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two years after the Associated Press reported that the‒ in an attempt to discover the source of a leak about a CIA operation that foiled a terror plot in Yemen.As part of its probe, thein the leak of classified material. After AP reported that theof the news wire's staff, AP President Gary Pruitt claimed that anonymous sources retreated into silence , afraid that they would become a target of a government leak investigation.The backlashmeant to bar the government from issuing subpoenas to journalists unless certain high standards were met. However, those guidelines , published in July 2013, they did not prevent FBI agents from usingwhich only require the approval of the FBI's general counsel and the executive assistant director of the bureau's National Security Branch,Such NSLs come with gag order barring the service provider from discussing the letters, according to Courthouse News.The rules for the use of NSLs were governed by Classified Appendix G , which werein the list of documents it was withholding from the FPF's FOIA request. They were revealed thanks to a leak to the Intercept in 2016. The organization argued in court documents that keeping that information secret was chilling the press and its sources." FPF attorney Marcia Hofmann told US District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. at a hearing last August. "The government doesn't want to disclose that because that's embarrassing to them."Gilliam disagreed with that assessment in his ruling , however, noting that the FBI "described with particularity thatThese pages not only identified NSLs as an investigative technique but also described information such as the circumstances under which the techniques should be used, how to analyze the information gathered through these techniques, and the current focus of the FBI's investigations."Just because the FBI didn't include Appendix G in the list of documents in its FOIA response did not mean that its search was insufficient. "While the FBI's search may not have been perfect, plaintiff was 'entitled to a reasonable search for records, not a perfect one,'" he wrote, quoting the 9th Circuit's 2015 ruling in Hamdan v. DOJ.The ruling means thaton the use of NSLs beyond what was revealed by the Intercept leaks, which FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm described as"This is an extremely disappointing decision. Whether it's the Obama administration or the Trump administration,Timm said in a statement. "It is antithetical to a democracy that supposedly values a free press. We are evaluating our options and will announce whether we will appeal the case soon."Under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act, individuals can request copies of federal records for free or at a nominal cost. The government is obligated to hand them over, unless the disclosure could harm national security, violate personal privacy, or expose confidential decision-making - exemptions that authorities often abuse, according to critics.