Federal authorities are barred from conducting an “unsupervised, wholesale search” of electronic devices that they seized from a Washington Post reporter’s Virginia home while investigating allegations that a Pentagon contractor illegally leaked classified information to the journalist, a magistrate judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter said he will independently review the contents of Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices instead of allowing a Justice Department “filter team” to perform a search. He denied the newspaper’s request for an order requiring the government to immediately return the devices to its reporter.
Porter said he balanced the need to protect Natanson’s free speech rights with the government’s duty to safeguard top secret national security information.
“The Court finds that seizing the totality of a reporter’s electronic work product, including tools essential to ongoing newsgathering, constitutes a restraint on the exercise of First Amendment rights,” he wrote.
The case has drawn national attention and scrutiny from press freedom advocates who say it reflects a more aggressive posture by the Justice Department toward leak investigations involving journalists.
Federal agents seized a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin smart watch when they searched Natanson’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, on Jan. 14. Last month, Porter agreed to temporarily bar the government from reviewing any material from Natanson’s devices.
Pentagon contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones was arrested on Jan. 8 and charged with unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. Perez-Lugones is accused of taking home printouts of classified documents from his workplace and later passing them to Natanson.
The newspaper’s attorneys accused authorities of violating legal safeguards for journalists and trampling on Natanson’s First Amendment rights.
Justice Department attorneys argued that the government is entitled to keep the seized material because it contains evidence in an ongoing investigation with national security implications.
