Slashdot Mirror
Using Technology to Protect Anonymous Sources?
A not-so Anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "The New York Times has a story describing how newspapers are looking for new ways to hide the identities of anonymous sources from prosecutors. This seems like a something the Slashdot crowd might know something about. How can a newspaper setup an IT system that completely hides every trace (including emails, phone calls notes, logs and so forth) of an anonymous source's identity?"
Simple solution...very powerful magnets!
For Time, the purpose of giving portable hard drives to reporters would be to transfer to the reporter ownership - and responsibility - for notes. That would reduce the onus on the company, leaving the reporter to decide how far to go with a personal act of civil disobedience. Some other publications also see the wisdom in this approach.
If portable HDs are used, it might not be a bad idea to encrypt them with something like TrueCrypt. A reported could even include a Hidden volume and tell the government/whoever that they haven't gotten around to actually using that particular drive yet.
Place the servers offshore.
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
just refer to them as Anonymous Cowards and leave it at that?
The best thing is to ditch anonymous sources.
yes me?
Places like Stealth Surfer ( http://stealthsurfer.biz/anonymous_email.html ) offer off-shore anonymous and encrypted email addresses, free of cost. Usage of free and public computers, such as public librarys and even Wifi hotspots, can help cover tracks. But sometimes it all depends on how determined someone is to invade your network. The most secure computer is one not connected to the internet - that's why I recommend AOL Dialup! You'll never be exposed to the internet again!
Don't use IT.
In Soviet Russia prosecutors hide YOU!
I suggest that reporters: 1) use their own laptops. 2) use their own email addresses with their own domain. 3) host their domain and email on a server that they own or with a company that will not turn over their records and/or not be subject to US law. 3) always access their email accounts over encrypted connections. On the other end, the source can make himself anonymous. I would suggest reporters encourage their sources to use a free email service like yahoo and always access the emails service using multiple web proxy servers, and publicly accessible connections. Obviously they would need to establish some code to identify the authenticity of the source to the reporter.
That would pretty much set things up virtually untraceable.
If they really wanted to get paranoid about it...the end leg could go through a mail2news server, and post responses anonymously, PGP encrypted to USENET groups set up just for this.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You guys do realize that newspapers all over the world have recently instituted strict policies prohibiting the use of anonymous sources, right? After 16 people died in rioting after that anonymously sourced Newsweek story and terrorists killed 50 more in London over it, the use of anonymous sources has been totally banned everywhere.
...how NY Times wants anonymous sources, but wants us to sign up to read the article about it.
Link to the anonymous sources from Slashdot.
Then the prosecutors won't be able to access the information.
Score: 5; Informative
The newspaper and the source could communicate via a blog or wiki hosted on TOR. It would be impossible to find where the actual server was, and if the source never provides his/her name and other information the newspaper could never find it, nor could prosicuters.
The newspaper itself could even host the wiki/blog and provide the public with the Tor Rendevous address. The government could force the paper to open it's page but there would be no logs available and the paper itself would never know who the informant is.
An example would be the Hidden Wiki available only to those using TOR.
i2p would also work, but requires open ports so won't work behind a firewall/NAT without configuration.
--
You could BugMeNot, or you could just click. You decide
Nearly all traffic, especially e-mail, is logged at some point along its travels across the internet. The end point can't remove every trace, they don't control each point along the chain.
I remember there was a great big anonymous email system in Finland.
address was anon4782344@remailer.something.fi
For some reason I also remember reading that the Church of Scientology had something to do with the demise of this remailer.
But - it was good for what it was - and it kept people anonymous.
Do any anon remailers still exist?
[Connection closed by foreign host]
This is a very timely article and an important one. I just received news that turd blos^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Karl Rove is an undercover CIA agent. Thank goodness I can post this important news on slashdot anonymously.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush
The first two things that come to mind:
Even then, it is not possible to be completely anonymous. It is always possible to match things like print head patterns, fingerprints, typewriter head impressions, and so on. Like anything else security-related, there are only varying degrees.
how newspapers are looking for new ways to hide the identities of anonymous sources from prosecutors.
Coming from the NYT that requires the identities of online readers, that's ironic...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Because of the way the law is written (IANAL, but I think I'm right), it doesn't really matter as long as the Journalist knows who the source is, since the Journalist can be held in contempt until she/he gives up the name. The only way to be truely anonomous is if the Journalist doesn't even know who the source is, and that seems like a bad idea.
The Journalist needs to know who the source is to decide if they are trustworthy, and a Judge can put the Journalist in Jail for not telling. This is a political question, or a social question, not a technological one.
Email - You could then grab a gmail or yahoo account (giving a ficticious name.)
Instant Messaging and File Sharing - You can use WASTE (RSA secured). More info can be found at: http://waste.sourceforge.net/ Hope that helps.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Sheesh, wasn't this the whole point of the freenet project? The trick is making the network and apps like FROST more accessible to non-l33t participants ... aka the last mile.
... free freenet kiosks in the malls under 24x7 camera surv. ;)
I can see it now
Once the discussion is archived, nobody can post anything useful to the poll, and then there won't be any trace of who is copying DVDs.
Oh, sorry, I thought this was some freedom of speech thing.
Nevermind.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Install slashcode and let everyone post as Anonymous Coward.
That's what blogs are for.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...of course. Otherwise through torture, threat of prison (or worse, threat of killing future book deals) they might squeal.:-)
In addition to anonymity pseudonymity is something people want.
That is, have a way to search for writings of.. or verify the articles of Silence Dogood or other pseudonym. That way people can have blogs etc. and people can be sure its the same credible person.
What a dissident group or person needs is to have a system that guarantees psuedonymity.
..who was it?
Blame it on Microsoft.
"Hey Mr. Sam I don't have the data anymore, I got a blue screen, wanna see it?"
If they don't believe that, better hide under the table, because THEY ARENT THE FBI !!
...so who does al-qaeda use for their IT, anyway?
If you hide all of the various forms of keeping track of who your source is, how do you validate that your source is actually who they say they are and that you aren't getting conflicting information from various sources? Can a source that you're going to verify (if you know ANYTHING about journalistic integrity) ever be truly anonymous?
This seems to be more of a problem that has a solution in the courts than one that can realisticly be enforced using technology because if you want to go this route, then you might as well just set up a "anonymous tip" box somewhere that people will insert information into from time to time.
http://tor.eff.org
http://www.i2p.net
Set up a server in tor or i2p, log nothing.
I'll bet most people in favor of preserving anonymous sources are also the first to shout "Information wants to be free" whenever some encryption gets cracked.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
In the case of deep throat - he was reporting on a crime that someone else committed. At no point did deep throat cross a legal line in reporting what he did to the Washington Post
In the case of the CIA leak - lets just say that who ever their source was COMMITTED a crime by leaking the name to the reporter. By committing a crime, he should be reported and punished to the full extent of the law.
Back to your regularly scheduled First Ammendment ramblings
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
How about these two lines?
/proc/random >> /mail/source /dev/null >> /mail/source
cat
cat
(repeat and rince a couple of time)
Something like that...
No sig for now.
Just be warned. I will patent and OWN any decent idea posted to slashdot on this subject.
We, the slashdotter, tend to keep to ourselves with the bevy and greatest technology.
Why let the media in it also? So the PHB can find ways to expose our latest and illusive methodology too?
No thanks....
that's the solution.
It's easy to provide anonymity to potential sources if reporters widely distribute their public keys.
It's a little harder to provide a distribution mechanism which resists backtracing by determined, well-funded and ruthless power.
It's harder still - and this is a long-standing problem for reporters - to verify material provided by anonymous sources. Even more so if revealing the information effectively endangers the source.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The only reason a source is of any value to a reporter is because they are not anonymous to the reporter. The reporter has to know the identity and bona fides of the source for the information to have any validity.
You might create a technology solution so that the only place the identity of the source exists is in the reporters mind, but even then the reporter needs to 'sell' the story to the editorial committee.
Instead, this problem must be solved judicially by making the freedom of the press tangible in a reporter's ability to gather information confidentially.
Great! What a great tool for injecting disinformation into the news cycle. I can now with total anonymity just make up unverifiable "facts" that support a particular political position I want put forth and get it published in the NYT. Just reel in a NYT reporter who has more hair mousse than common sense with some purportedly hot juicy news stuff and away we go! The more anti-Bush the better! They will chomp right on it. And I can then scoot away scott free since no one will know me as anything other than "Anonymous Coward".
Here's the short answer. You can't.
This is a social problem, not a technological one.
You need to fanatically develop a culture where secrecy surrounding a source's identity is sacrosanct. Reporters don't keep real names in notes. Nothing about real names of sources is written down. Communications involving sources is done verbally and face to face... etc...
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
It's easy. We set up pigeon feeders at newspapers, and in a little donated park areas around metropolis areas (good for the environment), set up bird seed machines that are on teh cheap as to attract lots of people, and train the birds to move from various park areas to newspapers. Then, all the informant has to do is pick a random park area and attach scroll to informant pigeon.. I mean carrier pigeon.. and bam. Too many people to keep track of for snoopy snoops. I suppose the only worry is getting a NO CARRIER signal. But the redundancy could be there with multiple visits to parks.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Forget about encryption, anonymous re-mailers etc. and just make stuff up like Jason Blair (and others) did.
