Adam Liptak, the New York Times correspondent at the Supreme Court writes:
… the Obama administration, … has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined.
“It increases the level of paranoia,” Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said of recent trends. “As security has been ratcheted up, so has the anxiety of many government officials about dealing with the press and the public.”
Mr. Corallo, who served under Mr. Bush’s attorney general John D. Ashcroft, said he was “sort of shocked” by the volume of leak prosecutions under President Obama. “We would have gotten hammered for it,” he said.
The current administration attributes the volume of prosecutions to happenstance and the availability of evidence, rejecting accusations of politically motivated selective prosecution.
[Read the rest: A High-Tech War on Leaks – NYTimes.com.]
Several states have so-called “shield laws” which give legal protection to journalists who want to “shield” the identity of their sources. But there is no federal “shield law”.
In Canada — “shield law”? Are you kidding me?