Surveillance expansion threatens press freedom – and everyone else's
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Mass surveillance is widespread. Congress must rein in government spying powers.
In 2013, whistleblower and longtime Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) board member Edward Snowden’s stunning revelations of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency shocked the world. Since then, we’ve learned even more about the alarming scope of surveillance by the U.S. government.
Mass surveillance undermines everyone’s privacy, and it threatens press freedom by allowing the government to spy on communications between journalists and their sources.
Featured Items
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Leaks Are Vital For Democracy and the NSA Revelations Are the Quintessential Example Why
When looking back at the past decade, it’s hard to think of a constitutional scandal that wasn’t first brought to the public’s attention by a leak to the press. Bush’s NSA warrantless wiretapping program, black site prisons, torture, CIA drone strikes, and offensive cyberattacks are just some of the examples. …
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Why is Eric Holder In Charge of Oversight on Eric Holder's Surveillance of Journalists Policy?
President Obama delivered a much-anticipated speech yesterday on national security policy, where he unexpectedly touched on the recent AP and Fox News press freedom scandals. While he condemned leaks, he emphasized that “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” and that he’s “troubled by the possibility …
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Virtually Everything the Government Did to WikiLeaks is Now Being Done to Mainstream US Reporters
At Freedom of the Press Foundation, we believe it’s vital to defend WikiLeaks’ right to gather and publish classified information in the public interest, just as it’s vital to protect the rights of Associated Press and Fox News to do the same. Under the law, the AP, Fox News, and …
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Nation’s Leading Journalists: Leak Investigations Chilling Our Reporting, Hurting Public’s Right-To-Know
This morning on CBS Face the Nation, President and CEO of the Associated Press Gary Pruitt called the Justice Department’s seizure of AP’s call records “unconstitutional” and said it has already had a chilling effect on newsgathering. The chilling effect may end up being the lasting effect of this scandal: …
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Guantanamo: The Tour
Last week, thanks to the generous support of the Freedom of Press Foundation, I traveled to Guantanamo during the height of a mass hunger strike to tour the detention facility, along with four other members of the media. We were shown the two main detention camps—5 and 6—as well as …
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White House Shield Bill Could Actually Make It Easier For the Government to Get Journalists' Sources
Under fire for the unprecedented Justice Department leak investigation that has engulfed the Associated Press, the White House yesterday asked the Senate to revive the stalled federal shield bill, which would aim to protect reporters from being forced to reveal their sources in many situations. A robust federal shield law …
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New Yorker Launches New Whistleblower Submission System, With Code Written by the Late Aaron Swartz
In an important announcement, the New Yorker has launched ‘Strongbox,’ a whistleblower submission system that aims to allow for anonymous leakers to digitally hand off important information to journalists. The underlying code, called 'Dead-Drop,' is an open-source project and was written by Internet pioneer and legendary coder Aaron Swartz, before …
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Justice Department Investigation of AP Part of Larger Pattern to Intimidate Sources and Reporters
As part of a new leak investigation, the Justice Department has secretly obtained the call records for twenty phone lines owned by the Assocated Press (AP), which could put sources for as many as one hundred reporters at risk. The AP called the move a "massive and unprecedented intrusion," saying …
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Inside One of the Biggest Freedom of Information Act Fights in History
As newsroom budgets shrink around the country, one of the casualties has been challenges to Freedom of Information Act violations or other open-records laws through litigation. One recent study shows major news organizations are challenging government secrecy orders in court much less frequently in the last few years. Despite these …
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The Freedom of Information Act: The Most Powerful Tool in My Reporting Arsenal
Jason Leopold is Truthout’s lead investigative reporter. Freedom of the Press Foundation is crowd-funding in support of his FOIA work and on-the-scenes reporting at the Guantanamo Bay trials. You can fund his work here. A couple of years ago, a friend handed me about 500 pages of documents he …
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