The FJP

Renowned Rights Watchdog to Downgrade United States in Freedom Rankings

If you thought the astounding (and ongoing) revelations about the NSA’s PRISM regime were going to hurt America’s reputation, it appears you were right. Freedom House just made it official.

In an exclusive statement to Future Tense, the internationally renowned rights watchdog said it’s going to downgrade the U.S. in its annual Internet freedom rankings.

“The revelation of this program will weaken the United States’ score on the survey,” the organization told me in an email.

Freedom House ranked the United States 23rd overall in its 2013 Global Press Freedom Rankings (PDF) and second overall behind Estonia in its 2012 Internet Freedoms report (PDF).

Catching up on the NSA’s Surveillance Program

As we adjust our tinfoil hats and try to make sense of the revelations that the US National Security agency has been monitoring email, cellular and other digital traffic for years now, we do a lot of reading.

It’s a fluid story with new facts coming to the fore about as fast as reporters can tweet them.

There are a lot of moving parts. First and foremost is news of NSA snooping on American activities via its PRISM program. Then there are denials by the Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft that they provided the Feds with back door access to their servers. Honest!

We’re not sure which is scarier: that they’re lying and actually do and did, or that they’re telling the truth and the government snuck in undetected.

While The Wall Street Journal appears quite happy with the program (Thank You for Data-Mining) and The New York Times quite angry (President Obama’s Dragnet), here’s some of what’s coming across our radar to help people get up to speed.

Chronicle Of Higher Education, Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’
Privacy is often threatened not by a single egregious act but by the slow accretion of a series of relatively minor acts. In this respect, privacy problems resemble certain environmental harms, which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Although society is more likely to respond to a major oil spill, gradual pollution by a multitude of actors often creates worse problems.

The Guardian, Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations (Video)
Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail.

New York Times, How the US Uses Technology to Mine More Data More Quickly
“American laws and American policy view the content of communications as the most private and the most valuable, but that is backwards today,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington group. “The information associated with communications today is often more significant than the communications itself, and the people who do the data mining know that.”

The Guardian, Boundless Informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data
A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA “global heat map” seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97 [billion] pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide… The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.

Wall Street Journal, Technology Emboldened the NSA
The NSA’s advances have come in the form of programs developed on the West Coast—a central one was known by the quirky name Hadoop—that enable intelligence agencies to cheaply amplify computing power, U.S. and industry officials said. The new capabilities allowed officials to shift from being overwhelmed by data to being able to make sense of large chunks of it to predict events, the officials said. [Related: Why Metadata Matters, via the Electronic Frontier Foundation.]

Tips and Tricks

Wired, Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press.

Fox News, A guide for journalists (and everyone else) to avoid government snoops.

Medill National Security Zone, Digital Security Basics for Journalists.

Slate, How to Shield Your Calls, Chats, and Internet Browsing From Government Surveillance

Bonus: Our Surveillance Tag is a deep dive into all things… err, surveillance.

Image: Feeling Safer? by John Cole.

The New York Times reports this week that only 1 in 8 of New York’s public high schools has a student newspaper — and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

The national figures are a little higher. But as Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior in the Bronx who works for her student paper, The Dewitt Clinton News, told the Times, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it,” which makes a “whole article” sound a little like a long sentence in solitary confinement.

Scott Simon, High School Newspapers: An Endangered Species, NPR.

FJP: And then there are things like Rhode Island’s 2011 anti-bullying law, which banned the use of social networks on school grounds. Here’s the Xtranormal take (video: 3 min 13 sec) on what high school journalism classrooms would look like without Facebook.

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The 2013 Utne Media Awards

About the contest:

2013 marks a new chapter in the 24-year history of the Utne Readerstaff recognizing and celebrating the best of what we read. Formerly called the Utne Independent Press Awards, we’ve decided to contemporize the name and call them the Utne Media Awards.

Considering the wealth of amazing new ideas, exceptional writing, and outstanding journalism taking place on the internet, we think it’s time the name of the award encompass every form of mass communication we come across each day from longform print journalism to video blogs. While we still love and will always celebrate the printed word, we’d be remiss not to recognize the democratization of information made possible by the internet. We think emphasizing the broad term “media” allows us to appropriately consider and recognize all of the ways people communicate with one another in the 21st century.

