Trump admin loses fight to spy on random journalists’ LinkedIn DMs
The Trump administration’s fight to stop suspected leaks of top-secret military information on LinkedIn can’t sweep in “a vast number of confidential sources” of random journalists “who have no conceivable relationship” to the Department of Justice’s investigation, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Key points
- The request was not limited to journalists involved in a controversial report from a news outlet that Trump said exposed confidential military information in a foreign country.
- The majority of journalists have LinkedIn accounts and publish their contact information to encourage sources to connect on the platform, LinkedIn argued.
- Even more concerning, the Trump administration secured a secrecy order barring LinkedIn from telling anyone about the sweeping request for a year.
The order came after the DOJ asked LinkedIn to turn over 18 months of communications from targeted journalists who collectively published more than 1,000 articles on many different topics over that time period.
Additional details
- So allowing that government overreach went beyond harming targeted journalists and threatened to undermine a critical platform where journalists frequently connect with confidential sources, judges ruled.
- That left journalists unaware for far too long that their First Amendment rights had been compromised, judges ruled.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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