[Insert pithy quote here]
they still don't have reliable thought readers yet, and we all know torture doesn't get you more reliable results, so that solution will work.
And never ever talk about it or write it down.
Consider using a numbered source system. Find a book that has the picture of the source and refer to that picture as something like RG7952 for Salizar's Homoculus Directory (R=S,G=H), page 89 (79=89), column 5, row 2 - which is a picture of that person. And then whenever you refer to it in internal articles, always use that exact reference (RG7952 big fluffy bear spotted at midnight doing tango with Shiek's best bud George in horizontal position on 12/5/04).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Have them all log in to the NYT web site, and post from there. No one would believe the login data.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Think of the /. feature of posting AC. In general, AC posts aren't worth as much as a post associated with a known user. I certainly give more interest to someone who bothered to register than I do to an AC posting.
That being stated, anonymity can be a Good Thing (tm), especially if you're worried about repurcussions from the entity you're informing upon.
Anonymous transactions happen every day when we use cash to pay for common items. It's why people don't remember who bought the giant Butterfinger bar at 1547 on Tuesday afternoon: it's only a buck. You also can't verify that you bought it, or when without a receipt, which takes away from the anonymity. However, if you're asked about where you were between 1530 and 1600 on Tuesday, and you paid with a credit/debit card, the time and location of the transaction can be verified to a much higher degree of confidence.
The use of anonymous sources isn't a bad thing per se, but the credibility of someone who refuses to be identified is generally viewed lower (sometimes a lot lower) than the credibility of a source with a name.
antipaucity
Panama is THE haven for hiding assets. If you embezzeled a shitload of cash from your corporation and need to disappear to a third world country, it's guys like these who can help you out. Isabella from shes.flightrisk.org used them to vanish somewhere having absconded over $100M from her family.
These crazy Panamanian lawyers recommend Hushmail. Used by 4 out 5 international criminals who chew gum. Let's just put it this way... if you wanted to contact a journalist with a blow the roof off the government leak, you'd use Hushmail. The United States Feds wants to get it's hands on Hushmail and cannot. It's been tested in international court. You start sending email to a journalist inbox from Hushmail and they will not find you. Mark Felt would use Hushmail.
write messages on toliet paper
if someone tries to read it
put it in your mouth or flush it down the toliet
i think it was on silence of the lambs.
Other than blasting off and nuking it from space, a one way hash is the only way to be sure.
Of course, with either solution, all data is irretrievably lost...
it's pretty much impossible. While it's great that reporters want to protect their sources, ultimately, those sources are almost never revealed by means of technological know-how. They're either revealed because someone decides to talk, or they never come to light and the reporter ends up going to jail for contempt of court.
For example, a local reporter in our area refused to give up the name of his source for confidential videotapes leaked from FBI files (in regard to the trial of then-mayor of Providence, "Buddy" Cianci). The source was ultimately revealed because people started blabbing, not because "Big Brother" ransacked the reporter's hard drive.
While in principle, I think encrypting such data may be a good idea, to keep it away from casual hackers and leaks of that nature, I doubt that cryptography or such things will keep the info out of the hand of law enforcement or other government agencies. They'll fall back on their usual technique of applying pressure to the person, not the technology, and that person either will or will not cave in.
On a bit of a tangent, I don't think there's any real way to keep someone involved in a report from being in the know as to who the source is - anonymous submission sources and the such are not very useful, because then the reporter has no way to judge the credibility of the information.
There are 50 comments so far and not a single one is moderated up or down.
On 19 June, 2005, Oregon's Mail Tribune reported that in a recent survey of 419 media outlets, nearly one-fourth of editors said they have banned the use of anonymous sources entirely -- a good start. Yet most members of the press still claim they cannot manage their self-appointed duty as the "watchdog of government" without using anonymous sources.
One must ask, then, how the scientific community manages so well using only verifiable sources? No scientific journal editor would even consider allowing a reference to an anonymous source.
Thomas Henry Huxley defined science as "nothing but trained and organized common sense." Scientific method might be similarly summarized as simply "telling the truth." Science makes rigorous efforts to prevent self-interest, conscious or unconscious, from distorting the truth. In studies testing new medications, neither the physician giving the drug nor the recipient of the drug know whether the medicament being evaluated or a placebo is being given. These double-blind studies prevent distortion resulting from bias. Richard Feynman wrote of "learning how not to fool ourselves" and of having "utter scientific integrity" as being part of "our responsibility as scientists." Scientists are trained to understand how deceptively easy it is to believe what they want to believe and to recognize that they must constantly be on guard against allowing this form of bias to compromise the integrity of their work.
How much a given field of knowledge values the truth can be measured by the attention it gives to methods attempting to preserve the truth.
The steady stream of high-profile scandals in the mass media over the past several years -- ranging from forged documents to trying to pass off fiction as news -- indicates that media methods need some serious scrutiny. First, consider my title, Anonymous sources: A license to lie. I don't mean to imply that reporters lie every time they cite an unidentified source. But consider: an anonymous source could mean no source at all -- material simply made up by the reporter. A more widespread concern, however, is that human communications are rarely perfect. Did the reporter's interpretation accurately portray what his source said? Or did he hear what he wanted to hear? Or did he paraphrase; allowing his bias to alter the meaning? The only way to know is to ask the source. That is why our legal system has cross-examinations; and why the accused is guaranteed the right to face his accuser. The use of anonymous sources almost guarantees that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will not be transmitted with accuracy and precision.
As a scientist, I suggest that considering themselves the "watchdog of government" invalidates the media's credibility by any objective scientific standard. It injects a massive anti-government bias that overwhelms the media's well-known liberal bias. As the "watchdog of government," the media needs to find government impropriety -- or make it up if they can't -- to justify their existence. Such a bias would not be tolerated in science, in law or in any other honest field of human endeavor.
A profession considering itself the "watchdog of government" is an excellent example of the mass media fooling itself, believing what it wants to believe. I recall well when our media acted as the ministry of propaganda for the North Vietnamese: The media told the American public that the Tet Offensive of 1968 was a North Vietnamese victory. In fact, it was an unmitigated military disaster for the Communists. Our media repeated that lie incessantly until, finally, the American public believed them, lost patience and stopped supporting the Vietnamese conflict.
In World War II we had censorship of the media. We won that war. In the Vietnam conflict we suffered the consequences of allowing our mass media unrestricted access to flood our homes with grisly scene
ROT13 is the answer! That'll ensure privacy and anonymity for certain!
-Tom
Why should we help these corporate media to further protect their anonymous sources? They're abusing the trust we have in their publications, by quoting sources their writers know, but without investigating whether their quotes are accurate. In fact, they look to their sources for quotes to reinforce their foregone conclusions about a story, then keep their source anonymous to protect them from that scrutiny.
Now, if these corporate media were looking for a way to require that any anonymous source be corroborated by another source, without a vested interest in merely backing up the first source's selfserving lies, I could see helping. But of course that's impossible to automate without true artificial intelligence. With their huge budgets, and other carveouts from accountability, why don't these corporate media get their sources in order first, with some human intelligence? Starting with discarding their attitude that the coroprate PR must be the basic truth, because it's worth so much money. And getting back into actual journalism, where the writer and editor collaborate to find the true story, regardless of who's telling it, or who it's about, then tell it to the public in a way that will be best understood. There's lots of automated tools for that. They should look more into using those tools, and less into CYA technologies.
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make install -not war
Anyone else find it ironic that they're looking to set up this anonymous communication system and yet they require registration to read their site?
*ack*
I can't say that with straight face and without choking.
Anyhow, if sources are so anonymous that they cannot be verified as to identity by the news people, and when has this ever stopped them, then how do we ever know it isn't some geek with a crude sense of humor who has managed to master nym and mixmaster remailers?
If they are known by the reporters, then the court order comes into play and they can testify or go to jail. That simple. We're not talking lawyer-client or doctor-patient or married couples here, we are talking about quite plainly, people whose entire job it is to print the most sensational things in their area that they can to sell newspapers and increase paying readership. Not saving people from the noose, not saving people's lives, not keeping a marriage together.
I place reporter-source privilege on the same level as that of gossip-mongers in my own neighborhood and as much importance on it. Reporters say their profession is about truth and facts. Well truth is ephemeral and in the mind of the person at hand and facts things that people may very well ignore in choosing their truth for themselves. If they want to be so high and mighty, let them put out verifiable bonafide facts and cut down the use of anonymous sources.
If news people see it as needing some way to circumvent court orders using encryption, then how trustworthy can it be? Sounds more like shielding their backsides and giving themselves greater latitude in abusing "anonymous sources" which they do too frequently these days as it is. Let them start acting ethical and aboveboard in the fourth estate to begin with and not looking for ways to cover their behinds.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
See this article. Cooper's source was revealed because Time editors chose to reveal that source, against Cooper's wishes, in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling. Cooper should not have trusted his editors, if he really wanted to protect his source. No amount of technological security will help if you are betrayed by your own people.
Vote for Pedro
From the looks of this and the previous post on the main page, it seems like the Slashdot mods have all gone to take a nap. Seriously, what's going on? How can nobody get modded up? Or are trolls to blame?
Re-read the patriot act. It basically gives the DOJ/Homeland/DOD the same capabilities as NSA/CIA. One of those, is the ability to listen in on ALL wired (including fibered) comm here in the USA.
