Shield Law? What Shield Law? Police Just Get Reporter's Phone Records
from the how-about-that... dept
While there are still debates over proposals for a federal shield law to protect journalists from having to reveal sources, California already has a shield law for journalists, but what good does it do if authorities totally ignore it. It seems that may have happened in the case of TMZ's Harvey Levin and the Los Angeles County Sheriff obtaining Levin's phone records in trying to track down who leaked information about actor Mel Gibson's arrest. Levin is pointing out that this does, in fact, appear to violate both state and federal law and is apparently working with lawyers over this. While the Sheriff's department says it spoke with a prosecutor and got a judge's approval to get the records, it's difficult to see how that fits with California's shield law.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: harvey levin, journalism, los angeles, shield law
Companies: tmz
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more questions than answers
And who actually broke the law? The police, the judge, or both? Or maybe the shield laws don't apply if there's a warrent (in which case they're not worth much).
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Re: more questions than answers
I think this depends on what the judge was told the reason for the warrant was for. If he was lied to then it should only be the police, if the knowingly broke the law then I would say both.
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Sorry to repeat myself lawyer = ass.
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Umm... Patriot Act?
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As I recall....
Sounds tough to balance between protection and reality to me.
/shrug
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Re: As I recall....
Otherwise, it's just big brother looking up your records without due process.
If the police in this case did get a warrant, then I'd like to know what judge signed the warrant, basically saying that there was reasonable cause to deprive this American citizen of his privacy based on the fact that the cops simply wanted to know.
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Re: Re: As I recall....
So they may not have to lie to the judge, as they are persuing a legimite investigation into a legitamite crime.
Whether the leaking of this information SHOULD be illegal is another question entirely, but that rests upon the legislature and/or the people, rather than the policy and the judiciary.
The former groups get to decide what the law is, the latter are to enforce and apply it.
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The reason I'm against this law
I'm all for a shield law that applies to all of us, INCLUDING journalists.
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Sadly though bloggers have much worse protection, but I guess that's a common theme today.
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Re:
So how do they define the difference? Does it apply to only some journalists? What about a journalist with a blog?
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Re: Re:
No answers?
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Shield laws
I hope this gets resolved in a way that protects our freedoms, including journalistic shield laws (which I think should apply to bloggers, as well - I agree completely with you!
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Re:
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