Search warrants seeking materials associated with your work

While state shield laws and the constitutionally based reporter’s privilege may help you fight subpoenas for your testimony, a federal law may help protect you from search warrants for material related to your Internet publishing. Under the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, subpoenas, and not search warrants, are required for government officials trying to acquire information during a criminal investigation; thus, with narrow exceptions, the law makes it “unlawful for a government officer or employee … to search for or seize any work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication[.]”

Work product materials include material “prepared, produced, authored, or created” for the purpose of communicating such material to the public and extend to notes, drafts and outtakes. Under its protection for documentary materials, the PPA also covers photographs and video and audio tapes.

Although the law is not yet clear, the statutory language of “purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication” seems to indicate that protection would extend to online publishers as well.

The two most noteworthy exceptions to the PPA allow government officials to carry out a lawful search and seizure if there is probable cause to believe that the publisher has evidence linking him or her to a crime and if authorities have reason to believe that death or serious injury will result if the search is delayed by obtaining a subpoena.  

Keep in mind that unlike a shield law, which allows you to refuse to comply with a subpoena, the PPA allows you to bring a civil lawsuit for damages after the fact if you feel that an unlawful search and seizure violated your rights under the act.

Fortunately, because of the PPA, you are not likely to face a search warrant. However, recent uses of the measure, including by California authorities who raided the home of a blog editor in 2010, indicate that you should be aware of the act’s protection from search warrants in most cases. The Student Press Law Center provides a useful guide to the PPA, including tips for responding to a search warrant seeking materials associated with your publishing activities.