If you do not believe it, then ask why homeland security busted a 1000 gang members this weekend? How would a group who was concerned with terrorist know so much about common thugs?Do you honestly think that was from human intel via military people?
No, it will now be much easier for the current admin to know exactly what is going on in Amerika.
Morse code with laser pointers in the desert!
Some might say: Setup a submission form, give the source a tracking number (reference number for the submission), and then delete the logs every hour so there is no IP trace.
But this is where the solution doesn't work: Reporters have to be able to verify their sources. To make sure it isn't a quack. If it is completely anonymous - what is to stop me from sending a note saying I am a top White-House aid and I got the inside scoop?
IMHO if the data given involves national security (i.e. the name of an undercover CIA agent), compromises peoples lives then the newspaper should be held morally and legally responsible to NOT publish it - and in fact must contact the department this is reporting on. At the very least to give some kind of warning. Stuff like whistleblowing is covered under the Whistle Blower laws - but risking someones life (i.e. that CIA agent who was made public) is wrong. We know there are spooks, and they work. If you do not like the idea of undercover ops then stop it at the system level - have it made illegal...but to risk someones life is inexcuseable.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
How can a newspaper setup an IT system that completely hides every trace (including emails, phone calls notes, logs and so forth) of an anonymous source's identity?"
(a) Make the whole frigging website accessible by HTTPS. That way, someone looks like they're reading the news, so far as a network sniffer is concerned.
(b) Stop requiring people to register their full name, age, occupation, and list of health problems before reading your website. Somehow, I think the New York Times missed this lesson.
(c) Stop logging. By which I mean, your website doesn't set cookies and apache doesn't log IP addresses. You don't get the "average length of visit" on your web stats, but who cares anyway?!?
(d) Allow feedback. Someone wants to comment on a story, they will. You might call them an anonymous whistleblower, but it's just comments on a story, so far as your website is concerned.
(c2) Check your ISP. Check their 'we'll squeal without prompting' policy. Then move your website to XS4ALL.
In the real world this surely happens over time, it's makes sense for a number of pieces of information to be traded to build the relationship.
Does it matter if the source is idenfied as Anonymous#104928 rather than their name - so long as the journalist can depend that Anonymous#104928 is the same person each time then the same relationship can be established.
To this day, he has no idea how Mark "Deep Throat" Felt sent messages to him in his morning paper.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Don't require a login?
This Anon Coward guy seems pretty smart, so I think Journalists should just listen to him.
Paper + fire = secure
With full anonymity, a white house staffer's word means nothing more than the average schmoe on the street. For the information to have value, someone needs to know the identity of the source. Once that has happened, full anonymity isn't possible.
carrier pigeons.... the prosectors will never suspect!
When an article calls a source anonymous, The reporter knows who the source is, but keeps the source anonymous to protect the privacy and safety of the source. Journalists can't write a reliable article if they don't know who the source of the info, otherwise they have no way of knowing the accuracy of the information they receive. Not many journalists want to end up looking like Dan Rather.
If the journalist knows who the source is, technology makes no difference - the journalist must surrender this information to authorities or risk the consequences (at least in the current state of affairs).
If the journalist knows nothing about the source, how can it be trusted?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
On the one hand the editors need to verify sources to prevent the kinds of made-up-story scandals of the last decade and on the other sources need to be protected.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
How, once you have hidden every trace of an anonymous source's identity, and someone contacts you claiming to by the same anonymous source, how do prove (even to yourself) that they are or are not?
The source could take care of this by telling you a code word that would appear in the next communication. The reporter could also tell the source what code word to use next (unless the source was using a one-way communication channel such as a letter or an e-mail with a forged header).
Other than such a mechanism, though... how could you tell?
There are a number of web-based anonymous email solutions which newspapers could provide their clients with. One example is the anonymous email script at http://attachesoft.com/.
Aren't there whistleblower laws that protect individuals who leak information about crimes committed by organizations they work for?
I don't think it means what you think it means.
NYT makes money from reporting news, so they want to make sure their news sources will keep providing them news, hence the need for anonymity.
NYT makes money from readership, and knowing who those readers are, hence the registration.
It would be ironic if a NYT reporter spent a lot of effort facilitating anonmous sources and then...
couldn't look up his source because he'd hidden it too well.
or
absent mindedly published the source anyway.
That's ironic. Having a use for both anonymous sources and registered readers is not ironic. It's obvious and expected.
Keeping anonymoty is something that academics have been working on for a while. The first thing the human subjects review board asks you is if you intend to keep your research subjects anonymous.
so things like double coding of names where two or more people change the names so that there is no way to know how subject X is.
Another is to just not know their names in the first place.
Destroying the evidence is another common tactic which means destroying all the personally identifiable data as soon as the research is published.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The hard part is not using technology to anonymize sources; that's something that can be straighforwardly done using any of the darknets out there. What's hard is that sources should never remain anonymous from reporters. We trust reporters to screen out the authentic/useful information from the fluff. Even if a reporter doesn't print the name of a source, they must know the identity to be able to ascertain the credibility and the motivations of the source providing the information. It is precisely the reporter's ability to create an informed opinion that makes them worthy of being printed, and pure anonymity deprives the press of that ability. -jag
When all you have is a hammer, everybody looks like a Messiah.
Well, for one thing, they should clean their own house, like DEMANDING a logon to read their stories online...
as already mentioned. A chain of at least 3 random. They are fiddly for newbies, the mixmaster cl client is not hard to use but it seems to require running a mail server as i remember.
There are other clients QuickSilver for Windows and an old one called Jack B Nymble which has a GUI (Windows). I think you still need Mixmaster installed with these.
There is nothing else that really comes too close to be honest. Not TOR, or any proxy will offer the level of security a chain of remailers can if used properly.
Mixmaster is the current standard (more secure than Cypherpunk) and Mixminion is the next proposed standard.
Also avoid any remailers that use the optional and controversial hashcash thing.
A good overview of anonymous protocols (for the academically inclined) is given here.
Forget about phone calls and other written records. Just insist that all of your messages with the source go through Mixmaster.
The same isn't true for science (or indeed journalism), where the biases of a source can affect the information presented, and should be investigated.
It is not primarily an issue of preventing evesdropping. That is not hard. It is not a problem of controlling access.
The bigger problem is not defeating a technological threat. It is a problem with defeating a court order. If anyone has access to the information (including the original reporter) then this information can be dubject to subpoena (IANAL). To my knowledge court orders don't tend to be defeated by some brand new technological system used. Even the reporter's recollection and testamony could be subpoenad. And if you hide things from the editorial staff, what sort of quality control do you get?
Use the right tool for the job. To defeat a technological threat, use a technological countermeasure. To defeat a legal threat, hire the best attourney. Better yet, don't enter into confidentiality agreements with those who are pursuing their own nefarious goals such as Carl Rove. Protecting whistleblowers is one thing. Protecting those in power as they seek revenge against those who dispute facts with them however is not nearly the same thing. A better way of handling this in order to have a good defensive position is to make sure that every reporter who may enter into such an agreement is given legal and editorial advice beforehand.
Just my lay opinion.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Make a news website in a neutral foreign country that will accommodate this sort of journalism..
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Onion routing to the rescue!
I think the better question is how to make sure the source is legitimate while maintaining its anonyminity? (Is that a word?) I'm not sure I have an answer to that.
Technological anonymity does not address all the vulnerabilities of the system because the identity of the source is also stored in the mind of the journalist. In fact, I suspect that technological security is an iron padlock on a paper house -- the human factors/social engineering issues create some severe vulnerabilities in the system. If the government can threaten or actually imprison a journalist over sources, then encrypted HDs aren't going to be much of a defense. As long as the journalist can ID the source, the system is very vulnerable.
The problem is that journalists really can't use unverified sources -- it's to easy to be either wrong, manipulated, or both as Dan Rather can attest to.
The real trick would be to accomplish both credibility and anonymity. Somehow the journalist needs to both know the source well enough to be sure that they are credible and yet not know the source well enough to ID them. Then they can add whatever encryption/obfuscation they want because none of the vulnerable information lies in a human mind.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
how newspapers are looking for new ways to hide the identities of anonymous sources from prosecutors.
Just make up the sources and stories as you go along? Oh, wait...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Then again, a typewritten letter stuffed in an envelope with no return address and correct postage is probably just as secure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm... That would mean data records of their original identity (in some way) would have to be maintained. This is really no different than registering for a forum (real name, email address, etc) under the name PoopyPants47Killa. All the admin has to do is look at the database for your username and find your email address, ip address, full name, etc... Nothing is anon. about the system you described.
Most solutions mentioned by fellow slashdotters so far suffer from two problems:
1. Credibility. The reporter must be able to determine that the source is credible. A reporter has to either meet his informant face to face to verify that he's actually somebody who has access to the information that he's trying to share, or has to be able to identify that messages claiming to be sent from the informer are actually from the informer. After certain amount of reliable information he has a good reason to trust the source. Public key encryption should come handy here, but who knows how many bits the US government can crack? For all I know they can divide large numbers in polynomial time.
2. The Patriot Act. Let's say a source decides to anonymously post his information on a public site. Just like I'm posting at an Anonymous Coward. Let's also say the site does not keep logs of IP addresses, etc. After a successful post or two the hosting company will get a visit from the FBI. Using the Patriot Act they'll force them to track all anonymous posts and not to tell the readers that they are doing so. Anybody remember the UCLA fighting this exact same case in NY?
