Bloomberg View: How Dangerous Are Leaks? Let's Find Out

It’s hard to feel comfortable with the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of national security leaks. The U.S. Department of Justice has acknowledged seizing phone records from Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak concerning a 2012 counterterrorism operation in Yemen. Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s e-mail was examined in an effort to track down unauthorized disclosures about North Korea. The Justice Department went so far as to call the reporter a “co-conspirator.”

Leaks are an especially vexing problem in part because they are routine and also because they are often a means of informing the public. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration reserves the right to define what a national security leak is. What the news media—and all Americans—should fear is that those in power might use “national security” as a catch-all to pursue leaks that don’t threaten security so much as cause embarrassment.