Hail hardy and good f-ing luck to the Feds. As a reporter I when dealing with sensitive sources I NEVER called them on a phone that could be traced to them or myself nor would I ever have them call me on a phone that could be traced back to them. And here I'm talking about sources that handling information that was classified or "hot" in some big way; not talking about a congressional staffer or agency employee leaking me a draft copy of a GAO report or something like that. I would instruct sources, either during face to face meetings or "talking" to a group of potential sources (like law enforcement) in an electronic forum, to buy phone cards and make calls to me from public phones or from disposable cell phones. I had more than two dozen Federal Air Marshals as sources and they all communicated with me using phone cards. Yes, all very James Bond, to be sure. But for years I was afraid that just this sort of thing might happen one day, either legally or illegally. I know several other reporters that operate like this as well. --Brock On 8/2/06 5:28 PM, "David Farber" <dave@farber.net> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brad Malin <b.malin@vanderbilt.edu> Date: August 2, 2006 2:15:42 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: NYT: U.S. Wins Access to Reporter Phone Records

If I was going to be a confidential source, I would do so through an encrypted channel.

-brad

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/washington/02phones.html

U.S. Wins Access to Reporter Phone Records

By ADAM LIPTAK Published: August 2, 2006

A federal prosecutor may inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to identify their confidential sources, a federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday.

The 2-to-1 decision, from a court historically sympathetic to claims that journalists should be entitled to protect their sources, reversed a lower court and dealt a further setback to news organizations, which have lately been on a losing streak in the federal courts.

The dissenting judge said that the government had failed to demonstrate it truly needed the records and that efforts to obtain reportersb phone records could alter the way news gathering was conducted.

<snip>

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