I can think of a few techy ways to remain semi-anonymous as long as I limit my postings, but I doubt an average computer user will be able to do that.
Post your dirty details and evidence into the FreeNet and then send the link/key anonymously your journalist contact.
Or, hell - do you care WHICH media outlet reports it?
Drop the key/link into a public newsgroup or forum, using an anonymizer via some other terminal or connection point.
After all, if you are trully interested in blowing the lid on something - who cares which outlet gets it, right?
The thing is, an anonymous source should not be anonymous to the reporter. The reporter need to know enough about the source to determine that they are credible. Then the reporter need to maintain the confidentiality of the source.
I don't know if the government has high-tech snoopers (but I bet they do judging by the chatter about internet wire-taps), but won't they carefully monitor the traffic any site/page that might get an potentially damaging insider tip/leak?
It seems to me that both the strongest and the weakest link in this chain is the person or people who know the source's identity. Why bother messing with all the technology when it's still going to come down to putting a reporter on the stand and demanding information? In the end it comes down to (as the article suggests) the level of civil disobedience the reporter wants to exercise.
A more important question is why do so many of today's news stories depend on anonymous sources? I understand there might be times where anonimity is necessary for safety reasons, but what the recent CBS bogus documents scandal and the Rove/Plume story show is that many of these anonymous sources have doubious credibility and/or self-serving motives for what they say. How is keeping these sources secret providing any kind of quality news? Facts and their sources should be as disclosed as possible to let the public decide what is going on. This concern over wanting to protect sources from prosecution is just a ruse from the New York Times to draw attention away from their lazy hush-hush gossip style journalism.
== anonymity.
Make award payment for the story lead payable to CASH.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Good journalists do it by fact-checking and looking for corroborating evidence in each individual story, regardless of how long they've personally known the source.
Not all "journalists" are of the CmdrTaco variety who just post whatever shit arrived in his inbox as "teh Newz!".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I've heard an interview with Bob Woodward where specifically said that he told his editor who his source was and that he thinks that the editor should know who a reporter's source is. It is a check and balance that leads to an internal accountability. Something which avoids the problems we've seen in the press lately of reporters claiming anonymous source when its really a completely fictitious sources. Doesn't the complete anonymity being talked about here lead more easily toward that kind of abuse?
pompous (adj.)
1. Characterized by excessive self-esteem or exaggerated dignity; pretentious: pompous officials who enjoy giving orders.
2. Full of high-sounding phrases; bombastic: a pompous proclamation.
3. Chracterized by pomp or stately display; ceremonious: a pompous occasion.
[Middle English, from Old French pompeux, from Late Latin pompsus, from Latin pompa, pomp. See pomp.]pomposity (-ps-t) or pompousness (-ps-ns) n.
pompously adv.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
pompous
adj : puffed up with vanity; "a grandiloquent and boastful manner"; "overblown oratory"; "a pompous speech"; "pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey"- Newsweek [syn: grandiloquent, overblown, pontifical, portentous]
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
They will march the reporter up before the judge and the judge will tell the reporter to reveal the source for an article. The reporter refuses and the judge says, "30 days, contempt of court."
They haul the reporter off for a 30 day stay in the local jail and bring them back before the judge who again tells them to reveal their source. Guess what happens if they refuse this time? Yip, another 30 days in the local clink. The reporter could effectively serve a life sentence for not revealing their source. Guess which side is more likely to give up first?
The only way technology could solve this problem is if it provided a way to keep the source AND the reporter totally anonymous AND no one else knows who the reporter or the source are. This scenario would provide a lot of protection for all involved, but if the newspaper doesn't know any of the parties involved with the story, they couldn't safely run the story.
Unfortunately the site www.rubberhose.org is gone..
[First they came for goatse.cx....]
But it can also be found under the name Marutukku. It might be a little overkill of course. And there's always rot-13
Truly anonymous sources lead to garbage news. Remember the bogus "Koran in the toilet" story? (Of course, Muslims are allowed to riot and kill if the Koran goes in the toilet. Christians have to tolerate the US government funding of Piss Christ because, well, they're Christians, but I digress...)
If a reporter can't judge the credibility of a source because he doesn't know who it is and the background behind the information, the story will be guaranteed to be garbage. And if the reporter does know who the source is, all the technical obfuscation won't protect him.
Ask Judith Miller.
By the time they come asking where the sources came from, all the data will be gone.
Anonymnity is for cowards, not news sources.
That, if there is no way to tell who your source is, your source is worthless.
It's one thing to get an anonymous tip that says, "Such and such person is involved in such and such illegal activity and if you look in such and such a place you will find proof." This is information that can be backed up in the real world, and it is irrelevant who lets you know about it.
But you can't print factual information gathered from an anonymous source for the simple reason that the anonymous source might be some sort of whacko, and you'd end up looking like a moron.
Half the time the reporter already knows what they're looking for, because, whenever theres an issue, a dozen people will hint about it under the table, but until you get someone who is in a position to know to go on record and say it, all you get is the kind of crap Fox News spouts which is 50% innuendo and 50% sensationalism. That may be good enough for TV, but if print starts spouting crap like that, they end up as the National Enquirer.
The long an short of it is, if your reporter can't find out enough about the source to tell if the information is reliable enough to print, then they can't use the source anyway.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
use as few electrons as possible.
The newspaper makes the following rule: anyone can mail anything to the newspaper anonymously.
Or drop it in an unwatched depository box.
The material should be accompanied by a 10-digit random key, which the anonymous poster uses on every submission. After receiving a few postings from the same person, the newspaper can have a look at them and if they are credible, begin to investigate the allegations. The newspaper never knows the name of the poster, only the key, which it keeps secret to prevent imposters from riding on the original poster's credibility. Anonymous posters can vouch for other anonymous posters by playing tricks with nested envelopes.
(Posted anonymously by 3141592653).
Seriously though...set up a call center/secretary (with an emphasis on "secret") in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US. Let all anonymous sources go through there. If the reporter is hauled to court, s/he can honestly state where s/he got the information from and the authorities cannot pursue it any further.
Reporters and editors need to know who the source is to decide whether or not to write about what they say. Otherwise they'd be publishing all kinds of false-but-plausible stuff from cranks. If the reporters and editors know, a court can order them to testify. No amount of fancy software can eliminate that risk.
Ask that anonymous sources do a dead drop in an unmonitored location on a piece of paper that has been run through a typewriter and handled with rubber gloves.
Then you don't know who your sources are, you just went down to one of your tip deposit locations and picked up an envelope. There are no tracking signatures, nothing digital, no handwriting, no fingerprints, and no information about the source except what the source wants you to know at the source's own peril.
IANAL, FWIW.
It's against the law pretty much, isn't it?
The easiest way is to meet sources in person. Exchange notes on paper that can
be burned etc. - email, phone etc. are all easily federally obtainable and
destroying such records will land journalists and newspapers in serious trouble if
I understand it correctly.
However there is no law about not telling someone you talked to someone else, or
throwing a post-it in the trash.
Neko
This is nothing more than a feeble attempt by the media to shirk responsibility for their own work. "Protect me from myself" should be reserved for people who can't care for themselves.
Besides, if the identity of the source is completely shielded from the reporter, how will they assign credibility/reputation to the information? Does the tin foil helmet crowd now command the same level of credibility as do normal people?
Simply cross your name out, like this: John
Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging by providing:
Encryption
No one else can read your instant messages.
Authentication
You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.
Deniability
The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.
Perfect forward secrecy
If you lose control of your private keys, no previous conversation is compromised.
http://www.xelerance.com/mirror/otr/, and a plugin of the same for GAIM: http://osx.freshmeat.net/projects/otr/
The point of anonymous sources is that they are not anonymous to the reporter and editor -- only to those who would do harm to the source for coming forward. The validity of an anonymous source is determined, in great part, by who they are.
If the reporter can't tell the difference between some paranoid fantasy from jimbo who works at mcdonalds and the inside scoop from one of the cabinet members, then at best the anonymous source is just a hint at where to look for actual proof/evidence and probably just random noise that will waste the time of the reporter.
As long as the reporter knows who the source is, he can be legally ordered to reveal the source's identity. So that's the catch-22, and all the technobabble about cryptographically secure anonymous communication won't do a thing to fix the underlying problem.
Use terminally-ill people in hospice care to redact the names, replacing them with unique identifiers before handing them over to reporters.
The bit I think you are referring to does not mean what you say it does:
In other words she had been outed, thus she was no longer clandestine. The interview continues:
He can't talk about specifics that touch on still-classified information. But he can say that the CIA believed a crime had been committed and let you draw your own conclusions.
Earlier in the article he repeated another statement by the CIA which makes it even more clear that Plame was an undercover CIA officer:
Just for fun here are some more quotes from the same interview demonstrating that it is ridiculous to believe that Wilson is a Democratic stooge or that Karl Rove was not trying to smear Plame:
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Setup a server to accept submissions. Turn off all logging, or put a strict log purge policy in place. So keep only the last 24 hours for finding problems in the system etc.
/dev/null /dev/nulli nfo;local0.info /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null
Then turn off syslog or setup your conf like this:
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none
authpriv.*
local0.notice;local0.debug;mail.*;mail.none;mail.
cron.*
kern.*
*.emerg
uucp,news.crit
local7.*
local4.*
New York Crimes: "New York Crimes, how may I help you." ...."
