Cali's Dem AG threatening journos for *possessing* info obtained from a FOIA

quote:

---

California Democrat Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, is under fire for threatening journalists who obtained a list of “police misconduct reports” from a FOIA request.

---

Trevor Timm
?
@trevortimm
This is crazy. Journalists were inadvertently given a list of police misconduct reports via a public records request. The California AG is now saying the journalists are breaking the law by merely *possessing* the documents and threatened legal action.

2,242
11:50 AM - Feb 26, 2019

LINK

quote:

---

“Someone who’s in possession of information that is unauthorized is supposed to return it or destroy it,” Becerra said at an unrelated news conference. “I don’t get to ignore the law. The law says that unauthorized possession or use of that type of data is a crime.”

---

The statute Becerra’s office cited in its letter also contains an exception for journalists, said David Snyder, a lawyer and the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

“The law is quite clear that a reporter or a journalist can’t be charged with the crime they’re citing,” he said. “That’s clear in the statute itself, and it’s clear under the First Amendment.”
Snyder noted that it may be possible under California law for the attorney general’s office to get a court injunction that would require reporters to return and destroy the records. But the idea that reporters could be criminally charged is “just wrong,” he said.

LINK