The compilation of the data took more than four months during the investigation into suspicions of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, which saw Donald Trump win the ballot.
His government tried in this way to find the sources of the media. Such deficiencies also targeted the Washington Post and CNN journalists, as revealed in the past.
Dean Pocket, editor of The New York Times, denounced the Trump administration’s actions. “Entering journalists’ phone data deeply undermines press freedom,” he said in a statement. “It threatens to silence the evidence on which we rely to report essential information about what the government is doing.”
News organizations and constitutional rights activists in the United States have long been critical of the US government’s efforts to obtain telephone data from journalists to locate their sources. In doing so, governments unfairly restrict press freedom.
Incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden promised last month that he would not allow the judiciary to do so.