Hunting Anonymous

Isn't this interesting:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

The far left, of course, has started hyperventilating about this, even though the story has just a single anonymous source. It apparently doesn't pass the credibility threshold needed to be published as a news story.

But let us assume for the sake of argument that the information above is true, and that Brian Ross and Richard Esposito are having their phone records tracked. We should then ask ourselves the following questions:

• What exactly do they mean by "tracking" in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
  
• Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
  
• Is it legal and ethical?

What exactly do they mean by “tracking” in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
In this instance, tracking means that the government was looking at which phone numbers were called by these reporters. They were not listening to the actual content of the calls, which is called wiretapping.

Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
The goal in such an effort would be to see if U.S. government employees were illegally leaking classified information to the press. If a government employee thinks that a crime is being committed, they are protected by legal processes on both the State and Federal level as long as they follow rules in reporting alleged infractions to higher officials via an accepted and well-defined process. If these employees instead leak these charges to the press or other outside agencies, they may guilty of serious crimes themselves.

Is it legal and ethical?
It would seem that this is legal, as this seems to be the point of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) under President Clinton.

From the standpoint of ethics, I can come up with very little justification for employees to leak to the press. Well-defined procedures are in place to deal with illegal and unethical behaviors that they may uncover, and the government has every right—indeed, they have a duty—to enforce the law.

In short, based upon what little information contained in this ABC News blog post, it appears that the reporters are very upset that their access to leakers inside the government might be at risk. I will assume that they'll only be more disturbed if these leakers are prosecuted for the crimes they've apparently committed, and finding a willing source becomes that much more difficult for the reporters.