.....
Anonymous Coward: "I have a story about the mayor."
NYC: "Let me transfer you to the City Desk."
NYC City Desk: "Hello, what can I do for you."
AC: "I have a story about the Mayor, but I need to remain anonymous."
NYCCD: "I'm sorry, we don't allow anonymous reporters, but I know this paper in the Cayman Islands that we occasionally buy stories from, their number is
AC: "Thank you"
Later that day:
Cayman Islands Inquisitor: "Hello, New York Crimes City Desk"
NYCCD: "Oh, hi again, thanks for that last story on the Governor, we sold a lot of papers with it, do you have a new story for me today?"
Assuming there's no caller ID on incoming calls to the NYCrimes, and that the offshore wire service is immune from US subpeonas, you are in business.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Since you obviously have information not available to anyone else about whether or not a crime was committed.
Considering that Plame was last overseas undercover in 1997 and the name became public in 2003 (and it may very well not have been leaked considering Joe Wilson's wife is listed in "Who's Who"...), it would be a bit hard to break a law with a five-year limit, now wouldn't it?
You need to read Plame's Lame Game and A Nutty Little Law.
Some excerpts:
Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.
and
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, notionally violated by this disclosure, is a ridiculous piece of legislation to begin with. It relies in practice on a high standard of proof, effectively requiring that the government demonstrate that someone knowingly intended to divulge the identity of an American secret agent operating under cover, with the intention of harming that agent.
Note that under the law in question, for a crime to have been committed - even if the five-year limitation weren't exceeded - the leaker would have to knowingly leak the information with the purpose of causing harm to the agent. Simply leaking the name to providie proof positive that her husband is a liar wouldn't make the leak a crime.
Get over your hatred of all things Bush. It makes uou sound like a paranoid twit.
Newsweek retracted it's claim that reports of Koran-abuse would appear in a *specific government report*, not that the Koran-abuse occured.
Indeed, I'd read articles about it for at least a year before the Newsweek article.
Naturally, the Republican spin machine tried to pretend that Newsweek retracted the reports of the abuse in general. And subsequent government reports confirmed it.
Sounds like something Apple would be good with, considering their success with the iPod Shuffle...
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
She was covert. That's a fact.
Keep trying to spin away, monkey boy.
There are obviously technical ways to obscure the source of a message, but I'm not sure that helps anyone.
The issue is that in the current system, the reporter *KNOWS* who the anonymous source is. They speak with them directly on the phone, in most cases, or face to face. The reporter can say truthfully "a white house staff member who wished to remain anonymous said x". This communication could easily be kept private -- a good reporter will be meeting regularly with lots of people, so a spoken communication will be impossible to pin on anyone in particular (as long as the reporter stays quiet).
In contract, total anonymity: if I walked into a random internet cafe in a neighboring city, submitted a feedback form to the paper, paid with cash and walked out, I would be anonymous... but I could easily say *I* was a high-ranking official and the reporter would just have to guess. That's not useful to them, and few reporters would base a story on this kind of information.
There's still a place for this kind of communication -- an anonymous source can say "x is going to happen tonight at the WaterGate hotel..." and a reporter can follow it up and do more research before printing anything... but they will have to filter through a lot of crackpots.
If any of those limey bastards go hanging our opperatives out to dry, I'm all for crucifying them.
/. as well.
That goes for
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
ENCRYPTED INFORMATION!
The easiest solution is an unsecured wifi network. With only one page accessible.
Anyone with a laptop or wifi enabled PDA can then gain access, leaving only a MAC address.
Making an anonymous system actually work requires removing all physical media, as they contain data that can allow identification (finger prints, etc.) anything over a wired network could be traced. Anything over phone lines can be traced with enough resources.
This leaves radio as an acceptable medium. To use radio, the most common kind, thus the most accessible kind is WiFi.
So all they need is a WiFi network with a web server serving a single page that allows for anonymous submissions.
The sources can't be anonymous; someone has to know who the source is, or else there would be no way to tell whether the source was valid or not. If they were entirely anonymous, then how could you tell some jerk feeding you BS from the true deep throats?
...but I would simply use a random alphanumeric password (insert your security program of choice, so long as it's secure) that's too long to remember (twenty or thirty digits should do it) & keep it in my wallet. You get subpoenaed, you "lose" the code down the toilet and quite correctly claim that you can't remember the password. I don't know what the statistics are on brute forcing passwords, but if you make it long enough perhaps there's a chance it won't get broken in your lifetime.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
DUH! Use FreeNet!
You're seriously suggesting a system under which a government source would be perfectly anonymous not only to the newspaper's readers, not only to the newspaper, but to the reporters themselves?
I see. That sounds like a wonderful idea. For me, at least. Because if such a system existed, I would set myself up as an "anonymous high-ranking administration official" immediately. I mean, I'm a random computer programmer in Indiana. But the newspapers don't know that, do they? I'm anonymous. So give me a year and I'll have the New York Times printing that the Bush administration plans to use nuclear missles against Idaho.
(And if you have any doubt they'll trust my word, remember: they trusted Ahmed Chalabi.)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
1) Scientific inquiry != Political reporting. Scientific reporting is carried out in the open because the cycles of publish and review has been shown a particularly effective means to zero in on the nature of nature. Research that is seen to result in the researchers and writers being blackballed, harrassed by government officials, or killed doesn't get pursued. Political reporting is usually an open process in the US, but because of the insiders advantages of acting without public scrutiny, the players are often willing to seriously screw anyone who shines a light where it isn't wanted. Ergo, there's sometimes a need to allow for anonymous sources to give the researched topic enough exposure that the players can't effectively retaliate.
2) Censorship & War: In WWII, the Federal Govt and DoW frequently hid or spun facts regarding the war effort, but there was a payoff that everyone saw. In Vietnam, the Feds and DoD played the same game. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons, they oversold their progress against the NVA and VC, which made everyone look like idiots when the Reds pulled off Tet. The US/RVN victory during Tet might have been capitalized after the Paris peace accords. But, since Nixon felt the need to play dirty during an election he could have won clean, he wasn't in a position to keep the North Vietnamese in line when he needed to.
Granted, the Vietnam War probably got a little TOO much TV airtime after Tet, but I don't think that's the case with Iraq. If Bush pulls us out of Iraq with our tails between our legs, it'll be because he pissed away his oportunities to conduct the war effectively, not because he wasn't better able to pull the wool over our eyes.
Luke, help me take this mask off
That's a prime example of media distortions becoming "accepted fact".
Myth: The Tet Offensive Was a Communist Victory
So let's say, for the sake of argument, that you have a list of all your sources -- names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.
Then you could match against that list, and know what to hide from notes, articles, etc.
You could ask the journalist for a nickname for each person whose information is used in their notes, etc. and replace "555-1212" with "BunnySlipper's Phone Number".
So any info saved in such a system has all references to actual names, phone numbers, etc of sources replaced by nickname references, and the info for each person so nicknamed is in an address book so they can get it back; if they can read the addressbook and know the nickname-person mapping.
This mapping could be stored encrypted with a password that only the reporter knows, as could the addressbook data itself.
Further, this encrypted info could be kept on a thumb drive that the reporter would keep with them, which they could hide/swallow/destroy if they felt so moved.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Simple: keep the anonymous source out of the IT system. No technological system is entirely secure, and obviously subpoenas are the magic key to open them. But if there are no e-mails, no logs, no electronic notes... they can't be turned over.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You would loose your entire IT department and find a lot of people with escrow in jail besides reporters.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
The technology is out there. The founding father of untraceability is David Chaum. There is a tradeoff between untraceability and practicality. Chaum describes perfect untraceability in the Dining Cryptographers paper, but it is impractical and subject to DOS attacks. Chaum's Digital Mixes are a more practical type of system and all of the anonymous remailers are based in this principal. TOR: The Onion Router Project is what you should check out, it is a real time Chaum mix net for TCP connections.
Maybe a text file on a floppy? That might be hard to track down...
Let Ben and Adam Laurie host the data in one of their bunkers. If Interpol or FBI try to raid the place, by the time they get past the security and through the heavily fortified bunker doors, the magnesium will have been ignited by then and there will be no more data... muah ha ha ha
If they tell me how to read stories without logging in then I'll tell them about anonymous contact!
How can a newspaper setup an IT system that completely hides every trace (including emails, phone calls notes, logs and so forth) of an anonymous source's identity?"
Are you kidding me? Having worked in the IT department of a major newspaper company for years now, I have reached the conclusion that most newspapers are lucky if they can run their own PUBLIC email systems, nevermind anything involving security or anonymity. You'd be amazed if you saw the ancient modems that the "AP Newswire" actually physically connects to.
It is not an industry with an appreciation for technological innovations. I mean, if it was, we wouldn't even call it the "newspaper" industry anymore.
How about a network of proxies that forward messages, but don't have a hard drive. Everything is done via RAM or some volitile memory, then getting power cycled every hour.
Why not just create a Content Management System on their intranet. Encrypt the database, and only allow SSL communication with the CMS web server.
Such solutions do exist, and if none of them are appropriate or secure enough there are teams of developers and security professionals you can consult with to build it for you.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
That feature keeps us really anonymous
I posting this as a joke, but the humour depends on someone replying to this and telling what's wrong with the slashdot system, I don't know offhand..
