Journalists Arrested for Revealing Grand Jury Info

[qwnu]

Story.

There is long-running hostility between Phoenix New Times (a weekly alternative paper) and Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio. They've published many articles critical of the Sherriff's department, including one which apparently published the sherriff's home address.

The paper received a county grand jury subpoena including damands for "information about all the online readers of the publication since Jan. 1, 2004, including their Internet domain names and browsers and what other Web sites they visited before reading New Times."

The paper published a cover story, titled "Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution" including the details of the subpoena.

The paper's editor and CEO were both arrested at their homes last night by county deputies.

I have to go to work, so this will be a "post-and-run", but this seems like an absurd tactic even for Arpiao and county attorney Andrew Thomas, and that's saying a lot.