Trash Collectors

As a veteran anti-war activist and blogster critical of my government, I took this news somewhat personally, since, according to the [New York] Times report, without getting permission or making a report, FBI agents could sneak around the back of my house at night and fish through my garbage cans. They could do this if they thought there might be information in those cans useful to intimidate me to snitch on someone. (For the record, I’m not uncomfortable with an FBI agent going through the rancid chicken parts and feces from our cat’s litter box. I have nothing to hide.)

Apparently, individual FBI agents are also now empowered to meddle with me and other writers on this blog in ways I can only imagine — if they deem that necessary. It has to do with the blogosphere and the First Amendment. According to the Times, the new rules clarify for agents just who is a “legitimate member of the news media” on the internet and who is not. The Times reports that “prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs.” I presume “count” means that a blog is deemed to have First Amendment rights.

While we writers here at This Can't Be Happening are quite serious and ambitious, we are not (yet) The Huffington Post. So I imagine the average FBI agent would relegate us to the realm of “low-profile blog” and, thus, to the list of fair game blogs for whatever harassment or intimidation said agent might deem necessary.

I’m not a scholar of constitutional original intent like Antonin Scalia, but in my citizen’s understanding, the First Amendment was written at a time when to be a legitimate journalist all you needed was a small printing press to re-produce a single sheet of information. One man or woman could do the entire operation — very much like a blog today. You didn’t need some kind of corporate membership or a club badge issued by the government. Readership numbers and clout was not the issue. Ideas was the issue. It was about a principle and checking the power of government.

The First Amendment is clear. “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or the press …” It doesn’t say anything about not abridging the freedom of only those journalistic enterprises the FBI deems legitimate or too powerful to screw with. We’re really in trouble when a secretive national police force becomes the arbiter of who is, and who is not, a legitimate journalist covered by the First Amendment.
~ from The FBI Loosens Up by John Grant ~