Attorney General Eric Holder, Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole and other Justice Department officials held two planned off-the-record meetings with the press on Thursday and Friday. At the moment, details from the Friday meeting have yet to be publicized by media executives or representatives who attended, but there are numerous details from the Thursday meeting [...]

The Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records, along with criminalizing Fox News reporter James Rosen to pursue a leak investigation into a former State Department contractor, has led to media organizations making some of the most clear defenses of freedom of the press to date. It has inspired a healthy amount of [...]

Attorney General Eric Holder has claimed he has never been involved in the “potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material,” but the Justice Department under President Barack Obama has been more than willing to criminalize the press in order to enable or enhance the ability of the department to pursue leak investigations. [...]

The extent of the administration of President Barack Obama’s attacks on the First Amendment has been confirmed to include having the Justice Department pursue a Fox News journalist as a “co-conspirator” in a leak investigation. The investigation involves Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department employee, who has been under investigation for possibly leaking classified information on [...]

In continuing coverage and discussion of the Justice Department’s seizure of AP records and the implications this has on freedom of the press, I went on “The Marc Steiner Show” on WEAA on Friday. Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel and policy advisor in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, and Jordan Bloom, associated editor of The American [...]

The answers given by Attorney General Eric Holder during his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon certainly make it appear like his decision to recuse himself was a gutless decision, one he made because he knew when the press discovered the Associated Press had their phone records secretly seized they would be collectively [...]

A symptom of the news that the establishment media organization, the Associated Press, had their phone records targeted by the Justice Department as part of an apparent investigation into a leak has been that reporters have been more aggressive in their questioning of officials at press conferences. During a news conference Attorney General Eric Holder held [...]

The US Justice Department’s secret seizure of phone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press is nothing less than a continuation of attacks on freedom of the press that have been ongoing under the administration of President Barack Obama. Carl Bernstein, famed investigative journalist who broke the story on the Watergate scandal with Bob Woodward, appeared on [...]

As rare as it is for the Senate to have anything resembling a debate on a civil liberties issue such as privacy and government surveillance, there was a minimal amount of coverage in the establishment press of the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The law, which allows warrantless surveillance, was reauthorized for five [...]