Be Secure Like a Journalist
January 9, 2025
This is an official dinobaby post.
If you want to be secure like a journalist, Freedom.press has a how-to for you. The write up “The 2025 Journalist’s Digital Security Checklist” provides text combined with a sort of interactive design. For example, if you want to know more about an item on a checklist, just click the plus sign and the recommendations appear.
There are several sections in the document. Each addresses a specific security vector or issue. These are:
- Asses your risk
- Set up your mobile to be “secure”
- Protect your mobile from unwanted access
- Secure your communication channels
- Guard your documents from harm
- Manage your online profile
- Protect your research whilst browsing
- Avoid getting hacked
- Set up secure tip lines.
Most of the suggestions are useful. However, I would strongly recommend that any mobile phone user download this presentation from the December 2024 Chaos Computer Club meeting held after Christmas. There are some other suggestions which may be of interest to journalists, but these regard specific software such as Google’s Chrome browser, Apple’s wonderful iCloud, and Microsoft’s oh-so-secure operating system.
The best way for a journalist to be secure is to be a “ghost.” That implies some type of zero profile identity, burner phones, and other specific operational security methods. These, however, are likely to land a “real” journalist in hot water either with an employer or an outfit like a professional organization. A clever journalist would gain access to a sock puppet control software in order to manage a number of false personas at one time. Plus, there are old chestnuts like certain Dark Web services. Are these types of procedures truly secure?
In my experience, the only secure computing device is one that is unplugged in a locked room. The only secure information is that which one knows and has not written down or shared with anyone. Every time I meet a journalist unaware of specialized tools and services for law enforcement or intelligence professionals I know I can make that person squirm if I describe one of the hundreds of services about which journalists know nothing.
For starters, watch the CCC video. Another tip: Choose the country in which certain information is published with your name identifying you as an author carefully. Very carefully.
Stephen E Arnold, January 9, 2025
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