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This brings us to the Supreme Court’s Vice Media case that was released late last year. It is not a corruption case. In fact, it involves instant-messaging communications between a journalist and a known jihadist who was not even seeking anonymity. Most of those communications were shared directly with the public through the journalist’s reporting. Still, the police successfully obtained a search warrant for the non-published screen shots in the journalist’s file.

The issue was whether police could access the journalist’s file for criminal investigation purposes. The way in which the court resolved this case, unfortunately, is cold comfort to those who might consider approaching a journalist with their story.

There are two things of critical importance to be balanced in such cases. On the one hand, is there worthwhile evidence in a journalist’s file to assist the police in their investigation? On the other, will giving police access to this information scare people off from coming to journalists with their stories in the future?

How can one tell if evidence they have not yet seen is likely to be helpful? The answer is that they can’t in a definite sense. At the same time, if any information relevant to a crime might be helpful, then search warrants facilitate fishing expeditions.

In this case, the value of the screenshots was assumed with very little analysis. Nothing is said about what the screenshots might reveal. It would not be the identity of the source since that was already known. The take-away seems to be that any information theoretically related to a possible crime has value and should be accessed by police. In other words, fishing expeditions are allowed.