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IPFS News Link • Government

US Govt Just Legalized Operation Mockingbird -- FBI Can Now Impersonate the Media

• http://www.dcclothesline.com

Last Thursday, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General published what's become the subject of outrage for journalists, civil and constitutional rights advocates, and legal experts — "A Review of the FBI's Impersonation of a Journalist in a Criminal Investigation."

Allowing agents to infiltrate media organizations for any reason threatens to utterly undermine public trust, kill the very concept of journalistic integrity, and throttle the flow of information from sources and whistleblowers concerned with the legitimacy of journalists they contact.

As shocking as the finding sounds, it only validates the practice — in fact, the report centers around a case from 2007 in which an FBI agent pretended to be an Associated Press journalist to identify an elusive suspect online. At the time, the FBI "did not prohibit agents from impersonating journalists or from posing as a member of a news organization," the report states.

But even the ubiquitous, mainstream AP — whose outlet became an unwitting pawn for the agency — sharply criticized the DOJ's announcement.

"The Associated Press is deeply disappointed by the Inspector General's findings, which effectively condone the FBI's impersonation of an AP journalist in 2007," Associated Press Vice President Paul Colford said in a statement cited by US News. "Such action compromises the ability of a free press to gather the news safely and effectively and raises serious constitutional concerns."

In 2007, a high school student near Seattle emailed a series of bomb threats to his school, but his use of proxy servers thwarted police efforts to learn his identity — so they asked for assistance from the FBI's Northwest Cybercrime Task Force.

Agents devised a plan, and, as the Intercept summarized, "An undercover agent sent the student email impersonating an editor for the Associated Press. The email included links to a fake news site designed to look like the Seattle Times."

When the student followed the links, malware revealing his actual location installed itself.

It wasn't until an ACLU technologist accidentally discovered copies of the bogus news stories in 2014 — buried in pages the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained from the FBI via a Freedom of Information Act request in 2011 — that the plot to pose as journalists came to light, generating massive controversy and consternation.

Furthering the contempt, FBI Director James Comey penned a letter to the editor of the New York Times defending the agency's impersonation, dismissively stating "we do use deception at times to catch crooks, but we are acting responsibly and legally."


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