On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan effort is underway to address a different kind of systemic failure. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Becca Balint have introduced the Privacy Protection Updates Act, a bill designed to put teeth into a 46-year-old federal law that is routinely ignored.
The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 was supposed to prevent the government from using search warrants to raid newsrooms or seize journalists’ equipment in most circumstances. In practice, as Freedom of the Press Foundation has documented, law enforcement officers have repeatedly obtained warrants to search and seize journalists’ materials — without even informing judges that the law exists.
The most recent high-profile case involved a raid on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, carried out under a search warrant that made no mention of the Privacy Protection Act. The new bill, strongly endorsed by Freedom of the Press Foundation, aims to close this loophole and ensure that the legal protections Congress intended for the press actually function in practice.