Sorry, I didn’t mean my analogy to be a wholesale dismissal of the subpoena or its justification. I meant to address what seemed like circular reasoning in your reply to this thread.

The thread started out with someone arguing that the "protests" are actually "riots". Someone else replied by pointing out "because there's riots and protests", which are not the same thing.

So then you replied with, "The cops are after evidence on arson and gun theft, not protests, as the headline says." – which I took (perhaps mistakenly) as an argument that the media's footage should not be considered as innocuous "protest footage", because the cops believe that it contains evidence of crimes.

But that seems like begging the question? Ignoring the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept (two suspects have been arrested and charged, but not tried), it seems problematic to argue that the media should handover its riot footage on the basis that the police believe it contains evidence of riotous activity.

Just as it would be problematic to characterize someone's personal email account as being non-innocuous, on the basis of what the police assert they might find if they do a few keyword searches of it.