Cora Currier reports:
The U.S. government can monitor journalists under a foreign intelligence law that allows invasive spying and operates outside the traditional court system, according to newly released documents.
Targeting members of the press under the law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, requires approval from the Justice Department’s highest-ranking officials, the documents show.
In two 2015 memos for the FBI, the attorney general spells out “procedures for processing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting known media entities or known members of the media.” The guidelines say the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, or their delegate must sign off before the bureau can bring an application to the secretive panel of judges who approves monitoring under the 1978 act, which governs intelligence-related wiretapping and other surveillance carried out domestically and against U.S. persons abroad.
Read more on The Intercept. See also Jessica Corbett’s article , via Joe Cadillic.
The US Government’s Secret Rules for Spying on Journalists Are “Terrifying”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/journalists-govenment-surveillance/249471/
Europe Worries Over Attacks on Journalists, Press Freedom:
In a report on the state of the press this year, Reporters Without Borders noted that Fico had called journalists “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas.”
“The freedom of the press isn’t doing very well today,” said Carlo Bonini, an Italian journalist, in a weekend interview with the La Repubblica newspaper. He recently wrote a book chronicling the death of Galizia, the Maltese journalist, and corruption in Malta.
There is worry across Europe of an erosion of trust in the media and a rise in attacks on journalists, as exemplified by the raid on the home of the Sicilian journalist Palazzolo.
READ MORE:
https://www.courthousenews.com/europe-worries-over-attacks-on-journalists-press-freedoms/