U.S. Seizes A.P.’s Phone Records: Media Surveillance and the Law

On May 7, 2012, the Associated Press published an article about a Yemen-based terror plot, set for the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, thwarted by the C.I.A. Now, the A.P. believes that story may have made them a target of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Around the time the A.P. filed this story, the Justice Department began collecting the phone records of several A.P. reporters across the country over the course of two months, without the organization’s knowledge.
The Justice Department has not said whether the Yemen terror story is the reason for the A.P. surveillance, and attorney General Eric Holder says that he was recused from the A.P. subpoena, though he did offer this defense to a room of angry reporters yesterday:
“I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976,” Holder said, “And I have to say that this among — if not the most serious, then it is within the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk — and that is not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk, and trying to determine who was responsible for that I think required aggressive action.”
Bob Garfield, co-host of Takeaway co-producer WNYC’s On the Media, explores the fallout for the press and the U.S. government.