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August 21, 2013 02:41 am GMT
In fear of Big Brother, award-winning technology law blog, Groklaw, has decided to shut down. TechCrunch, however, will not be following its lead. There is always a risk that an abusive government agent may try to intercept or intimidate our sources, but it’s the kind of risk that every media outlet has faced since the printing press and will continue to face into the foreseeable future. In a heart-felt blog post, beloved Groklaw progenitor, Pamela Jones, explains that the only way to avoid the possibility of being monitored by the National Security Agency is to go completely off the grid. “My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it’s possible. I’m just an ordinary person.” Since Groklaw’s (impressive) brand of source-driven journalism was heavily reliant on email and online chatter, Jones claims, “The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can’t do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate.” While I’m no fan of secret spying, the decision to shut down has struck some journalists as rather odd. Any media outlet worth their salt regularly deals with confidential sources, often in a legal grey area that threatens both big businesses and the government itself. This most definitely poses risks. Recently, in the most extreme case, British spy agencies have detained journalists and destroyed hard drives to prevent further leaks of information. But, this shouldn’t deter us. As the reporter tied to classified government leaks, Glenn Greenwald, explained after his partner was detained in Heathrow Airport, “If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. The logic of Groklaw seems to imply that all media outlets should shut down. There’s a few holes in this logic. First, there are secure ways to communicateover email. Journalists can use end-to-end encryption, which is mostly spy proof (probably how Greenwald communicates with his source, Edward Snowden). It’s true that some secure emailprovidershave shut themselves down, but that’s only because the government can force them to turn over emails with the senders knowing. Individuals can and do send
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/L25b5XFwXPI/
Big Brother Isn't A Reason For Journalists To Quit The Internet
In fear of Big Brother, award-winning technology law blog, Groklaw, has decided to shut down. TechCrunch, however, will not be following its lead. There is always a risk that an abusive government agent may try to intercept or intimidate our sources, but it’s the kind of risk that every media outlet has faced since the printing press and will continue to face into the foreseeable future. In a heart-felt blog post, beloved Groklaw progenitor, Pamela Jones, explains that the only way to avoid the possibility of being monitored by the National Security Agency is to go completely off the grid. “My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it’s possible. I’m just an ordinary person.” Since Groklaw’s (impressive) brand of source-driven journalism was heavily reliant on email and online chatter, Jones claims, “The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can’t do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate.” While I’m no fan of secret spying, the decision to shut down has struck some journalists as rather odd. Any media outlet worth their salt regularly deals with confidential sources, often in a legal grey area that threatens both big businesses and the government itself. This most definitely poses risks. Recently, in the most extreme case, British spy agencies have detained journalists and destroyed hard drives to prevent further leaks of information. But, this shouldn’t deter us. As the reporter tied to classified government leaks, Glenn Greenwald, explained after his partner was detained in Heathrow Airport, “If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. The logic of Groklaw seems to imply that all media outlets should shut down. There’s a few holes in this logic. First, there are secure ways to communicateover email. Journalists can use end-to-end encryption, which is mostly spy proof (probably how Greenwald communicates with his source, Edward Snowden). It’s true that some secure emailprovidershave shut themselves down, but that’s only because the government can force them to turn over emails with the senders knowing. Individuals can and do sendOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/L25b5XFwXPI/
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