In what is becoming a depressing pattern, it was reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked Select Committee on Jan. 6 is facing yet another lawsuit over what is perceived to be an overly broad subpoena seeking highly personal information from a freelance photojournalist.
In her suit, Amy Harris alleges that the subpoena is an “invasive and sweeping” attempt to access her phone records, according to Just the News, which also noted that her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Time magazine as a member of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). Among her most recent body of work include photos from the ‘summer of unrest’ in 2020, in which she documented protests by the far-right Proud Boys and the far-left Black Lives Matter groups.
“On Jan. 6, Harris interacted with the Proud Boys but she did not enter the Capitol, she maintains. Instead, she chose to stay outside with other photographers and those images were later published by the Washington Post and others,” Just the News reported, adding:
The committee specifically subpoenaed Harris’ cell phone carrier Verizon to see all subscriber information, calls, text messages, and other records associated with her phone from Nov. 1, 2020 through Jan. 31, 2021. Verizon planned on complying with the subpoena unless Harris challenged it in court by Wednesday.
The 23-page complaint argues that the subpoena violates “her First Amendment rights as a journalist, her protection under the D.C. Shield law, and her Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure.”
The subpoena “would also impermissibly intrude on her protected newsgathering activities, deprive her of future opportunities to obtain confidential information from confidential sources, and expose her to possible threats of bodily harm from those whose numbers would be so exposed by disclosure of her call detail records,” according to the lawsuit.
Akili-Casundria Ramsess, the NPPA’s executive director, noted in a statement:
“We believe it is misguided for members to subpoena the phone records of a visual journalist who risked her health and safety to report on and photograph protests on both sides of the political spectrum. Such actions have a chilling effect upon the core First Amendment values critical to the democratic principles the Committee was established to protect and we hope they will seriously reconsider their position in this matter.”
