According to the Washington Post, the US Department of Justice secretly tapped journalists’ phones four years ago.
The US Department of Justice has private data from journalists from The Washington Post. (Archive image)
Photo: Gerald Herbert (AP / Keystone)
According to the Washington Post, former US President Donald Trump’s administration secretly spotted journalists’ phones four years ago. As reported by the newspaper on Friday, journalists Eileen Nakashima, Greg Miller and their former colleague Adam Entous reported that the US Department of Justice had personal and professional telephone and cellular data from April to July 2017.
“We are extremely concerned about this use of governance to access journalists’ communications, ”said Chief Editor Cameron Barr. The US Department of Justice should immediately provide the reasons for this “interference” in the work of journalists. The work of journalists is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press.
The civil rights organization ACLU accused the ministry of “spying on” the reporters. “This should never have happened,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote on its online Twitter service. “If the government spies on journalists and their sources, it is endangering the freedom of the press.”
The Justice Ministry messages did not tell reporters the reason for the wiretapping.
During the period the recordings were released, the three reporters wrote an article about a meeting between Trump’s advisor and then US Attorney General Jeff Sessions with the Russian ambassador before the 2016 presidential election. I have also written about President Barack Obama’s administration’s attempts to stop Russian interference in the election campaign.
According to US intelligence estimates, Russia interfered heavily in the US presidential election campaign in 2016 – above all through hacker attacks and the spread of manipulative messages to internet networks. The Russian intervention was directed against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in particular.
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