It would hinder security, but it would mean anonymity for everyone who entered a given page. when a court demands the logs, you simply say "I don't keep them, theyre secure-erased every 5 minutes"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Yeah, I just carry it because I am supposed to, but I really haven't used it." ...or just buy everyone an iPod :) Then no funny excuses as to why you carry it around... and it's plausible to have one lost or stolen.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Thats about as likely as new blockbuster films not being leaked onto the net or hax0rz not getting around MS' new validation process...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If people are suffering retribution for whistleblowing, then they are already under fascist control- Just not by the government. The public can be informed by people that don't hide behind an invicible wall of unaccountability. According to the current laws, nobody gets 'called into court and grilled over any information they leak that might challenge those in power', unless they LIE, (slander, libel, perjury), divulge classified information, (breach of contract, if it is corporate and not government information), or if they broke some law getting the information in the first place (wiretapping violations, tresspassing, burglary). Anonymity in these cases protects the lawbreaker, not the accused. As for employment purposes, it's easy to tell if an illegal reason was used to deny someone employment- Did the decision-maker know that the individual was blacklisted?
If protected groups are being persecuted, prosecute the persecuters to protect the persecuted.
NY Times and Washington Post seems to find more scandals in the US president administration than the rest of the world's media find in the rest of the world's governments.
(-: They seem to be as good at news as the English press is at digging into the private lives of football (sorry, socker) stars. :-)
Locally, most newspapers can't survive without big handouts from the state (a large part of that problem is the heavy taxation of work time. Give with one hand, take back with the other -- with the axe always ready to fall if they become too problematic...)
One of the (probably few) places where Sweden seems superior, is that it is illegal for public departments or employees to inquire for sources.
So NY Times et al could just start a local Swedish magazine, tell all people with sensitive information to call here -- and buy stories from the Swedish magazine, which would be their only source of income. :-)
(I guess the local magazine would have to publish something, too, to keep the rights as a paper magazine. They could always charge $100 a magazine to stop having to print many newspapers. :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
The sources contact a computer system and request or waive the right to anonymity. Anonymous sources are given real-sounding, computer generated pseudonyms. One reporter screens all sources, anonymous and non-anonymous, and determines whether they are credible. This reporter types the source's name (or pseudonym) into the system and the system gives a code to the source. The sources then proceed to walk to computer terminals, login with their codes, and chat with another reporter through a screen. If the source has requested anonymity, the interviewer sees only that the source has requested anonymity - the reporter interviewing the source does not even know the computer-assigned pseudonym. After the interview, the computer securely deletes all records of the sources. The interviewer knows nothing, the reporter verifying credibility doesn't know which source was anonymous, and the computer's records are deleted. For added security, phony anonymous sources could be hired by the newspaper to further hinder an attack against the reporter verifying credibility (obviously the weakest link in this system), and the hard drive can be thrown into an active volcano when the computer is replaced :)
-linuxrocks123
This is not legal advice; my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by my employers.
"There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is -- other people!"
-Jean Paul Sartre
If its truly anonymous why keep any notes on it at all?
You may or may not know that Judith Miller, the one in jail, was a major supporter of the invasion of Iraq and hyped it incessantly leading up to it. She was also one of the big "hypers" of the entire WMD mythos.
Another interesting piece of news is that John Bolton, (remember him?) was one of Judith Millers sources and he has testifed before the Grand Jury in this matter.
The sharks smell blood...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Anonymity is determined by the sender of the information, not the reciever. If they want good anonymous ways to submit information, just tell the the whistle blowers to go use someone else's WiFi connection. It's not like they're hard to find. Other than that, dial up on a beige boxed line with stolen login info, phone call on beige boxed line, snail mail if you're competent, library computers, the list goes on and on. Some are more legal than others however.
Weren't the masses just complaining that Freenet was too anonymous? This is -exactly- what Freenet is for.
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
As long as many reporters/journalists abuse their profession, I will hold back on any info which can help them violate the codes and ethics of their profession. I am surprised that many people still get away with that; under the current administration, anything is still possible.
Accept email, instant messages, etc via a tor network.
Bullshit.
"Mathematics is the queen of the sciences." -
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Mathematics is a science, even if the academic department may be in another building. What do they teach you kids these days?
When Andrew Wiles published his first attempt at a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, was his mistake immediately apparent? Couldn't that be checked by anybody who read the paper? Mathematics research is not like a calculus test - sometimes finding the answers is very hazy before the answer is found - just like the rest of research.
The very same kinds of biases exist in mathematics research that exist in the rest of scientific research (I need the grant, I'm too smart to be wrong, My School of Thought believes this, etc.). The same means for finding error exist in mathematics as in the rest of the sciences (transparency of methods, reproducibility of results, peer review, review of consistency with the rest of canon). Knowlege of the biases of an author does not grant one any deeper knowlege of the subject matter of a publication. Knowing whether a particular scientist believes, for example, that some plants gain energy from the travel of water through their xylem may be useful for some things, but finding out whether the plants actually do gain energy from the water flow inside them is not one of them! Only reproduction of the scientist's work, both experimental and theoretical, on the subject by other scientists will prove useful. Investigating scientists' biases is great for witchhunts, but never really helps science any.
I pointed out Bourbaki because he (or rather they) showed that in science it is more important what is said than who it is who says it. You might want to note that there is absolutely nothing which would prevent another group of mathematicians or scientists from pulling a similar stunt today.
In addition, holding up scientific journals as a paragon of source transparency is ridiculous when you realize that the peer review portion of the scientific process is usually performed by anonymous reviewers!
I used to work in one or more Aerospace-related companies. At one of these companies, there was a concerted drive to get people to report fraud, waste, and/or abuse of corporate and/or tax dollars.
So they put boxes up for anonymous tips. There were a few problems with this:
- you had to badge in to the buildings and individual office clusters.
- areas were compartmentalized, so only a few people would/could know what was going on in a given office
- buildings, hallways, etc, were under continuous video surveillance.
Not surprisingly, there was not a lot of success with this program.
Similarly, in a lot of Big Secret Government Conspiracies [tm], there are a limited number of people who have access to information. A sufficiently damaging leak can almost always be identified (Deep Throat being a notable exception). Because of this, anonymity is somewhat less valuable than we like to think it is.
The power to enforce laws, defend whistleblowers, and protect those who reveal abuse seems to me to be more important.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
It's really relatively simple. If you know all of the ways that anonymity could be compromised, you can eiminate them, for a certain cost and degree of complexity.
Now, how many ways are there of tracing an anonymous source? Can you itemise them _all_? Are you sure you haven't missed any? How about real-time surveillance?
As usual, the trick isn't in the technology, it's in knowing how and where to apply it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This has to be the first story with more than 200 comments were not a single one is moderated above 3. I browse at 4, and so far I haven't seen a single one.
Are everyone exceptionally un-insightful today, or have the moderator points gone astray?
> This seems like a something the Slashdot crowd might know something about.
/. could help government make anonymous sources irrelevant, much like ACs here.
Sure, but only if you look at it backwards:
Who's gonna "mod up" a paper anonymous source and risk the fate the anonymous would have if discovered?
Ditch the idea of the reporter dealing with the source directly. If intermediaries employed by a news agency were responsible for determining the validity of a source, it could work. The intermediary uploads the information to a database which does not track which itermediary the information came from, but that it did come from a valid intermediary. This database is then made available to the reporters to spin their story.
Intermediaries would have to be self-policing and a sufficiently large group to prevent mass interrogations.
Interviews could also be handled via something like usenet or IM, where someone like Rove could come in and be assigned a generic (and frequently used) name like "WhiteHouseOfficial" by a third party who is denied access to what he writes.
The key is separating the knowledge of what is said from the knowledge of who said it while keeping the confidence high that the person doing the talking is a credible figure.
Or we could just decide to honor confidentiality.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
http://stegfs.sourceforge.net/
... just happens to include the Director of the FBI??? Do you, as a DC reporter, really know him personally, well enough to send him a Christmas Card every year??? Or is there some other reason his name and address are in there?"
Tag lost or not installed.
What I want to see is a setup where you have 2 areas on the disk.
One is the real data.
The other is some "dummy" data that is innocuous.
This is basically hidden volumes work. You create an encrypted volume and fill it with information that you don't need secret but looks like you might and the rest of the volume is random data passed through the encryption to fill space.
Then you create a hidden volume that fills the freespace. If you mount the encrypted volume using the first password, you'll see the innocuous files but cannot tell if there is a hidden volume or not. If you mount the hidden volume with the correct password, you'll get the real data.
If at any time following the creation of the hidden volume you write information to the outer volume you will most likely destroy the contents of the inner volume. I say most likely, since if you have a 120GB outer volume and a 2mb innervolume, the inner volume probably won't get hit, but if you have a 120GB and a 119GB, it probably will.
You could maybe write an autorun.inf and bat or vbs file to copy lots of data to the outer volume if the inner volume isn't mounted within so many minutes...
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Google innovative? Phhfft! This is Zombo-com!
that bounces about 4-5 times around the world through various mix of nym servers and mixmaster ones...encrypted each leg of the way individually to each server..headers stripped each time.
