EDITORIAL – Due process at risk in Lancaster

Now is a scary time to be a Pennsylvania journalist.

Recently, the Lancaster Intelligencer… Now is a scary time to be a Pennsylvania journalist.

Recently, the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal found itself in trouble for a potential breach of state security. State investigators claim that the newspaper published articles containing nonpublic details of local crimes. Investigators allege that the newspaper’s reporters accessed these details by hacking into a restricted section of a government Web site – an act that is considered a felony.

Another possibility is that the county coroner, whose job consists largely of investigating deaths by non-natural causes, provided the newspaper with a password and/or permission to access the site. He denies knowingly doing any such thing.

Last month, investigators raided his home and seized computers. This month, they’ve taken four hard drives from the newspaper and plan to review the cached Web content and histories, looking for evidence of a crime.

For several reasons – the privacy of reporters’ anonymous sources and basic First Amendment rights, especially – the newspaper is contesting this seizure. The state supreme court refused to hear its case, which means the government investigators are free to go into the hard drives. The ruling judge ordered that he be shown the extracted files before prosecutors see them, as a protective measure for reporters.

Now, it’s very possible that the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal did something it shouldn’t have. This seizure, though, seems like an inappropriate and overly drastic way to get to the bottom of things. Not only does it potentially hamper the newspaper’s ability to function while the computers are missing, but it sends a loud, intimidating signal to other papers in the state.

If a government agency can swoop in and take these items, where are the boundaries of reasonable search and seizure? It’s the job of a newspaper to find out as much of the truth as it possibly can; this case, regardless of the outcome, will likely have a chilling effect on other newspapers and reporters who consider it their jobs to dig for information.

This also potentially compromises anonymous sources. Although the judge is requiring a look at withdrawn files, there is no safety net ensuring that investigators won’t pull up other information – purposefully or not – that may damage anonymous sources’ reputations at a later date or in a less direct way.

Newspapers, like any other business, have to respect the laws of the land. Lawmakers, though, should have taken many more steps in between suspecting the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal and seizing its private information.