How Journalists Can Prepare For National Conventions In 2016

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2016 is poised to be an eventful year for journalists. The most obvious are the national conventions for the two major political parties and the presidential election in November.

Recently, CNN Money reported that Cleveland is in the market for 2,000 sets of riot armor, including upper body and shoulder protection, elbow and forearm protectors, hard-shell shin guards, and tactical hard-knuckle gloves, plus 2,000 batons. The city seems to be preparing for use of bricks and bottles. In addition, Cleveland is seeking two dozen sets of ballistic body armor with visors, face shields and vests; 2,500 steel barriers; three horse trailers; 2,400 hydration packs; 300 bicycles; and 310 bicycle helmets.

Following brief skirmishes in Chicago during a recent GOP rally, which involved a crowd inside of about 25,000, and a crowd outside with roughly 5,000, the national conventions will need to plan for much larger crowds, more organized protest groups, and the possibility for flash fires, property damage, and personal injuries.

A few journalists were detained, and it’s not clear whether they were rounded up with groups or singled out specifically. We will see in the aftermath, but this is a clear example of what reporters face when covering civil unrest, riots, and political events with large numbers of attendees and protesters.

Why Journalists Shouldn’t Use Signal To Encrypt Conversations

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Recently we have heard praise for encrypted phone calls, namely, the application Signal by Open Whisper Systems, designed for iPhone and Android. While Signal is one option for cellular calls, we underscore that such tools frustrate mass surveillance, but do not protect users under targeted surveillance.

Ironically, much of the Signal praise comes from journalists, who are more likely to be targeted than average citizens. Every United States adult with a cellphone is subject to broad surveillance under “mass surveillance” programs, remaining anonymous until analysts retrieve their records. This is nothing new. Analysts, investigators, and law enforcement officers may target specific people, however, before calls are made, and there are several vulnerable behaviors—points of targeting—that make attacking encrypted voice data unnecessary. The same may be said for digital data entered by keyboard, keypad, and touchscreen—the modulations, radio waves, and power currents.

To be safe, communicating by cellular phones requires more planning than opening and using an application. And thinking further, alternative methods reduce risk significantly more than encrypted cellular calls. Our aim is to outline, very broadly, why we do not make encrypted phone calls and offer, perhaps in passing, but in good faith for people in our network and dark trades, one communication method that relieves risks in targeted surveillance cases.

Beating Surveillance: Typing Is The First Mistake

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The worst trait for a social movement is a Face for the movement. Personalizing an age, such as an age of surveillance, organizes, at the same time, a body for inspection — laying out the rows and columns in order. What has happened with “privacy” is a short list of public figures sponsor tools (often the same tools), and whether those tools are necessary to security becomes a minor problem. Here the humanities has a task: analyzing how we perceive a problem and how the perception is itself a problem.

To narrow this inquiry further, take professionals in journalism. The data security narrative has been that privacy is a science with rules for securing information. The matter is simply hiding information methods, and we need just wait for an authority to say, “Here are the rules [or an amendment to a rule].” Everyone behaves similarly. “Use PGP, Tails, Signal and Red Phone and VPN and OTR and F and G and H and J.”

This is the easy way out and the most dangerous perception of privacy issues. Notice how the movement functions: sharing technology tools in waves, starting from public figures and covering their followers in neat, succinct intervals. Government hunting expeditions are like firing from a helicopter into a field of buffalo. The buffalo run together in one direction.