"The Obama administration has brought more criminal prosecutions against journalist sources than all previous administrations combined."
Steve Coll
The case of Edward Snowden sparked worldwide discussions about the reach of government into the personal, and technological, lives of its citizens. One of those discussions continued at Yale Law School on Tuesday.
Steve Coll is the dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He said there's a small renaissance of investigative reporting on national security subjects.
"The bad news is that we have essentially stimulated a backlash from the national security state, from the justice department," Coll said. "That's been manifested during the Obama administration by the familiar statistic that the Obama administration has brought more criminal prosecutions against journalist sources than all previous administrations combined."
Coll said that's the kind of overt tension with government that journalists are used to, but there's another, more subtle one: surveillance. "There is almost certainly a much deeper, submerged problem of how the surveillance state, since 2001 and perhaps earlier, has been systematically targeting journalism and journalists," he said.
"We do not know how the federal government's surveillance state collects or sifts communications between government personnel, and former government personnel with clearances, and journalists."
Steve Coll
Coll gave a personal example of how he suspected his phone was tapped after a reporting trip abroad. He cited a documentary filmmaker who faced repeated interrogations and demands from intelligence officials upon her return to the country from foreign reporting assignments. He also told a story of how the federal government has taken intelligence information and turned it into evidence in criminal cases -- without subpoenas.
"We do not know how the federal government's surveillance state collects or sifts communications between government personnel, and former government personnel with clearances, and journalists," Coll said.
Coll also spoke of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence worker who leaked government data.
"He has really done a great service to professional journalism," Coll said. The journalism dean said there are a few reasons for that. One, Snowden -- who went to great lengths to protect the classified governmental information he was sharing -- proved how vital data encryption can be. Another: Coll said Snowden left the critical business of deciding what was newsworthy to the journalists.
You can watch the entire talk below.