05.13.13 01:38 PM
In what is being called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” by the news organization’s top executive,
The Associated Press has discovered that the Justice Department secretly acquired two months’ of phone records on its reporters and editors.
From
The Associated Press:*
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
Justice was likely seeking information about classified information about a CIA operation in Yemen in the spring of 2012 leaked to the
AP.
http://personalliberty.com/2013/05/1...-ap-reporters/
