“Mr. Patel has also called for using the Justice Department more aggressively to uncover who in the government is providing information to news reporters, and said that leakers should be prosecuted. He wrote in his book that all federal employees should be forced to submit to monthly scans of their devices “to determine who has improperly transferred classified information, including to the press.”
—Elizabeth Williamson and Charlie Savage in “Kash Patel Has Plan to Remake the F.B.I. Into a Tool of Trump”
The news media is clearly frightened that its various methods of spreading propaganda on behalf of the Left and that totalitarian-leaning cabal’s strangle-hold on the government is imperiled by Donald Trump’s return. The article that the quote above comes from is an excellent example. Good.
Gee, Trump’s FBI nominee Kash Patel (above) will actually use law enforcement to enforce the law. The Horror. Providing leaks to reporters, from inside the government or from inside any legitimate organization, is a breach of ethics warranting dismissal and civil penalties. For a lawyer to do it is grounds for disbarment. In many instances, leaking to the media by a government employee is illegal.I don’t have time to check right now and I am sick as a dog, but I wonder how long Ethics Alarms has described the news media as illegal “information launderers.” If someone is so outraged about what they observe and learn in a government agency, then that employee’s ethical course is to publicly reveal the information that so troubles him or her, and accept the consequences. The Constitution doesn’t give reporters the right to shield their sources; that’s why journalists have gone to jail in the past for not revealing them. So called “shield laws” should be repealed. Journalists have abused the privilege, and that’s what being able to keep sources secret is, a privilege. It is not a right. As a crusty Wilford Brimley tells a blathering attorney for a newspaper in “Absence of Malice,” “that right does not exist.”
The dewy-eyed sentimentality over brave journalists guarding the anonymity of their sources to check government power is based on the inflated reverence for the motives, honesty, trustworthiness, and integrity of journalists. If those admirable motives and virtues ever existed, they do no longer, at least not in sufficient numbers of reporters that they can be regarded as anything but anomalies or exceptions.
“All federal employees should be forced to submit to monthly scans of their devices to determine who has improperly transferred classified information, including to the press? That gets a full Kurtz from me:
Again, good! Like journalists, government employees who abuse their positions for their own political agendas have forfeited the privilege of trust. What was done to Trump in his first term and the accelerating ethics rot in the news media make the measures described in the article as frightening in truth over-due, critical, and necessary.
The piece was meant to make Patel seem dangerous. I felt better about his nomination after reading the article than I did before.
Finally was able to get a gift link for the article that gets past the paywall. It is here.
Ethics Alarms 
In 2008-2009 I attended the National Defense Intelligence College and the editor of The Washington Post was a guest speaker. A student asked him what responsibility his paper had to protect the secrets of the United States. His reply: “None. That is your job”.
I have always found the idea that journalists need not disclose sources an opportunity for fiction. Imagine, a college term paper without citations let alone a legal brief.
Pelosi described the smear wrap up which is to float some smear about a target for destruction which is picked up in the news media which is then used as the source of them making the statement publicly.
Until the media provides actual sources that can be verified there is no reason to believe anything they write. I will use their ubiquitous statement when writing about Trump. There claims are baseless and without any evidence.
Dammit Their claims not -There claims
I think some of this is legit and some is not. I would not be in favor of employees being forced to allow search of their privately-owned devices (Fourth Amendment), especially when the easier solution is to ban such devices from the workplace. This is already the normal, accepted practice for people who work in sensitive locations, and the explicit rule for people who work with classified information.
If the Government wanted to scan MY phone, especially one that never went inside the office, I’d be asking to see a search warrant and looking for a lawyer.
I do agree that the Government has an interest in taking measures to protect its sensitive information, and it mostly does. The problem is that people with security clearances are Trusted, which in this context is a term of art meaning that they are in a position where it is possible for them to break the rules and the Government knows it, and has to accept that risk in order for essential work to get done.
The only legitimate, legal reason for an individual to divulge sensitive information to the press is to blow the whistle on situations where government officials are breaking the law. Even then (in the briefings I’ve gotten at least), there is a reminder that “You Are Not A Lawyer” so the proper procedure is to take up the matter within the agency before going outside. Just because YOU think something is illegal doesn’t mean it actually IS.
–Dwayne
Hey, when a plagiarism scandal isn’t enough to prevent you (twenty years later) from being elected as Vice-President and then later as President, then it’s clear enough that no one cares about plagiarism anymore.
–Dwayne
Crap, this was posted to the wrong article. Nothing to see here. Move along.
–Dwayne