Stop Media Glorifying

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9 March 2014

Stop Media Glorifying

Guccifer on Cryptome: http://cryptome.org/2014/01/guccifer-cryptome.htm

The advice I got from the nice EarthLink engineer, Rich Gardner, was instructive: Keep your personal data on a thumb drive, in a safe. That new normal explains why I wouldn’t have dreamed of writing about Guccifer until after his arrest was announced. Believe me, Mr. Guccifer — and all your friends — far be it from me to provoke you into really strutting your stuff! But even still I hesitated, given the risk, as Mr. Gardner put it, of “painting a target” on my back. The realization that I was falling into totalitarian thinking convinced me I had no choice. For in the vacuum of fearful silence, crimes like Guccifer’s begin to resemble principled dissent.

The cult of the hacker is the tech-age update of America’s long romance with the outlaw; hence an emerging narrative that casts Guccifer as sort of a Sundance Kid to Edward Snowden’s Butch Cassidy — or, per New York magazine, the hacker’s “Graydon Carter, the host of a fabulous, scandalous party,” to Mr. Snowden’s “geek crusader.”

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The ruling was revolutionary, because the court for the first time rejected virtually any attempt to squelch criticism of public officials — even if false — as antithetical to “the central meaning of the First Amendment.” Today, our understanding of freedom of the press comes in large part from the Sullivan case. Its core observations and principles remain unchallenged, even as the Internet has turned everyone into a worldwide publisher — capable of calling public officials instantly to account for their actions, and also of ruining reputations with the click of a mouse.

But the government can upset the Sullivan case’s delicate balance by aggressively shutting down avenues of inquiry, as the Obama administration has done to an extreme degree in prosecuting those suspected of leaking classified documents, and even seizing reporters’ records. Uninhibited and robust criticism can go only so far without meaningful access to information.

Still, American press freedoms rank among the broadest in the world. Citizens and media organizations in countries from China to India to Britain do not enjoy the same protections. In many parts of the world, journalists are censored, harassed, imprisoned and worse, simply for doing their jobs and challenging or criticizing government officials. In this area of the law, at least, the United States remains a laudable example.

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Another development is that wealthy businesspeople are coming forward to fund journalistic enterprises — including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who bought The Washington Post, and Pierre Omidyar of eBay, who founded First Look Media, the online news organization that is publishing the work of Glenn Greenwald and other journalists.

And the past year, with its astonishing news leaks from Edward J. Snowden, has put a spotlight on the adversarial relationship between government and the press. The federal government’s increasing desire to shoot the messengers — to prosecute whistle-blowers and threaten journalists — is one way we know how much this matters and how it simply can’t be lost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/stop-glorifying-hackers.html

Sunday Review | Opinion

Stop Glorifying Hackers

By DIANE McWHORTER

MARCH 8, 2014

I WAS at the Museum of Modern Art in New York not long ago, soaking in Edward Hopper’s retro downer mystique, when I got a call that opened up brave new all-night-diners of doom and gloom.

The editor of thesmokinggun.com, a website that publishes embarrassing documents with headlines like “Man Jailed for Toilet Seat Attack on Disabled Kin,” had come into some documents of mine, including my Social Security number with birth date, a photograph of me assailing a moth infestation in an elderly friend’s kitchen and nearly all my passwords.

The conduit of the purloined goods was Guccifer, a hacker made famous last year for liberating George W. Bush’s post-presidential self-portraits from his sister’s email. Colin Powell’s Facebook page was also defaced, but plenty of people with no state secrets got caught in his net (apparently he got to me while hacking the email of my friend Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton family consigliere).

Yet in January, when Romanian authorities arrested Marcel Lazar Lehel, the 40-something citizen thought to be Guccifer, the world did not seem to share my relief. Instead of being called out as the Grim Reaper of privacy, Mr. Lehel got mostly attaboys. Guccifer is “to hacking what the Beatles are to rock and roll,” wrote New York magazine. A commenter on Gawker suggested a legal defense fund.

