Public interest disclosure for beginners

Posted by Martin Stabe on 29 May 2006 at 08:57
Tags: Journalism

A number of political bloggers have been soliciting leaks from disgruntled Home Office civil servants after new Home Secretary John Reid described his ministry as “dysfunctional and unfit for purpose”.

Spy Blog has an invaluable list of tips for whistleblowers. Anyone considering passing inside information to journalists or bloggers should have some understanding of basic (counter-) information security issues, and this is a handy guide.

Short version: Don’t use your government-issue PC, phone or photocopier. Send only encrypted e-mail; buy a disposable mobile phone and use it carefully.

Spy Blog also has a reminder for bloggers:

… if any of them should be lucky or unlucky enough to actually be the first people to be contacted by a Government whistleblower, they have an ethical duty to protect the identity of their “journalistic source”.

Indeed. This obligates both bloggers and journalists to have some understanding of how to protect a source who gets in touch online.

For example, before publishing any documents you have been supplied, make sure it has been cleansed of any data that might identify your source. Be especiallly aware of the metadata generated by software like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word and gadgets like digital cameras (an important lesson which the Washington Post recently learned the hard way).
The tips are a bit technical and may beem a tad paranoid to some, but as Spy Blog notes, journalists in the US and Germany are being spied on by their governments in the course of leak investigations, so you can’t be too careful.

Tags: Journalism