In a blog posting yesterday by ABC News, reporters Brian Ross and Richard Espisito claim that the U.S. government has traced the phone calls of journalists working for the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Well, that would make sense considering the national security leaks both newspapers have uncovered (whether or not the secret prisons story is actually accurate or not).  But some people believe this is somehow connected to the NSA data mining phone records.

The executive director of the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, said the government’s reported acquisition of journalists’ calling records was part of a pattern of intrusions on First Amendment rights by the Bush administration. “I’m ready to throw my arms up in the air,” she said. “If there was a subpoena, they are supposed to be notified.”

Ah, yes, they are supposed to be notified, but there is a 90 day window before notification must be made.  How exactly is an investigation into the leaks part of a “pattern of intrusions on the First Amendment rights?”  The First Amendment guarantees are still applicable, and they always will be, but it is against the law to print national security secrets and has been for decades.

Dalgish though apparently knows better and realizes that tracing phone calls can come from two sides, calling into question her original assertion in the first place.

Investigators could obtain records of calls from government phones without any subpoenas, Ms. Dalglish observed.

An FBI spokesman, Bill Carter, called the ABC report “misleading,” but did not dispute that journalists’ phone records have been obtained by his agency. “In any case where the records of a private person are sought, they may only be obtained through established legal process,” he said.

Is it not right to investigate where leaks come from and where they spread?

Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator linked with BellSouth Says It Gave NSA No Call Records...