Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records is both extreme and dangerous

From the Guardian, courtesy of a facebook friend, civil liberties expert Glenn Greenwald sounds off on what could become a pretty big scandal for the White House:

The key point is that all of this takes place in the ongoing War on Whistleblowers waged by the Obama administration. If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process. Imagine what message this latest behavior sends to journalists and their sources: that at any moment, the phone records of even the nation's most establishment journalists can be secretly obtained by the DOJ, which has no compunction about doing so even in the most extreme and invasive manner.

More here.

Lots of important stuff in the first amendment.  Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble, freedom to petition, and, of course, freedom of the press.  The founders included all these freedoms in the Bill of Rights, indeed, at the very beginning of the Bill of Rights, because they are considered to be key and foundational to the concept of democracy.  That is, you can't have democracy without these freedoms.  That's why America has traditionally been very careful when it goes about restricting first amendment freedoms.  I mean, as I've said continually about second amendment gun rights, we would be fools to make any freedom totally absolute.  

It's a bad idea to allow, say, a religion that practices pedophilia, or an "assembly" designed to intimidate and harass private citizens, or a free press that practices libel, and so on.  So okay.  Freedom of the press is not absolute.  There can be reasonable restrictions on the press.  But because freedom of the press is so extraordinarily important to the overall functioning of democracy, we'd better have some damned good reasons for any restrictions we place upon it.  DAMNED good reasons.  Otherwise, we're literally threatening democracy.

So, is national security one of those reasons?

Sure it is.  But that's where things start getting murky.  What does "national security" actually mean?  And when does that notion become so important that the government must literally threaten democracy by way of restricting freedom of the press?  In short, when does security trump citizens' need to know?  Some situations are easy.  For instance, in a time of war we don't want the New York Times running the names and addresses of CIA operatives in enemy territory.  Bad idea.  On the other hand, if we have CIA operatives assassinating foreign officials in nations with which we are not at war, the public probably needs to know about it whether the White House and Pentagon agree or not.  So this is a big discussion.  We have competing legitimate interests here.

But because freedom of the press is an essential freedom, the government bears the burden of justifying any restrictions in this area.  I have a hard time swallowing that seizing the phone records of dozens of AP reporters and personnel can be justified by "national security."  I mean, I suppose there's a case the government can make.  But they haven't made it yet.  And really, did they need to go after this many people, all in one fell swoop?  Surely, there are better, more focused approaches the DOJ could have taken, approaches that would respect and honor one of the most important freedoms that we as Americans have.  The sheer scope of this "investigation" is tantamount to mass arrests, a nuclear bomb, when a couple of warning shots would have sufficed.

That's why I'm extraordinarily skeptical that there is any real "national security" issue at stake here.  That's why it seems to me that this is about intimidation, about restricting freedom of the press for the sheer sake of the government's convenience.  This smells really bad, and the Obama administration better have the most incredible explanation I've ever heard, or I will join with crazed Republicans in calling for his impeachment on this.  You don't jack around with the first amendment.  And it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican.  This is above and beyond partisanship.  It's about understanding what it means to be an American.

One final note.  All you crazed Republicans with whom I might find myself a strange bedfellow.  You helped this happen.  You said nothing when Bush was doing the same thing.  Indeed, you cheered for it, never for one moment projecting into the future to imagine what it would be like when a guy you don't like is in the White House.  Conversely, Democrats, you don't even THINK about defending this (unless, of course, Obama offers the best explanation ever).  American values, democratic principles, freedom, these are the things to which we must be loyal, not a man, not a party, not an ideology.  If it was wrong when Bush did it, it's wrong when Obama does it.  

And that's the end of the argument.

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