For journalists, there are aspects of their job that could make them more susceptible to
having their communications monitored in some way, or its metadata
collected for later analysis, thus explaining the use for tools that can help them protect their own work-in-progress and their communications with sensitive sources. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries of the Wall Street Journal says there’s a real benefit to all journalists learning the basics of encryption and operating security.
Valentino-DeVries points out the fact that the idea of surveillance in general makes sources scared to to speak with or confide in journalists. However, the more comfortable journalists become with secure communication, the safer
that all sources will feel when contacting and trusting members of the
media.
According to The Huffington Post,
Sarah Kinosian, who monitors American security assistance in Latin
America for the Center for International Policy, says "In a lot of
countries, activists and human rights defenders especially are really
targeted, so we want to make sure [victims] can pass documentation to us
in a safe way.”
There are free, basic tools that journalists can download, as reported by the CJR, such as, Tor for anonymous browsing, Adium (for Macs) and Pidgin (for PCs) for secure IM conversations, and then a combination of Thunderbird, Enigmail, and PGP/GPG keys for a good, basic start on sending and receiving encrypted email. There is also Cryptocat, for encrypted group chats, TrueCrypt, which encodes and password-protects files on your computer, and CCleaner, which cleans up your computer by deleting temporary files and overwriting deleted files to make them harder to recover.
For example, when PGP is used to send an email, the sender uses the receiver’s
public key to encrypt the contents of the email so only the receiver’s
private key can decrypt it. Even though subpoenas can force Google or Yahoo to turn over peoples’ emails,
PGP makes it impossible for Google and Yahoo to read the messages, so
they’d be turning over incoherent nonsense.
Even if what you are covering as a journalist isn't NSA worthy, it is stressed that it is in journalists best interest to at least experiment with encryption tools and security before they actually "need" them.
The New Yorker, The Intercept, Washington Post, and ProPublica are a few
of the early sign-ons for Secure Drop, a new encryption system for
journalists designed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
This is super interesting. It's one thing to know that it protects you but another to understand how it works and how it can protect you even when a site like Google is subpoenaed. This could be massively impactful for the world of investigative journalism and well as public privacy in general.
ReplyDeleteYour mentioning that it is important for journalists to be familiar with encryption before they truly need it is a really good point. Encryption can be difficult to learn and trying to figure it out on the go could compromise your source. Being familiar with encryption and putting your public PGP key out there can also show a potential source that you want to do what is necessary to protect their privacy, and possibly encourage them to leak to you important information.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you included encryption tools because it is easy to feel helpless in such a situation. I also agree with what you said about it being important for a journalist to learn encryption so as to better protect their sources. Without trust or a secure way for sources or whistleblowers to present information to a journalist then a journalist would be putting a lot of people at risk.
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