I'm taking the "Manners and Means Section" to be equivalent to "these are the acts that taken together constitute the crime." That is the context of my post. I

I'm taking the "Manners and Means Section" to be equivalent to "these are the acts that taken together constitute the crime." That is the context of my post. If you don't agree with this, what do you take that to mean? The "Purpose and Object of the Conspiracy" section is not a collection of acts that constitute the conspiracy. It's the objective of the conspiracy. An objective is not an act. I agree that actually attempting to crack a password so that a source can cover his/her tracks is beyond the actions of a journalist. And as far as "collaborate in advance" not being a journalistic activity- do you not consider "cultivating sources"[1] to be a core journalistic activity? Let's say a source/whistleblower reaches out to an NYT journalist. They communicate over "Signal" an encrypted chat. The source worries about being detected in passing the confidential material they've obtained. The NYT journalists assists the source by providing a link to this NYT article "How to tell us a secret"[2]. You could then remove the second half of section 18- add in some other part about the journalist conspiring to assist the source in covering his/her tracks, and reuse this indictment. That's the threat to journalism. [1] https://ijnet.org/en/story/developing-and-cultivating-sources https://ijnet.org/en/story/developing-and-cultivating-source... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/reader-center/confidential-tip-line.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/reader-center/confidentia...