Twelve weeks have passed since Judge Anthony Trenga ruled on February 24 that the FBI's search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home violated the Privacy Protection Act. The DOJ filed an April 9 motion asking the court to overturn the ruling. No Fourth Circuit notice of appeal has surfaced. [1]

The paper's Tuesday brief on the same thread named the artifact: a bounded negative-evidence story until another filing lands. The brief is the same today. [1]

The clock matters because Natanson is one of two press-freedom cases the paper has been counting — the other is Disney's FCC license deadline, now at day twenty-three of thirty. Both cases produce institutional pressure on speech without a courtroom confrontation: a reporter cannot work without her seized phone, a network cannot ignore a license-renewal docket, and neither story advances without a document. The DOJ's options are to file a notice of appeal, to drop the matter, or to let the clock work for it. [1]

There is no public Fourth Circuit filing today. The paper's position is unchanged: Natanson remains a bounded negative-evidence story until one surfaces. [1]

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin