Leaked FBI doc reveals secret policy of targeting journalists

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>FBI documents sought after in Freedom of Information Act requests for the last year are now available, thanks to a leak to the Intercept. They lay out secret rules for collecting phone records of journalists, bypassing normal judicial processes.

>The documents, published Thursday, outline how FBI agents would utilize National Security Letters in obtaining journalists’ phone records. They date back to 2013, the same year the agency’s overseer, the US Department of Justice, amended its standards for subpoenaing for such records.

>However, the newly leaked papers are marked “last updated October 2011,” and they seem to conflict with DOJ policy as well as reveal information that many say never should have been secret in the first place.

>The FBI’s National Security Letters, or NSLs, are used like search warrants, but unlike a normal warrant, they are not signed off on by any judge or court. They are approved in-house without even a requirement to notify the target. For the purposes of these documents, that means not even the news organization employing the journalist would necessarily be informed. Furthermore, they nearly always come with some form of a gag order, preventing the target from talking about their NSL case.

>Getting an NSL authorized typically requires the signatures of the FBI’s general counsel and its National Security Branch’s executive assistant director as well as other chain of command OK’s following the agent making the request, the Intercept reported. That is, as long as the NSL is deemed “relevant” to an investigation pertaining to national security.

https://www.rt.com/usa/349081-leaked-fbi-doc-journalists/