In November 2014 Swedish Journalist Carl Fridh Kleberg spent a month at LSE as the Polis/ Journalistfonden Fellow.
His research paper Is Source Protection Dead: Protecting journalists’ sources in a post-Snowden age was the result.
Some of its conclusions are:
- The revelations of mass surveillance by Edward Snowden have highlighted the potential threat to the privacy of journalists’ communication and data, calling into question the ability to protect anonymous sources.
- Threats to the privacy of journalists can come from a number of sources including government agencies, employers and service providers.
- There are a number of tools available to help maintain privacy of communication but using these can sometimes draw unwanted attention in themselves and there is no tool that is 100% safe.
- There is a need for training and awareness-raising amongst journalists, and media organisations will expect the next generation of journalists to be more ’data savvy’ -something that is not yet the case.
- There are a number of simple steps you can take to increase data security such as continuous ’password hygine’ and an awareness of privacy and location settings on devices like mobile phones.
- When assessing risk to a source, journalists need to be aware of the compromising potential of electronic communications and may need to go ’offline’ for the most risky of cases.
You can go “offline” as much as you like but you still have to record interviews, make notes and write up articles. Your pictures are usually digital or digitised and if you are freelance there are conversations with editor that need to be had.
I have had people who know me ask about pictures I’ve not put online.