Get TOR or i2p and use one of the anonymous e-mail services that exist on those networks
What you've just described is basically Onion Routing, TOR and i2p being the most well known onion routing networks.
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Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
It doesn't matter what Joe Wilson says about his wife's status at the CIA, he doesn't work there. The CIA requested an ivestigation of Bob Novak's outing of Plame because they thought they had been compromised, and a crime was committed. And Novak admits the CIA told him not to out Plame.
Novak and his informant impeded the ability of the US to find WMD's by outing a CIA front company set up for the purpose.
Yet they require registration? Sounds as if they like anonymity when it serves their purposes (covering their six, so they can preserve their sources, produce content, and deliver eyeballs to advertisers) but when it *doesn't* serve their purposes, all bets are off.
What did that boardroom conversation sound like? My guess would be something like, "Make 'em register. Learn all we can. We can probably data mine, or sell the data to others who *can* data mine, and still smell like a rose."
The NYT wants to be known as the leading US 'newspaper of record'. OK, I'm fine with that. But there's a social resposibility that comes with the title. Let people see things without leaving a trail. The would-be Emperor Shrub the First's regime is in the process of of making permanent the most onerous provistions of the Patriot Act. Library records, etc. They plainly want the ability to see what you're reading.
Anonymity is important. The NYT is abrogating their right to any claim of a 'newspaper of record'. They're not just annoying you--they're selling you down the river.
NYT--take the moral high ground, if you want to stake a claim. Or just admit you're well on the way to becomming Fox News, and make the stockholders happy. You can't have it both ways.
BTW, NYT, your material on the Discovery Channel, etc., sucks hugely, and it's getting rapidly worse. The episode on the Deep Impact comet mission broke new ground in this area. I can probably come up with 20 entirely valid points of complaint. So you're already on the way to becoming the Fox News of popular science education.
You suck. Just admit it. Repeat after me: "We'll do whatever it takes to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. If that involves means ignoring our responsibility as a free press in a republic, and selling out the American people, so be it. If we have to misinform and/or slant science news, we'll do that too. Science news is verifiable, but we don't think that anyone is gonna check up and call BS. So we'll just do it. Have a nice day."
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
The safest and most anonymous protocol I've seen is Freenet. If anyone was lucky enough to see the Freenet presentation at DEFCON, they illustrated how a message could theoretically be sent over a trusted social network, location-independent and subsequently anonymous. The theory proposed that instead of a massive random anonymous freenet node network, Freenet would begin to integrate normal human-like social networks, allowing users to "validate" the identity of other users without compromising anonymity (Somewhat like a PGP-key signing party). Each user would pick a random number, and based on their social network of trusted friends, their number would be switched with other users, giving the illusion of proximity. Not only was the proposed theory location-independent, they also illustrated how a man-in-the-middle attack couldn't happen without being completely obvious (In the presentation, it was illustrated that a message to a false "John Kerry" would take a large and noticable amount of hops (if the message got there at all) because "John Kerry" doesn't have a normal social network that would be apparent with a prominent political figure). Of course, I do see how this method could possibly be vulnerable (As we all know how easy social engineering can be): A) A "trusted" person who is being used as a hop point could intercept the message and compromise security. (A risk you take when trusting friends, and friends-of-friends) B) The message sender or receiver could be compromised, and a person could theoretically follow the chain of hops to the other party involved.
With pure anonymity you get a possibly great scoop that has no credibility.
In some cases it might be possible for a source to demonstrate credibility because of the information they transfer (ala Deep Throat) but that will be rare.
If the reporter knows who the source is--a basic requirement for the reporter to establish that source's credibility in most cases--then the reporter can be subpoenaed to divulge that identity. And the prosecutor will know that there is a source because the reporter claims it *right there in the story* ("senior administration officials confirm blah blah blah"). If they don't use the commonly accepted jargon for credible anonymous sources then the story has trouble getting legs and the reporter might as well not write it.
Now of course it is possible that newspapers will be able to use encryption, agressive shredding, etc to make investigation of sources more difficult and possible crimes harder to prove in court, but I am not sure if that will fly in the face of GLB and SOX, not to mention whatever Congress cooks up after the first time a really high profile "traitor"-type case comes along.
It doesn't matter whether you can develop technology that can allow someone to be completely anonymous because the government will simply pass laws that allow law enforcement to eavesdrop on the illegal activity. Look at things like CALEA. Telecommunications companies in the US are required by law to provide a means to access all the data they relay to law enforcement personnel (with the appropriate court orders, etc.) If you develop a system that allows reporters to communciate with sources anonymously then the government will pass a law requiring that all news agencies allow law enforcement to add logging to the system. It's not a fight you're going to be able to win.
The truth is that while your conversations with your priest, lawyer and/or doctor are privileged, conversations with a reporter are not.
So, if you're the anonymous source you need to take that into consideration before you go leaking information. Your reporter cannot truthfully promise that you won't be revealed.
If, on the other hand, you're the reporter, you need to make a decision early on based on the same lack of privilege. The only sure-fire way you have to protect the identity of a source is to go to jail. If you're not willing to do that, then don't promise anonymity.
Things work just about the way they should as it is. There will be times when an anonymous source is doing something beneficial for society (Deep Throat) and there will be times when they're not (Karl Rove, most likely). If the information is not worth going to jail over, then it's probably not worth promising anonymity for.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Maybe they're pointing the way to anonymous sources: obfuscation. They'll start claiming they have 5000 sources, all named "pidmeoff" or "ih8regs".
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course nonviolent Muslims need to wake up, and they already did. They've been in a living nightmare for the past 3 years. All this profiling, questioning, hate crimes, attacks on their religion, etc. Muslims are WIDE awake and working on it. CAIR's membership is growing. Record numbers of Muslims voted in the last US election. Petition drives are popular, CAIR's "Not in the Name of Islam" petition now has 689,706 signatures since I last checked the front page. Look at the American Muslims' fatwa against terrorism. These worldwide condemnations stretch back to 9/11 and before. Terrorism is the most evil thing one can do to tarnish the image and honor of Islam, and Muslims don't stand for it. Indonesia had a demonstration against terrorism, and Palestinians had a massive demonstration Against suicide bombings. Iran had a candlelight vigil after 9/11, as did mosques in America.
Muslims are helping, they call the police on other Muslims. How do you think the "Lackawana Six" were apprehended? A Muslim neighbor called the police and said they were at a training camp. If you think Muslims aren't doing anything, you're mistaken, but I don't blame you. I didn't see CNN polling Muslims or MSNBC knocking on people's doors and asking their opinion of Osama Bin Laden. Muslims don't support Al Qaeda. Do you think Christians are quiet when abortion clinics are bombed or IRA blows something up? Everyone knows the religious leaders are against this stuff, I guess they won't print it as news.
Neal Stephson had an interesting idea in Cryptnomicon. All the date being stored on Servers with no outsides sources, and all the doorways leading to the source be Wired to be Huge Eltro-magnents to erase any Media sent through the doorway. Just hope you don't have a pacemaker...
The problem is doing it in such a manner that the reports are credible. How can an informant be anonymous and trustworthy? How does the reporter know a ten year old kid didn't make up the story just for kicks. The informant needs a way to prove their trustworthiness. To do that, I think the informant needs to:
It is the informant that needs to protect their own identity. If a reporter can trust Carl Rove, they can certainly trust an anonymous source that has proven itself dependable.
Oh, yeah, the special prosecutor working on his case before the Grand Jury for an action which could not possibly be a crime. That makes lots of sense. If the answer was this obvious, why hasn't the administration used this obvious defense? Maybe because "Sure he did it but it wasn't a crime" wouldn't fool said special prosecutor? Then again, maybe the prosecutor is only working on a perjury charge. We don't know, but it's pretty obvious that if the answer was as simple as you claim then Rove's lawyer wouldn't have to resort to the "but he didn't mention her by name" defense. Right? If you disagree, call Rove and maybe you can replace his council.
last overseas undercover in 1997 and the name became public in 2003
The question isn't when the name became public, it is when it was leaked to an unauthorized source. Read the law.
the leaker would have to knowingly leak the information with the purpose of causing harm to the agent. Simply leaking the name to providie proof positive that her husband is a liar wouldn't make the leak a crime.
That is simply not true. I hesitate to say lie, but that statement is wrong.
The law is here. There is no mention of intent to cause harm. Section a, which by itself carries a maximum ten year sentence, only specifies that the leaker had classified knowledge of the agent's identity and revealed that identity, knowing it was classified*. Section b carries a five year sentence for when a leaker has access to classified information and learns (I presume this means "is able to deduce" or it would be no different than a) the agent's identity as a result, and leaks the identifying information. Section c, the closest to the misinformation in that article, requires knowledge of an agent's identity being classified and a "pattern of activities" intended to disclose an agents identity while the leaker "has reason to believe" doing so would be harmful to to intelligence activities. This is the most general clause of the law, but still no mention of intent to harm.
The funny thing is that in the second article (which is not the one which contains the misinformation, by the way, despite the arrangement of links and quoted paragraphs) is mostly about how the law is extending beyond its original intent of going after those with classified information and is being used against the press. Well, guess what? The guy the press was protecting is exactly who the law was intended to go after -- those with privileged access to classified information who leak it in the first place.
* This is why Rove disclaimed having seen the memo that was distributed among the rest of the administration about Plame's identity being kept secret. Oh, but it was never a problem to begin with, he just forgot to mention that part. Seriously, call him up and tell him to fire his lawyer.
