Telling important stories securely, with Runa Sandvik
Lock and Code · Malwarebytes
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (podcasts.captivate.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
In 2017, a former NSA contractor was arrested for allegedly leaking an internal report to the online news outlet The Intercept. To verify the report itself, a journalist for The Intercept sent an image of the report to the NSA, but upon further inspection, it was revealed that the image was actually a scan of a physical document.
This difference—between an entirely digital, perhaps only-emailed document, and a physical piece of paper—spurred several suspicions that the news outlet had played an unintended role in identifying the NSA contractor to her employer, because the NSA did not have to find people who merely accessed the report, but only people who had printed it.
This is what journalism can look like in the modern age. There are countless digital traces left behind that can puncture the safety and security of both journalists and their sources. Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with security researcher Runa Sandvik about how she helps reporters tell important stories securely and privately amongst many digital threats.