WASHINGTON: The Associated Press on Monday asked the Department of Homeland Security to respond to an investigation into 20 US journalists, including an acclaimed AP reporter, over the use of sensitive government databases to track international terrorists.
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Meyerkas, AP executive editor Julie Pace urged the agency to explain why the name of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Martha Mendoza was run through the database and posed as a potential confidential informant during the Trump administration. Identified in, as detailed in a report by the Inspector General of Homeland Security.
This is a prime example of a federal agency using its power to investigate the contacts of journalists, Paes wrote. While the inspector general’s report detailed the action taken under the previous administration, the practices were described as routine.
The DHS investigation into American journalists, as well as Congressional staff and perhaps members of Congress, was reported by Yahoo News and the AP on Saturday. It represents the latest clear example of an agency created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks using its vast capabilities to target American citizens.
DHS drew criticism from Congress and elsewhere in July 2020, when it deployed spoofed or unknown agents in military-style uniforms to clear people from the streets of Portland, Oregon, and protests outside federal courthouse in the city. During this they put them in unmarked cars.
This latest revelation prompted Sen. Ron Wyden to immediately submit the Inspector General report from DHS to Congress.
If multiple government agencies were aware of this conduct and did not take any action to stop it, there needs to be dire consequences for every officer involved, and DHS and the Department of Justice will have to be told that this is unacceptable in the future. What action they are taking to stop the conduct, said Oregon Democrat Weyden, who has long called for more oversight of government surveillance.
CBP said in a statement over the weekend that its investigation and investigation practices are strictly regulated and that the agency does not conduct investigations without a valid and legal basis for doing so.
Mayorcas and DHS had no immediate response to Pace’s letter, which sought assurances that this unfair treatment and apparent abuse of power would not continue.
This would be in line with a recent order by Attorney General Merrick Garland prohibiting the seizure of the records of journalists in the leak investigation. This was followed by an uproar over revelations that the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump had obtained records relating to journalists, as well as Democratic members of Congress and his aide and former White House counsel, Don McGahn.
During the Obama administration, federal investigators secretly confiscated the phone records of some journalists and editors at the AP. Those seizures included office and home lines as well as cellphones.
The DHS Inspector General report, which revealed the most recent revelations of the journalists’ investigation, also stemmed from a Trump-era leak investigation.
The IG was overseeing the actions of Jeffrey Rambo, a Border Patrol agent who was on temporary duty with a Customs and Border Protection unit in the Washington DC area in 2017 when he saw him as part of a leak investigation involving reporter Ali Watkins. As accessed official travel records. , who was then with Politico and now writes for The New York Times.
After his investigation of Rambo and Watkins was uncovered in media reports, the Inspector General began his investigation.
During his investigation, the IG learned from Rambo that he had regularly checked on journalists and Congressional employees, among others, while working in the CBP unit, Counter Network Division.
Rambo told investigators that he inquired about her database before trying to establish links with Mendoza, because his expertise in writing about forced labor is an area of concern for CBP as it tries to circumvent import sanctions. applies. The AP reporter is a known expert on the subject, having won its second Pulitzer Prize in 2016 as part of a team reporting on slave labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia.
The AP, in a separate statement from the Pace letter, also sought an explanation for the database’s use to investigate Mendoza and other journalists.
We are deeply concerned about this apparent abuse of power, the AP said. It seems that journalists are being targeted just to do their job, which is a violation of the First Amendment.
The inspector general referred his findings to a federal prosecutor for possible charges of misuse of government databases and lying to investigators, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute Rambo and two other Homeland Security employees.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
read all breaking news, today’s fresh news And coronavirus news Here.