The cultivation of sources and the use of encryption and other means to protect those sources are essential to investigative journalism. While the government may include these details to show intent or to describe the means and context for the alleged criminal action, they seem to go beyond what is necessary. Barton Gellman, who led The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the Snowden documents, told CPJ, "If asking questions and protecting a source are cast as circumstantial evidence of guilt, we'll be crossing a dangerous line."
Read the full article here.