As part of a state grand-jury investigation over press leaks, the office of Pennsylvania's Attorney General has seized four hard drives from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. At issue is whether reporters at that paper were given access to a password-protected law enforcement website with nonpublic information on local crime incidents. The paper is accused of having used some of that information in news reports. Reporters may be charged with felony "computer hacking" if they accessed the website without permission from authorities.
The dispute pits the government's desire to solve an alleged felony – computer hacking – against the news media's fear that taking the computers circumvents the First Amendment and the state Shield Law. The state Supreme Court declined last week to take the case, allowing agents to begin analyzing the data.
"This is horrifying, an editor's worst nightmare," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington. "For the government to actually physically have those hard drives from a newsroom is amazing. I'm just flabbergasted to hear of this." (…)
In interviews yesterday, the reporters' lawyer, William DeStefano, and the coroner, Gary Kirchner, disagreed over whether Kirchner had given them permission to access the site.
DeStefano said that although he didn't know whether any of the reporters used the Web site, "evidence has been presented to the attorney general which makes it clear that the county coroner, an elected official, invited and authorized the paper or reporters access to the restricted portion of the Web site… . If somebody is authorized to give me a password and does, it's not hacking."
Link to Philadelphia Inquirer story (via Romenesko)
