Forgive me for sounding a little paranoid, but I’ve had the rainbows ripped from my eyes. Last fall, I signed up to work on a CBC investigation into Canada’s electronic spying programs, relying on the CBC’s exclusive access to the Edward Snowden/NSA leaks. It has been shocking to learn the capabilities of our intelligence agencies. But it has also been a surprising crash course in new technology, privacy and vital questions facing the future of journalism.
…
But surveillance risks go beyond reporters covering foreign conflicts, terrorism or spies, notes Christopher Parsons of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, who has helped the CBC dissect the Canadian Snowden documents. “Sports reporters might be less interesting to signals intelligence organizations but might still be very interesting to other sporting organizations, criminal betting organizations and so forth.”
…
“Malware and spyware infect computers across Canada on a regular basis; what do you do when your work computer, holding audio or text files pursuant to a sensitive story, has been compromised?” asks Parsons. “Do you want to notify sources? Do you want to have an ‘air gapped’ computer, which is disconnected from the Internet, where you store source materials, and another computer or device for writing your stories?”
These are awkward questions. No news organization wants to publicly admit its electronic communications are vulnerable. Frankly, I’ve never had a single conversation with the CBC’s IT people about whether we’ve been hacked or compromised, let alone been told what we do specifically to protect sensitive information. And it’s vital, because so much of our email and work these days lives in the cloud.
Categories
Excited Pixels 