Hello!!! It’s 2013. Who keeps paper files anymore?
While the police and DHS were wrong to seize them, the should have been kept in an encrypted laptop.
And keep digital backup media in a separate place. I don’t think the Feds were after depriving her of the info. Instead, they wanted to know what she knew and from whom. Then they track down the sources and silence them. They also deliver a rather pointed message to the jouralist.
It’s how things work in the beginning. In the next step, people simply disappear.
Back in the late 1990s...I worked in an Air Force shop, and came to work early one morning around 6AM, and OSI had some guy at the door and trying to prevent me from entering our work area. I responded that I was the facility custodian and asked where was their paperwork for this ‘search’. They got hyper, but calmed down enough to ask me....where are the file cabinets. That was their big thing...they had some authorized base search paperwork and wanted out file cabinets to clean out completely. This had something to do with several contractors and the officer running their contract.
I looked at the guy and just started laughing. I responded...every single document that we generated...was digital and sitting on the base server. We had actually gotten rid of all paper documents and the cabinets. They were in disbelief and ran off to the base communications center, with the aim of confiscating the server and it’s RAIDS. The comm officer only noted they could have a back-up copy....but no one was walking out of the center with hardware or hard drives.
Based on cops and their present knowledge level...they all believe that people are still in some paper age and massive records will be gleaned. It’s just not happening.