Subpoenas

The Senate Judiciary Committee Friday unanimously approved a “very overdue” bill that would require law enforcement officials to get a warrant before accessing e-mail messages, updating a dated privacy law.

The proposed amendments are historic and will create a consistent method for handling government access to online communications, said Sophia Cope, director of government affairs at the Newspaper Association of America. But the measure likely won’t go to the Senate this year, forcing the process to start over again next year, she said.

In the first ruling under Wisconsin’s new shield law, a judge denied the state Department of Justice’s request to subpoena three journalists who reported on a farmer’s alleged criminal conduct .

The justice department was unable to show that the information they seek is unobtainable from other sources, as required by the 2010 law, said Sauk County Judge Guy Reynolds. But Reynolds, who ruled from the bench Thursday, added that he would reconsider the subpoenas if the state's other witnesses contradict the journalists' reports.

Paula Broadwell isn’t the only person whose Gmail messages were read by government officials – Google received almost 8,000 e-mail access requests from U.S. state and federal governments in the past six months, according to the latest Google Transparency Report.

Google fully or partially granted 90 percent of the requests made by federal, state and local U.S. governments, according to the report. The requests by stateside governments account for more than a third of requests worldwide.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and EarthRights International have filed motions to quash subpoenas issued by Chevron Corp. to three e-mail providers for the data and location information of more than 100 email accounts over the span of nearly a decade.

The subpoenas, which were issued in federal courts to Google and Yahoo in San Franciso and Microsoft in New York City at the beginning of October, represent Chevron’s latest attempt in an ongoing legal battle to prove that an Ecuadorian judge falsified information in an $18 billion lawsuit against the oil giant.

A Florida judge denied prosecutors’ attempts to seal court records and close future hearings in the prosecution of George Zimmerman, ruling in a hearing today that “this is an open court, this is a public case.”

Update, Oct. 23: Kiriakou pleaded guilty today to one count of disclosing information identifying a covert agent and will likely be sentenced to two and a half years years imprisonment under a plea deal with prosecutors. As part of the agreement, the remaining four counts of the indictment, including three counts of violating the Espionage Act, were dismissed. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced in January.

Documentary filmmakers are fighting a subpoena that would require them to hand over outtakes and notes, claiming that they are protected under New York's shield law.

Recent leaks of classified information prompted concerned members of the Congressional House Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing today to address consequences for those involved in releasing and publishing national secrets.

The First Amendment-based reporter's privilege does not extend to a pair of academic researchers working on an oral history project for a Massachusetts university, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston (1st Cir.) ruled Friday.

The U.S. government announced it will not subpoena journalists as witnesses in the prosecution of a former intelligence officer who allegedly leaked classified information.