Holder to Tighten Rules for Obtaining Reporters’ Data

WASHINGTON â€" Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been criticized for the Justice Department’s aggressive tactics in secretly obtaining phone logs and e-mails of reporters as part of leak investigations, is expected to issue new guidelines on Friday that would significantly narrow the circumstances under which journalists’ records could be obtained, a Justice Department official said.

The new guidelines, which the official said would take effect almost immediately, would prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from portraying a reporter as a co-conspirator in a criminal leak as a way to get around a legal bar on secret search warrants for reporting materials, as an agent did in a recently revealed search warrant affidavit involving a Fox News reporter.

They would also make it harder â€" though not impossible â€" for prosecutors to obtain a journalist’s calling records from telephone companies without giving news organizations advance notice, as the department recently did in obtaining a sweeping set of phone records for reporters with The Associated Press. Notifying news organizations in advance would give them a chance to contest the request in court.

“This is as far as the department can go on its own until Congress passes the media shield legislation,” the Justice Department official said, referring to a bill, which the Obama administration backed amid a furor over leak investigations, that would let judges rather than prosecutors be the ultimate decision-makers about subpoenas for journalists’ phone records, among other matters.