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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Associated Press filed a lawsuit [arstechnica.com] this morning, demanding the FBI hand over information about its use of fake news stories. The case stems from a 2007 incident regarding a bomb threat at a school. The FBI created a fake news story with an Associated Press byline, then e-mailed it to a suspect to plant malware on his computer.

An Electronic Frontier Foundation FOIA request on a different matter revealed the strategy in 2011, but it wasn't made public until last year, when privacy researcher Chris Soghoian saw evidence of the operation in the documents and tweeted about it. That spurred both the AP and The Seattle Times to complain vocally about the FBI's behavior.

"The FBI both misappropriated the trusted name of The Associated Press and created a situation where our credibility could have been undermined on a large scale," AP General Counsel Karen Kaiser wrote in a letter to then-AG Eric Holder last year.

It has been widely reported that the US government's illegal spying has cost tech companies a great deal of money and undermined their credibility with their customers. Will this case do the same for the press?

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