Absolutely. And it's important to realize here that the First
Amendment
and the freedom of the press that it protects is not protecting the
press. It's protecting the public. It's protecting our ability and our
right to know what the government is doing in our name. And that's all
the more important when it comes to national security cases like this
where the government has vast authority to make secret its activities.
And this particular subpoena is so chilling because of two reasons.
First, it's extremely broad. It covered 20 phone lines in offices where
more than 100 reporters work. And then in addition to that and perhaps
more troubling, the Department of Justice elected to delay notifying
the Associated Press that it had issued the subpoena for these telephone
records. What that means is the Associated Press was robbed of the
ability to go to court to challenge the subpoena.
-- the ACLU's Gabe Rottman on the first hour of Thursday's The Diane Rehm Show (NPR).