The winners are:

YES! Magazine for General Excellence
The New Inquiry for Best Writing
Tom Dispatch for Best Political Coverage
Colossal for Best Arts Coverage
Guernica for Best Social/Cultural Coverage
New Internationalist for Best International Coverage
High Country News for Best Environmental Coverage
Tricycle for Best Body/Spirit Coverage
Scientific American for Best Science/Technology Coverage

See here for descriptions of the winners.

See here for the full list of nominees.

FJP: An interesting mix. Agree/Disagree or have some favorites of your own in any category? Let us know.

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I’m a journalist. I believe in journalism, and I believe in our communities. I believe in holding those in power accountable. I believe in building civic knowledge. I believe in celebrating the good and trying to understand and solve the bad. But mostly I believe in storytelling.

Laura Amico in Nieman Reports, Calm at the Kitchen Table: A Start-up Tracks Murder in Washington, DC. - (via jcstearns)

Charging any individual with the extremely grave offense of ‘aiding the enemy’ on the basis of nothing beyond the fact that the individual posted leaked information on the web and thereby ‘knowingly gave intelligence information’ to whoever could gain access to it there, does indeed seem to break dangerous new ground.

Laurence Tribe, professor, Harvard Law School, to The Guardian. Bradley Manning trial ‘dangerous’ for civil liberties – experts.

The News: The trial of Bradley Manning begins today. The US soldier leaked hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks in 2009 and 2010, and has plead guilty to ten of the 22 charges brought against him.

The most serious charge though is that Manning knowingly aided the enemy. If found guilty, he faces life in military prison.

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WSJ “Attorney General Holder Pledges Shift On Media”

EXCERPT:

“Attorney General Eric Holder told news editors in a private meeting Thursday that he is committed to changing Justice Department guidelines on investigations involving journalists, in the wake of recent controversies over the seizure of reporters’ phone and email records.

Mr. Holder and aides said they were open to changing the guidelines the department uses to broaden the circle of officials who have to agree that subpoenas are justified as a last resort. The officials also said they were open to annual reviews with news organizations…”

Yes, but will they spy on reporters unabashedly, and intimidate if not ruin the lives of - perhaps justified - whistleblowers?

Via the Wall Street Journal.

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Conquering Everest

Sixty years ago today Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary became the first people to scale Mount Everest.

The feet, obviously remarkable, was also cloaked in journalistic intrigue with the Times of London sponsoring the expedition and having exclusive access to the climbers. While The Times broke the story, it didn’t publish the first photos of the successful climbers. That honor belonged to Reuters’ Peter Jackson who tracked the expedition through the Himalaya.

Via the BBC:

[Jackson] needed 11 porters to carry his equipment and supplies - one just to carry a heavy box of coins because the hill people did not use paper money, and another to carry a portable radio and spare batteries.

After several weeks of climbing and perilous river crossings, Jackson arrived at the Thyangboche Monastery.

The monks there looked after him while he waited for news…

…Two weeks later, a messenger raced through the monastery with an urgent despatch.

Jackson discovered the runner had been offered 200 rupees to get to Kathmandu in six days and he suspected the mountain may have been climbed…

…[Jackson] trekked down to the small town of Namche Bazar where an Indian police officer manning communications let him see the message.

It was from the expedition leader, Colonel John Hunt.

On the trail back to the monastery, Jackson said he met Morris heading down to Kathmandu, and the Times reporter claimed the expedition had failed.

The next day, All India Radio announced Everest had been conquered and the Times was able to break the news on the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Jackson’s hunch had been correct - the message had been sent out in a pre-arranged code.

“Snow conditions bad” meant Hillary, and “advance base abandoned” meant Tenzing. Morris had not taken photographs and was rushing to Kathmandu to file his story.

Jackson then waited for the climbers to come down to the monastery and was thrilled to be able to meet them.

There were no other journalists in this remote place, and it was there he interviewed them and took the iconic picture of Hillary and Tenzing smiling at each other.

FJP: And that is how you scoop a story.

Bonus: The tech the 1953 expedition team used compared with what’s used today.

