alt Hacker News“ Agents searched Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials case”
Right underneath the headline. That’s pretty normal for the FBI, assuming they had a search warrant.
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Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of journalists to investigate leaks? If not, it's hard to make a compelling case that this is "normal"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_(film)
Interestingly enough, that was an event related to classified information with the same newspaper.
> Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
As others pointed out, the problem with this is that you end up with a government that can target any reporter by claiming they have "classified materials". No need to prove what those materials are (because they are classified). This is how third world countries choke journalists.
No, this is absolutely not normal as the article clearly states. Reporters are very rarely raided in the US under circumstances like these.
The problem is that "classified materials" means whatever the government wants it to mean in this context. Is there a journalist you want to target for a particular reason? Just accuse them of handling classified information, which they don't ever have to produce to the public because it's "classified".