Rasch: Journalists served subpoenas in Lamo case
Mark Rasch: The Subpoenas are Coming!:
The demand that journalists preserve their notes is being made under laws that require ISP’s and other “providers of electronic communications services” to preserve, for example, e-mails stored on their service, pending a subpoena, under a statute modified by the USA-PATRIOT Act.
The purpose of that law was to prevent the inadvertent destruction of ephemeral electronic records pending a subpoena. For example, you could tell an ISP that you were investigating a hacking case, and that they should preserve the audit logs while you ran to the local magistrate for a subpoena.
It was never intended to apply to journalist’s records.