Image: Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary drink tea at Camp IV on Mount Everest, by George Band via National Geographic.

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To Strongbox or Not to Strongbox

Last week we noted that the New Yorker launched Strongbox, an online system meant to preserve the anonymity of leakers submitting sensitive material to the magazine.

Strongbox is based on the work of Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen and, as Amy Davidson noted when announcing its implementation, “Even we won’t be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won’t be able to tell them.”

Which is a good thing given recent news about the Justice Department’s surveilling of journalists and news organizations.

But can it be be a newsroom boon?

Writing at CSO Online, John P. Mello argues that while Strongbox “provides strong protection of the identity of a source, it removes an important element in the process: authentication.”

Here’s what he means:

A system where anonymous leakers are dropping documents into a folder has advantages when government investigators start probing a story’s sources, but it also creates tremendous disadvantages. “The government can’t come after you to find out who gave you the document because you have no way of knowing,” [Northeastern University assistant journalism professor Dan] Kennedy said.

“That gives more protection to the source, but it makes it harder to vet the document because you don’t know who gave it to you,” he said…

…”All sources, anonymous or not, have to be evaluated. That’s impossible to do without context. “Knowing your source’s motivations helps contextualize the information,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director for the Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“A solution that prevents the news organization from knowing the identity of a confidential source has value, but it’s not an ideal solution because it is important to know the identity of the source to weigh the information,” he told CSO.

“Information supplied by a confidential source needs to be evaluated, weighed and understood in the same way that information of somebody speaking on the record does,” he added.

FJP: A tool is a tool. While Mello illustrates important drawbacks, if the alternative is no documents to work with then you work with the tools available. It’s just important to know going in what their limitations are.

Images: Independent Twitter posts via Nicholas Thomson and Kevin Anderson.

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Just Write What the Government Tells You

The News: The Justice Department tracked Fox News’ correspondent James Rosen in an attempt to tie leaks on North Korea to a government advisor.

Via Glenn Greenwald:

If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted [for leaks by the Justice Department], and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable.

Image: Twitter post from Karen Tumulty

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Groundhog's Day: DOJ Tracks Fox Reporter's Phone Records

Last week’s news was that the Justice Department seized two months of Associated Press phone records.

This week’s begins with a report that the DOJ surveilled Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, tracking his visits to the State Department in an apparent attempt to link a 2009 leak of classified information about North Korea to government adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim

Via the Washington Post:

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press…

…Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

Washington Post, A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe.

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At Bloomberg, reporters could sit at their desks and use a keyboard function to see the last time an official of the Federal Reserve logged on. And the Justice Department obtained the records of The Associated Press from phone companies with no advance notice, giving it no chance to challenge the action. The absence of friction has led to a culture of transgression. Clearly, if it can be known, it will be known.

David Carr, Snooping and the news media: it’s a two way street (via soupsoup)

soupsoup

In mid-April, we went live with a half dozen articles which we call “stubs.” The idea here is to plant a flag in a story right away with a short post—a “stub”—and then build the article as the story develops over time, rather than just cranking out short, discrete posts every time something new breaks. One of our writers refers to this aptly as a “slow live blog.

This Is What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code community

The results of Fast Company’s experiment with “stubs” — which allowed them to gradually create long-form journalism — pleasantly surprised the team when it brought a lot of traffic. Learn more about their strategy and check out snapshots of their site analytics from Chris Dannen. (via onaissues)

FJP: SBNation, the network of sports blog, rolled out a feature similar to this when Vox Media redesigned the entire ecosystem. This is how Jeff Clark of SBNation’s CelticsBlog described “Storystreams” when the redesign launched:

This is a kind of post that has several updates within that post. It is a smarter way of handling big stories that have many updates (like trade deadline day and media day) rather than editing a single post or breaking it into several smaller posts.

And yes, I’m a Celtics junkie. — Michael

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The Ultimate Nerd Assignment

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias watches every movie and every episode of every Star Trek and reports back on what it all means.

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Posts tagged newsrooms

Renowned Rights Watchdog to Downgrade United States in Freedom Rankings

Groundhog's Day: DOJ Tracks Fox Reporter's Phone Records