Justice Department Promises It'll Stop Spying On Journalists

The U.S. Department of Justice is super sorry that they've been spying on journalists in order to identify leaks within the federal government, and they promise that they will stop obtaining their records. Don't hold your breath. This tactic has been used by both Republicans and Democrats alike, and it is extremely unlikely that they are going to stop. This practice is nearly as old as the country itself, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Great news everyone. The US department of justice came out recently and said that they are no longer going to be looking at the phone records and other, you know, private data of journalists here in the United States. Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. But either way, here's the issue. Obviously, the recent dust up in the news about Donald Trump using the DOJ to spy on reporters, having the DOJ seize the records of these reporters, subpoena the records, because they wanted to find out who was leaking within the federal government. Even Joe Biden came out and said, this is an attack on the first amendment. You can't do this, DOJ. I want you to stop. DOJ says we're gonna stop, but this is not just a Trump issue, folks. This isn't even just a Republican or Democrat issue. Hell, spying and trying to trash journalists here in the United States is basically a tradition as old as the country itself.

Anyone who goes out there and attempts to report the truth, whether they are on the right or the left, is going to be attacked by an administration, whether it's run by a Republican or a Democrat or anybody else. It's a tradition that has crossed party lines over the years because we know in happened in Obama. We know it happened in Bush and Trump and Clinton and Reagan and all of these people, folks, it's kind of what they do. And it sucks that they do it. I would love to believe that they're not going to do it anymore. But hell, even if they stopped spying on them and taking their data, that doesn't mean that journalists are not in the crosshairs. Let me tell you this quick story. Christmas day, a couple of years ago, I get an email from a colleague back when I was doing a lot of freelance writing for DeSmogBlog. Christmas morning, I get this email.

She says, hey, recently I had a freedom of information act request come through a lot of emails from the state department, I've been going through them. And guess what? I found that they were talking about you, a piece that you wrote. Now, I'm not an investigative journalist by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a reporter if anything. And what I had done was a couple months prior to her getting these emails, I had written a piece on fracking and how the Obama administration was still pushing fracking. They weren't going to ban it, blah, blah, blah, fracking bad. But that piece drew the ire of higher ups within the state department to the point where they were discussing my piece with me in the email. Do, do they have a file on me? Have I been surveilled? Have I been surveilled because of what I do here every day?

I don't know. But I do know because of that FOIA request and the email that she had sent me to me that I've been on their radar, at least in some capacity, at least one time. And that was terrifying. It was a little flattering, but it was terrifying. And I have to imagine that the real investigative journalists out there, the ones who actually expose the horrible atrocities of the government, those are the ones that are really being targeted. And we know that. But the DOJ says they're not going to do that anymore. Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it.