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Media Freedom / Media Sources / UK Press / US Press — Comments Off on Metadata: a reckoning is still due
09
Feb 15

Metadata: a reckoning is still due

The UK government lost a court case on electronic surveillance the other day. I hope that it will be defeated in at least one other case to come.

Faithful readers of this blog will know that when the Edward Snowden revelations changed our understanding the way governments watch how we communicate, the defenders of dragnet information gathering rested on the argument that the snoopers weren’t listening to the calls or reading the content of the emails. They were only able to see who had phone, emailed or texted who, when and for how long. Metadata, so called.

As time went on, this “defence” looked less and less reassuring. It looked especially alarming to journalists, since this harvesting equips governments with the ability to find out journalists’ sources. The direction and frequency of contacts will usually be enough to spot the source of a leak.

More than that: it can get someone killed. I had missed this extraordinary debate involving General Michael Hayden, a retired head of America’s NSA, in which he cheerfully acknowledges that “we kill people based on metadata”, quickly adding that the government does not act that way inside the US. There’s a very good commentary on what else Hayden says here by David Cole.

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Media Freedom / UK Press / US Press — Comments Off on “Shield laws” are back – but watch the drawbacks
12
Nov 14

“Shield laws” are back – but watch the drawbacks

The annual conference of the Society of Editors heard two arguments this week for “shield laws” to protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources including a pledge from the Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, that a future Conservative government would amend the Human Rights Act to give more “specific protection” to journalists.

There is a good account here of the speech by Gavin Millar QC, a very knowledgeable expert, and Javid’s speech is here. All this is well-intentioned and understandable: shield laws already exist in several American states. For a whole series of reasons stemming from recent disclosures, the protection of sources in the digital age is a big concern.

But there’s a big difficulty with shield laws, however tempting they might sound at first hearing. They require journalists to be a defined category of people. Once upon a time, that might have been easy: they were people who worked on the editorial content produced by printed newspapers and broadcast channels. Important disclosures are made by journalists; but they are also made by people who aren’t inclined to call themselves that.

Now, it’s not so easy. Anyone with a smartphone can “publish” to audiences large and small, simply by hitting a “share” button. Who counts as a journalist? In the aftermath of the Leveson Inquiry into phone-hacking and related wrong-doing, civil servants tied themselves into tangled knots trying to define “news publishers” who would be included in a new regulatory system.

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Law / Media Freedom / UK Press / US Press — Comments Off on Metadata surveillance: the issue which won’t be allowed to disappear
22
Sep 14

Metadata surveillance: the issue which won’t be allowed to disappear

This blog returns to what I hope will be more frequent publication after an unintended break with a small item of good news. How often do blog-writers throw out appeals, queries and rhetorical questions and hear nothing but silence? Frequently.

In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the scale of electronic communications surveillance by the NSA and its international partners, I wrote a short post a few months back underlining why journalists should worry about “metadata”. To journalists particularly, the issue of whether the snoopers, tappers and buggers are reading your email or merely tracking who you email and when (metadata is the latter) isn’t important.

A source can be identified by a list of emails and calls even if the authorities don’t have the content of those exchanges. Indeed, there are active cases in the US which suggest that the American government is doing precisely that. In the long history of keeping reporting free of the state, this may turn out to be a more important issue than the British media’s debate over regulation in the wake of phone-hacking and the Leveson Inquiry.

I suggested in February that someone should test whether the indiscriminate collection of this kind of information was a threat to free expression and a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s not an open and shut case, but surely something worth trying.

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Media Freedom / Media Sources / UK Press / US Press — Comments Off on The protection of journalists requires metadata surveillance to be challenged in court
14
Feb 14

The protection of journalists requires metadata surveillance to be challenged in court

A few weeks ago, I could only have given the haziest definition of what “metadata” is if I was asked. Thanks to the electronic surveillance disclosures of Edward Snowden, the word is heard everywhere. “Metadata” should resonate very loudly with journalists.

When Snowden released clues about the scale of surveillance conducted by the NSA, GCHQ and allied cyber-snoopers, it was quickly made clear this was – mostly – who called or emailed who, when and from where. So-called “metadata”. The actual content of the communications isn’t, apparently, collected and stored in huge industrial quantities by the governments doing this.

It took me a embarrassingly long time to work out that while this form of information collection may be useful for tracking people who might want to kill people, it is also perfectly adapted to tracing journalists’ sources. Data which tells someone who called who and when is enough to provide very strong clues about who is providing information to whom. No need for any government agency to be so intrusive and unsubtle as to listen in to the conversation itself.

The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York has just released a set of excellent essay on attacks on journalism and the one by Geoffrey King dealing with this lays out the danger very well. King quotes the author and expert on the NSA James Bamford: Continue reading →

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UK Press / US Press — Comments Off on Syria, Snowden and how public opinion really moves
30
Aug 13

Syria, Snowden and how public opinion really moves

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the news media shape, frame and alter public opinion. Only up to a point: the exceptions to this rule help to explain public reactions to both the use of nerve toxins in Syria and to the surveillance revelations of Edward Snowden.

This morning, pundits on both sides of the Atlantic are scrambling to assess the British parliamentary vote against military action against the Syrian government. The way in which public opinion is moving on Syria, surveillance and relations between Britain and America can be partly explained by two striking qualifications to the simple idea that news media tell people what to think.

Sometimes, public opinion moves independently of discussion in the media and does not reproduce the prevailing consensus inside mainstream newsrooms. In the 1990s, British (and Danish) public opinion began to turn doubtful on the European Union before sceptical opinions started turning up in newspapers. Media opinions in Britain were not unanimous about joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but there was majority in favour; public opinion was against. Most editorials in London this week tilted in favour of action in Syria; public opinion is solidly opposed.

Secondly, when the tone and conclusions reached in the public sphere differ from what opinion polls tell us people think, the difference is usually the result of long, slow deep changes in mood and thinking. Journalists like to present change as something sudden which has just happened. Big changes in consensus don’t occur as right-angled turns. They are gradual, tentative, empirical and often only half-observed.

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