In Major Ruling, Court Orders Times Reporter to Testify | Hacker News Reader

In Major Ruling, Court Orders Times Reporter to Testify

nytimes.com

54 pointshedonist31 comments

The following really struck me:

"In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. — the court whose decisions cover the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — ruled that the First Amendment provides no protection to reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them."

Especially seeing as there is no such thing a leak that isn't unauthorized. It seems another step in hiding information from the public because would-be leakers now need to worry that the reporter they give information to would be forced to reveal their source.

Many leaks are authorized. The White House leaks all the time.

If it is authorized its not a leak. That is not to say the White House doesn't position releases of information as leaks to journalists, but even so, those releases are not actually leaks despite what they would have you believe.

How can a consumer of news media tell the difference? Should we just assume they're all authorized unless someone is holed up in the Moscow airport?

Playing devils-advocate here, but this isn't really new -- the fourth estate flourished because of journalists who vowed to go to prison rather than reveal sources, and it became a game of chicken that Journalists won in that era. Now it's the Government that has decided not to blink and the weakened resolve of news organizations has made it easy for them to trample over hard-won gains of decades past.

There, to my knowledge, have never been codified protections for journalists -- just standards.

"There, to my knowledge, have never been codified protections for journalists -- just standards."

I didn't believe this so I decided to take to Google...turns out there doesn't appear to be any formal laws. There is section 8 of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (http://www.iachr.org/declaration.htm) but that means nothing.

Doesn't seem any different than Judith Miller, who is mentioned at the end of page 2. She went to prison instead of revealing her sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Contempt_of_cour...

Miller disclosed her source after being released.

The government ruled in favor of the government and against individual rights again? At least they're consistent.

the courts always rule in favor of the executive branch. every single ruling. don't even bother reading the opinions; there's nothing useful in those. if you see "United States" at the top, you'll immediately know the victor.

You mean like in Hamdi?

> the courts always rule in favor of the executive branch. every single ruling. don't even bother reading the opinions; there's nothing useful in those. if you see "United States" at the top, you'll immediately know the victor.

United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972) [1] -- particularly relevant in the area of domestic surveillance -- disagrees with you.

[1] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/297/case.html

Surely we can say at this point that ruling is a dead letter? Lots of people are nostalgic for the freedom that some of us used to have.

> Surely we can say at this point that ruling is a dead letter?

It explicitly didn't consider foreign intelligence surveillance power, and FISA was adopted after it to limit domestic surveillance using the foreign intelligence excuse, which largely reduced the then-building pressure on the Court to resolve that issue. The loosening of FISA under the FISA Amendments Act and the subsequent mass surveillance means that the pressure is likely to return.

I wouldn't say US v. US District Court is a dead letter now. I would say that we are reaching the point where how the Supreme Court decides the issue it deferred then will determine whether it becomes a dead letter.

The person you are replying to appears to have been going for sarcasm, not seriousness.

Anybody surprised about this?

This is in line with what we have seen before. The "war on the whistle blower".

Next we'll see attempts to make it illegal to publish classified information after it has been received (or maybe it is already - see the Wikileaks disaster). In that case the reporter and the news outlet itself would be held responsible.

I'm not surprised because courts have been holding reporters in contempt for decades for attempting to assert a privilege against outing sources that the law does not recognize.

Federal law doesn't recognize a "reporter's privilege" to refuse testimony about sources. Some states do (this is a federal case, not a state one) but those protections are often qualified, for instance preventing reporters from being forced to testify as a "first resort", but requiring testimony if all other investigative avenues are exhausted.

This is eerily similar to the plot of the movie "Nothing but the truth" starring Kate Beckinsale as a reporter outing a C.I.A. agent. In the movie the reporter outs a C.I.A. operative and is then prosecuted for not revealing her source. If I understand correctly in this case the situation is even worse, the source of the leak is known and been prosecuted and the reporter has been asked to testify in his trial, though I guess the reporter never breached the law.

To save everyone from having to look it up:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress in this instance has not made any law prohibiting a reporter from publishing a story, and reporters being required to testify is just one of a myriad of circumstances in which parties to controversies can be required to testify in one way or another.

If the freedom of the press is infringed, and the infringement was legal, that must mean Congress made a law infringing on the freedom of the press, right?

How was the freedom of the press infringed? I mean, the government requires that journalists and newspapers pay taxes, so is that another infringement?

I didn't say that the freedom of the press was infringed. I said "If the freedom of the press is infringed..."

This is like arguing that reporters should be able to break into computers to get information for stories; after all, anything you did to criminalize that would be an infringement on the press.

I was disputing your claim that this wasn't a first amendment violation because Congress didn't make a relevant law. Now you're arguing that this wasn't a first amendment violation because there was no infringement on the freedom of the press, which is a much more tenable argument.

Constitutional freedom of the press is the right to publish information, not a special privilege of members of the professional media to avoid generally-applicable legal duties.

Paywalled. Anyone got a readable link?

Delete your nytimes.com cookies, refresh.

If you're using chrome you can just open an incognito window and view it there.

Same in Firefox. It's even a right-click option.

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