The enemies of Democracy are
The best way of keeping anonymous sources truly anonymous would be to have their email server run linux and record the bits where every email message is written and over write with junk all data which is A: not an actual word B: html code and C:around a @ without a space interrupting it and then after doing this as soon as the email was recieved clear all the memory that was in any way involved in this process. That way you'd never even have to worry about user-end security.
Well it seems to me that the real problem here is the fact that at some point you have to have a name in the transaction. At least if you want to get paid for being a source anyway. This looks like the golden opportunity for a new startup in switzerland. You could get the media to pay and compete for listing on your program and you could get the informers to pay to setup bank accounts with you. Then the informers select the news agency they wish to inform and could even have bidding on the info... Then the agency that wins pays the anonymous account which the end user can transfer to some other nice non expiditonary account. What do you guys think?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
You've been reading the IP-over-carrier-pigeon April Fool's RFC, haven't you??
Pretty much any technology is trackable, and chances are you don't even know it. While I'm more-or-less referring to things like printers that print invisible serial numbers and exported Pentium chips that double as guided missile beacons, I'm also talking about encryption and anonymizer accounts. All it takes to crack those open is a court order, as the Church of Scientology has been so effective in demonstrating.
But a pen and paper is untracable. Just like pay phones and small bills instead of cell phones and credit cards.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Solution: have reporters marry their sources, or simply have them get quickie legal papers, so they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
There's not way in hell that the government will put an end to its two favorite rackets; screwing and suing the general public. You've just got to play their game!
... do away with anonymity! Make everyone identify themselves. No more faceless hiding, evading responsibility for statements and culpability for actions! Let their identities be known!!!
How can a newspaper setup an IT system that completely hides every trace (including emails, phone calls notes, logs and so forth) of an anonymous source's identity?"
How about this one:
How can a newspaper reporter rely on such a source under any circumstance?
As understoood, anonymous sources means that the source is not named, not that the reporter has no idea who he/she/it is. Reliance on someone who won't go on-record, and who won't even identify himself to the reporter is incompetent journalism, and I pray that the fourth estate is not so jaded as to believe there is any journalistic integrity to such a thing.
Who am I?
I'm not sure whether a trace can be completely wiped out !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
By using Freenet, 'everyone' holds the information. You can't get traced by adding/serving or reading the information.
Tell it to the judge, TERRORIST!
But "I do not know who my anonymous source it and I there is no way to determine who it is from the information I have."
Let's also assume that the reporter, plans to deny that he knows who the source really is. This is a fair assumption since the other alternative is to simply stonewall. Which he can already do.
Convincing the judge is the challenge. No matter what technical solution is applied, if the reporter can't convince the judge that he doesn't know the source's secret identity, the judge will find unpleasant ways to motivate the reporter's compliance.
Rubberhose comes to mind. Oooh, nifty, neato, keen. I won't tell and you can't make me! Nerds are saving the world from oppression. And thumbing our noses at authority. Ah, yes.
The technical solution is trivial. Work on the social part of the solution. How does the reporter convince the judge to leave him alone? Convince the judge he really doesn't know? It's hard to prove a negative. Convince the judge that the reporter has a right not to tell? Supreme court says no such right exists. And how does the source get the reporter not to rat her out just to save his own ass?
The current solution is to stonewall. To have reporters that are willing to go to jail to protect their sources and inform the public. That willingness deserves our respect.
Yes, I know. The reporter recently in the news DID NOT reveal the identity of the agent who was compromised. The reporter refused to identify a source to whom anonymity was promised. What is the value of a free press? The "fifth estate", the unelected branch of government is not a police force. I acknowledge these are issues worth discussing, but not what I'm concerned with in this post.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I'd use GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/) plus the following plugin... Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private (not just encrypted) conversations over instant messaging by providing: Encryption, Authentication, Deniability, and Perfect forward secrecy. Found at.. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ Willy
To be fair, some Imam will be interviewed telling us that Islam is against violence.
Two more will tell us violence is bad, but that we must look at the bombers reasons for acting out.
Five more will tell us that an ardent follower has been ruinited with Allah, having served his master well.
Thank goodness for sites like Memri that help us keep tabs on what Imams are saying in Arabic. Seems that more than once, several of those teachers have been found to be saying one message in English (Islam hates violence) and another message in Arabic (Allah needs warriors to protect Islam).
damaged by dogma
Telegraph. Have keys strategically placed throughout the city along with Morse charts.
Or just check [x] Post Anonymously....
Since war was a given, it would have been nice if the Administration had a clue how to conduct one, or the occupation that would follow. The only saving grace was that the uniformed leadership did have a clue, and many a general staff career was snuffed as the services fought to educate the likes of Rummy and Wolfowitz as to what was needed to get their war on. Otherwise, the US would have gone in with 75k soldiers instead of 150K, and had their ass handed to them. Although at least 50.5% of the voters will vote for a retard, they won't vote for a retard who's a loser. Hence, the brass inadvertently saved the President's ass. But, they can't work miracles, leading to our current mess... the appearance of which ain't the "liberal" media's fault.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I'd also add - why would I want to help a newspaper violate the law and the Constitution?
Despite lofty claims made by the press, the U.S. Constitution says nothing about anonymous sources. On the other hand, it does mention being permitted to face your accuser;
Clear, Dark Skies
... and so many people have reacted! An article in an op-ed column that demonstrates the author's clear bias yet argues that journalism should be subject to the rigours of science so that facts cannot be distorted. Infinite loop! Really shouldn't have read it...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Benetech's Martus, a free, open source and multi-platform for encrypting and anonymously distributing information about human rights violations.
/. to see if anyone had mentioned Martus in the past.
Why can't the news media use something like this?
Frankly, I'm even more surprised that nothing turned up when I searched
MEMRI is selective and biased against the Arab press, and that it highlights pieces that cast Arabs, especially committed Muslims, in a negative light.
The organization cleverly cherry-picks the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials. It carefully does not translate the moderate articles. Juan Cole looked at newspapers that ran both tolerant and extremist opinion pieces on the same day, and checked MEMRI, to find that only the extremist one showed up. It would sort of be as though al-Jazeera published translations of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell on Islam and the Middle East, but never published opinion piences on the subject by William Beeman or Dick Bulliet.
People who read MEMRI are being given an unbalanced view of the region as a result. In some instances the translations are not very good, but the main objection is the selectiveness of the material. MEMRI is one of a number of public relations campaigns essentially on behalf of the far rightwing Likud Party in Israel that tries to shape American perceptions of Muslims and the Middle East in a negative direction.
It would be just as easy to set up a translation service that zeroed in on racist and "Greater Israel" statements in the Hebrew Israeli press and made the articles available in English, while ignoring more liberal newspapers like Haaretz. If most educated Americans heard the raving against "ha-aravim" (the Arabs) that goes on among West Bank settlers, they'd be completely taken aback by the bigotted terms of reference. Much of such Likudnik discourse is not different in kind from what one hears from the Ku Klux Klan about minorities in this country.
If you talk to someone who ACTUALLY READS Arab Press (like Dar Al-Hayat or As-Sharq Al-Awsat, you're not going to find extremist imams in the mainstream, contrary to what MEMRI is tricking you into believing. (BTW, no imam is going to say "Allah needs warriors." Allah needs nobody.)
Use pencil and paper, and phone booths, instead.
Dr. Cole seems to think there are, and that they are a problem. He writes, using a hardware(terrorist)/software(bad ideology) metaphor: I don't know how many of this type of Imam exist. But I do know that in American main stream media, all effort is made by Christian clergy to challenge any doctrinal approval of violence by extremists, and to distance themselves from those who espouse such approval.
I don't and can't know how many of these radical Imams exist. MEMRI is only a tool that has helped expose them. Of course MEMRI is selective, and of course they are biased. That doesn't necessarily invalidate their translations. Can you point to any instance of mis-translation?
I don't see the primacy as knowing the numbers, but rather what's being done by Islamists to keep Islamism pure of violent extremists.
damaged by dogma
I guess you meant not untracable, but alas it's wrong and was for a long time.
There are no anonymous Swiss bank acoounts, period. The infamous numbered accounts so much loved by bad American thriller authors exist, but are not anonymous. The idea is that the actual account owner is codified by a number, bank internally. Only very few people (likely on VP level) know the true identiy of the account owner. If a judge however rightfully (there are obstacles in Swiss banking laws, but never for a criminal offense) demands the bank to turn over that data, the bank will.
Up to roughly 20 years ago there was a loophole: By utilizing an attourney, who only had to certify that he knew the real owner (but didn't have to mention him) you could in effect, for a hefty fee, bank anonymously. As mentioned before this loophole is closed long since and banks (must) demand the name (and official identification) of the real owner of the account; intermediary or not. You can also be damn sure that they will have a closer look and ask uncomfortable questions when you turn up with a Columbian passport and a large suitcase containing used 10$ and 20$ bills.
There might be certain shady financial institutions that violate the law, but you will certainly not find a major (or even minor) Swiss bank violating those laws.
If you want to park and launder your money anonymously, try Austira (no more for long) or open an anonymous trust in the UK. Even though the Limeys wail loudest about Swiss bank secrecy they offer far better devices if you're in the industry of shady business.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk