noted. 02/14/2012

• A High-Tech War on Leaks - NYTimes.com

  tags: leaks

  • It used to be that journalists had a sporting chance of protecting their sources. The best and sometimes only way to identify a leaker was to pressure the reporter or news organization that received the leak, but even subpoenas tended to be resisted. Today, advances in surveillance technology allow the government to keep a perpetual eye on those with security clearances, and give prosecutors the ability to punish officials for disclosing secrets without provoking a clash with the press.

  • “The government does not pursue every leak,” said Mark Corallo, who served as the Justice Department’s spokesman in Mr. Bush’s administration. “On balance, it is more important that the media have the ability to report. It’s important to our democracy.”

     That does not seem to be the view of the Obama administration, which has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined.

  • MR. ASHCROFT authorized a single subpoena for reporters’ testimony or records in his four years in office, Mr. Corallo said. He would not say so, but that subpoena was probably the one that troubled Judge Sack in 2006. The reporters lost. In a dissent, Judge Sack said he feared for the future.

     “Reporters might find themselves,” he wrote, “as a matter of practical necessity, contacting sources the way I understand drug dealers to reach theirs — by use of clandestine cellphones and meeting in darkened doorways. Ordinary use of the telephone could become a threat to journalist and source alike. It is difficult to see in whose best interests such a regime would operate.”

     What he imagined may now be reality. Consider the most recent prosecution, of John C. Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. agent who is said to have disclosed classified information to journalists in 2008 about the capture and interrogation of an operative of Al Qaeda.

  • The appeal in Mr. Risen’s case may, at first blush, suggest that the new primacy of digital surveillance in leak investigations is overstated. But Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the case was a vestige of another era.

     She described a conference in June organized by the Aspen Institute that brought together lawyers, journalists and intelligence officials to talk about government secrecy. The ground rules, she said, were that the identities of those involved were to be kept confidential, but what was said could be reported.

     “I was told in a rather cocky manner” by a national security representative, Ms. Dalglish recalled, that “the Risen subpoena is one of the last you’ll see.”

     She continued, paraphrasing the official: “We don’t need to ask who you’re talking to. We know.”

     The solution for reporters, Ms. Dalglish said, is to adopt Mr. Woodward’s methods from the 1970s. “For God’s sake, get off of e-mail,” she said. “Get off of your cellphone. Watch your credit cards. Watch your plane tickets. These guys in the N.S.A. know everything.”

     Mr. Corallo, the former Justice Department spokesman, provided corresponding advice to government officials. “Don’t be stupid and use e-mail,” he said. “You have to meet a reporter face to face, hand him an envelope and walk away quickly.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.