The U.S. did not secretly obtain these records. It notified the AP that these records were obtained using a valid subpoena, which by law needs to be approved by the attorney general. Subpoenas of phone records happens all the time in both criminal investigations and civil cases.
This is just the AP using the propaganda power of its infinite supply of ink to attempt to protect itself from criminal investigations. Congratulations, HN--you fell for it. The amount of critical thinking on this site has dropped to unmeasurable levels.
It isn't as cut-and-dry as you're pretending. The AP's complaint is that the records obtained were unreasonably broad in scope, which goes against the DoJ's guidelines w/r/t news subpoenas.
>Rules published by the Justice Department require that subpoenas of records of news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general, but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained through subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.
>A subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period," according to the rules.
>The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that "might impair the news gathering function" because the government recognizes that "freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news."
Regarding the attorney general approving subpoenas,
>Rules published by the Justice Department require that subpoenas of records of news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general, but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained through subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.
In general it is really shady that so many things are 'unknown' about this. Presumably the reporters who wrote this article should have been able to gather this information (since the article is itself written by the AP). That they didn't implies either a) that the journalists are supremely incompetent, or b) that the DoJ is intentionally withholding information it normally has to hand over by law or regulation. That may be why the journos are calling this "secret" information gathering.
"Presumably the reporters who wrote this article should have been able to gather this information (since the article is itself written by the AP)."
This sums it up--the reporters who wrote this article are the ones whose records were subpoenaed. Classic conflict of interest, but the AP does not recuse themselves from writing this story. Thus, I cannot trust anything that they say. Facts are "unknown"? They will be if it helps the AP spread FUD. Subpoena is too broad? Says who--why, the AP, of course.
From what I can tell, the subpoena covers the five reporters involved in the article under investigation, plus all the communal phone lines used by all reporters in the office, lest reporters try to cover their tracks by using a phone that's not on their desk. That doesn't sound unusually broad to me.
This is just the AP using the propaganda power of its infinite supply of ink to attempt to protect itself from criminal investigations. Congratulations, HN--you fell for it. The amount of critical thinking on this site has dropped to unmeasurable levels.