Federal Court Orders Court-Led Search of Seized Journalist Devices

A federal court has decided that a search of devices seized from a Washington Post reporter will be supervised by the court itself, after concerns arose about the Department of Justice's (DOJ) reliability in conducting the search. This decision came from US Magistrate Judge William Porter, who criticized government prosecutors for omitting crucial information in their search warrant application.

Judge Porter noted that the court was unaware of a 1980 law, which restricts searches and seizures of journalists’ work materials, when the warrant was initially approved. The ruling comes six weeks after the FBI executed a search warrant at the Virginia home of reporter Hannah Natanson.

While Porter denied the Washington Post and Natanson’s immediate request for the return of the devices, he opted for a court-led process aimed at focusing the search on materials relevant to a criminal case against an alleged leaker connected to Natanson. Furthermore, he nullified the part of the warrant that allowed the government to examine the seized data.

“The government acknowledges that it established probable cause to obtain only a small fraction of the material it seized,” Porter stated in his order. “Allowing the government to search through the entirety of a reporter’s work product—when probable cause exists for only a narrow subset—would authorize an unlawful general warrant.”

According to Judge Porter, the government’s proposed search would also breach the Department of Justice’s own guidelines, which stipulate that press-directed search warrants must be narrow and designed to minimize intrusion into newsgathering activities unrelated to the investigation. Although the use of keyword searches can limit intrusion, Porter rejected the government's proposal to have its own “filter team” conduct the search.

“Given the documented reporting on government leak investigations and the government’s well-chronicled efforts to stop them, allowing the government’s filter team to search a reporter’s work product—most of which consists of unrelated information from confidential sources—is the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of the Washington Post’s henhouse,” Porter wrote.