No more, apparently.

Currently I'm using a photo of some children to publicize a program we do. I don't have to worry about using the images of these children, because I got the photo from the newspaper, where it was published with their parents' consent. The parents' intent was not to see their children on small posters in the library every month, but the children's privacy is not invaded because the parents consented to the publication of this photo in a public newspaper.

This is the same legal principle.

A reporter from AP used photos that were already present on a publicly available (though probably obscure) website, and made available by the SEALs themselves with the help of one of their wives. It's as if, after having gotten photos smuggled past Army censors, a WWII GI's wife used them to make her own newsreel and distributed it to local theaters. Gosh, nobody will notice! This lawsuit comes from the same extended family as the famous McDonald's coffee lawsuit: I'm too dumb to know how to act, so I'm going to sue you. They violated security themselves, and now want to shift the blame to someone who took advantage of their own lack of thought.

They would have better luck trying to sue on the basis of intellectual property right violations, although, if it's shown that the photos do in fact show abuse, the reporter may be protected by whistle-blower statutes. I suspect this is their real tactic, if their lawyers have a brain, and would explain the injunction against republishing the wedding photos also posted on the website. As if anyone really cares about those.

Before you go censoring the press, try censoring the military. That's also the way it was done in the good old days: letters and telegrams read and sliced, telephone calls monitored and bleeped. Intrusive? Yes. But not a Constitutional issue. And if the source dries up, such episodes will be much less likely to recur in the future.