Senator Arlen Specter took the stage with a panel of journalists at the American Civil Liberties Union's annual convention earlier this week to urge support for a federal shield law that would protect journalists from being compelled to disclose confidential sources. He also addressed reports of a possible compromise on legislation to grant some form of legal amnesty to telecommunications firms accused of participating in warrant-less surveillance by the National Security Agency, arguing that the lawsuits must be allowed to proceed, but with the government as defendant.

The Pennsylvania Republican was joined by James Risen, one of the two New York Times reporters who first broke the story of the extrajudicial NSA surveillance program, and Toni Locy, the former USA Today reporter who was held in contempt of court for refusing to disclose the identities of her sources for her 2002 reporting on the FBI investigation into the previous year's anthrax attacks. Mr Risen has, himself, been served with a federal grand jury subpoena in connection with his 2006 book State of War.

Specter warned that courts' increasing willingness to go after journalists' sources threatened to create "more than a chilling effect; it is a freezing effect" that would hamper the publication of important stories. The Senator singled out Risen's NSA reporting for praise, saying that it "ranks with Watergate, it ranks with Iran-Contra." In order to ensure that such stories can continue to be printed, Specter wants the Senate to act on his Free Flow of Information Act, which would provide qualified protection for reporters. The House version of the bill passed by an overwhelming margin last year, but has stalled in the Senate in the face of opposition (and a veto threat) from the White House. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is optimistic about the prospects of renewed action, and told Ars she believes a vote on the stalled bill could come as soon as late this month.

Both journalists noted that their past ambivalence about special protections—Locy had long believed that "the First Amendment was enough"—had fallen away in recent years. While prosecutors have, in the past, tended to be chary of subpoenaing journalists, Risen worried that the Justice Department's discretion in deciding whom to investigate could be used as a weapon against inconvenient reporting, especially as more and more information is deemed classified, whether or not it is especially sensitive. "Virtually every day, the New York Times prints classified information," Risen said. "You could have a leak investigation every day.

Locy, whose own brush with the law stems from a civil suit by scientist Steven Hatfill, whom Locy's reporting identified as a "person of interest" to the FBI, stressed that private legal action by the disgruntled subjects of reporting posed a similar threat. Without protection, she predicted, "investigative reporting will be gone."

There was some disagreement on the panel, however: Risen suggested that Specter's bill might not cover the national security stories whose sources are most in need of confidentiality. While the law would raise high barriers for prosecutors seeking disclosure of a journalist's source in most cases, it contains an exception for cases in which a court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that disclosure would help to prevent "significant and articulable harm to national security." Specter, however, asserted that reporting like Risen's would be protected, a view Risen later said he found surprising.

Unlike earlier versions of the shield law, the bill under consideration in the Senate would potentially protect at least some bloggers, as well as traditional reporters. The previous definition of a "journalist" as one who earns "significant" income from reporting has been replaced by a functional definition covering anyone who "regularly" engages in journalism. But it is not clear to what extent it would shield part-time "citizen journalists" who do not routinely do original reporting.

Specter also warned that we are "on the ledge of giving the phone companies retroactive immunity," and quipped that, given the secrecy surrounding the NSA program, it seemed "very difficult to give retroactive immunity when you're not sure what you're giving immunity for." He also chided the courts for not doing more to challenge "the assertion of the executive that the executive can ignore the law." The senator reaffirmed his support for allowing the government to stand-in for the telecoms, arguing that "substitution would give most of the loaf to the cause of civil liberties." Specter did not, however, feel obliged to remind the ACLU crowd that he had, nevertheless, voted for the Senate's version of surveillance reform legislation, including a retroactive immunity provision.