NSA posters commissioned by RSA Data Security, circa 1990 (via Tom Tomorrow)
Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.
CPJ promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.
NSA posters commissioned by RSA Data Security, circa 1990 (via Tom Tomorrow)
Journalists are among those most likely to face technical attempts at attack and interception. Reporting is based on discussions with sources who may want to remain out of the limelight, and news sites attract extensive readership, making them a desirable target for potential attackers. But there are simple steps to protect against the most common form of eavesdropping, and journalists should be aware of the types of technical adversaries they may face.
Several countries use sophisticated network interception and attack appliances to monitor, filter, and attack the entire country’s Internet connection. Such tools are available for anywhere from $15.5 million to $380,000, a price point described as“dictator pocket change” by Morgan Marquis-Boire, a security researcher who specializes in these sorts of tools at The Citizen Lab, the technology and human rights research institute.
Before we get into the details of the risks journalists and news organizations face, and how they can protect themselves, let’s get some terminology straight. When technologists talk about spies and snoops reading messages we often break those potential interlopers into passive listeners, active “man-in-the-middle” (MiM) interceptors, and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
photos via Spiegel Online and Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Support the #RighttoReport. Protect Journalist Rights.
Journalists risk their lives traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the world to bring us information about current events. We were reminded of how dangerous this work can be with the executions of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIS. Journalists have a right to gather and report the news to public and the U.S. government should do everything in their power to protect, not erode, those rights.
But that’s not what’s happening. Reports based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden suggest that the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have targeted news organizations, journalists, and human rights groups for surveillance. When journalists believe they might be targeted by government hackers, pulled into a criminal investigation, or searched and interrogated about their work, their ability to inform the public erodes and their lives could be put at risk.
Protect your #RighttoReport. Sign the Petition.
“Bad guys are everywhere, good guys are somewhere!”
– The revealingly simplistic headline on NSA documents shared by Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept which reveal plans for a program to map every internet-connected device worldwide. (via stopprism)
“The work of journalism has become immeasurably harder than it has in the past.”
– Edward Snowden in an interview with the @guardian.
Foreign governments are considering reverting to typewriters to thwart NSA surveillance.
It was just over a year ago this week that former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked a trove of secret National Security Agency documents detailing the agency’s massive online spy program. What and how much Snowden took remains a mystery.
On Tuesday, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, told The Washington Post that Snowden took less than the agency previously thought. So what should we make of Clapper’s claim? Snowden revealed that the NSA tracks cellphones, collects call logs of Americans, uses a secret court to obtain e-mails, chats, photos and videos from Silicon Valley tech companies, and it spies of foreign allies.
According to Clapper, however, “some things we thought he got, he apparently didn’t.” What it was that he didn’t get, Clapper, did not, of course, elaborate upon. In his interview with the Post, Clapper added that the U.S. intelligence community now believes that many of the files Snowden “looked at” he was not able to take from the agency’s servers; and that those he did manage to walk away with weren’t as damaging as it had initially believed.
The original estimate of Snowden’s haul was about 1.77 million documents. That number appears to have first been given on a controversial 60 Minutes segment on the NSA that, since its airing in December of last year, has drawn the ire of media outlets for taking a notably pro-NSA stance. “It was hard to watch the NSA segment and not wonder who was minding the store,” David Carr wrote in The New York Times.
“I never thought it was an accurate estimate,” longtime NSA reporter and author James Bamford tells Newsweek about the NSA’s initial number of documents that were stolen. He adds that Clapper’s new estimate, about 1.5 million, probably “reflects reality.”
Full Disclosure: Wikileaks Says It Will Leak What the Intercept Won’t
“It’s just simply the fact that [the NSA does] not think anybody should be able to communicate anywhere on the Earth without them being able to invade it.”