Given that private citizens as well as celebrities (Candace Bushnell, Tina Brown) have been undressed by him, where is the alarm that anyone’s online dossier could be called for no particular reason — unless you have total control over not just your own cyber-presence, but that of your lawyer, your financial adviser, your therapist, your children’s teachers, your spouse, paramour, bookie and bail bondsman?

Partly, of course, the seeming indifference is resignation — the fragility of our privacy is well established. But it also stems from pride, reflecting the extent to which our “devices” have become stand-ins for our egos. Consider the assumption in early media accounts that Guccifer was fooling only with “geezer” servers like EarthLink, Yahoo and AOL. If you were so gauche as to use what one New York magazine writer called “a second-tier e-mail account,” then you basically had it coming.

This is wishful thinking. Although my (inactive) EarthLink account was hacked, so was my primary address, Gmail.

More troubling, “the system” seemed to have worked. Within 24 hours I had received anodyne alerts from Google and EarthLink and — not suspecting anything criminal — reset both my passwords. I would not learn for nine months that within my short, oblivious interval of defenselessness Guccifer had managed to capture a passwords list I had Gmailed to myself at the office.

But unlike the unfortunate insurance executive whose divorce records Guccifer released, at least I had conducted my own correspondence with the matrimonial bar on an old EarthLink server, before we parked our business on Gmail’s platform indefinitely.

That said, I hold less antipathy for Guccifer than for the gatekeepers who give us a false impression that our digital homes are protected and encourage us to cram in ever more precious assets. But when the locks are picked with abandon, there is no accountability.

EarthLink initially made a very pleasant security expert available to me. But once I began bearing down on the company’s duty to issue stronger hacking warnings or conduct follow-ups to possible intrusions, the corporate veil of boilerplate descended. Google simply directed me to a link suggesting that password theft was the fault of consumers being gulled out of their account information by phishing spammers. And even in the wake of its recent mass hacking, Yahoo likewise continues to push that argument of user fallibility.

Being mugged by Guccifer recalled the sense of revelation I had on a visit to Tombstone, Ariz.: that a setting enshrined on grainy black-and-white film was in reality stained with the blood of actual men. The shootout at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral was a mythic episode in a struggle now gone global, of rogues (those aggrieved ranchers) raging against the state-backed elite, represented by Wyatt Earp.

The United States surely marshaled its finest in pursuit of a bandit who pulled off security breaches against two former presidents, former and sitting secretaries of state, a senator and a variety of intelligence officials. Yet for a year the world’s most exhaustive electronic surveillance dragnet came up short against a cyber-insurgent so brazen that he was allegedly hacking the head of his own country’s domestic intelligence — while serving a suspended three-year sentence for hacking.

For us civilians, with no choice but to wander into the digital crossfire, it becomes increasingly hard to know who, if anyone, wears the white hat.

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Diane McWhorter is the author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/the-uninhibited-press-50-years-later.html

The Uninhibited Press, 50 Years Later

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

MARCH 8, 2014

Perhaps no one understood both the necessity and the costs of a free press better than Thomas Jefferson. In a 1787 letter to a friend, he wrote, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Two decades later, Jefferson, by then a president battered by years of criticism, saw things differently. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” he wrote. “Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

This tension lies at the heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee that “no law” may abridge “the freedom of speech, or of the press.” How is society to preserve open criticism of the government, while also protecting individuals from libel, or the publication of damaging false statements?

Fifty years ago this Sunday, the Supreme Court answered that question with a landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. The ruling instantly changed libel law in the United States, and it still represents the clearest and most forceful defense of press freedom in American history.

The case involved an ad that had appeared in The Times in 1960, condemning “an unprecedented wave of terror” against civil-rights demonstrators by “Southern violators,” particularly in Alabama. The ad was a plea for national attention, and for donations to support the movement. L. B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner, sued The Times for libel, claiming that the ad clearly targeted him, even if not by name, and that it contained numerous factual errors. Applying plaintiff-friendly libel laws, an Alabama state court awarded him $500,000.

The Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn that verdict. The country’s founders believed, Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote, quoting an earlier decision, “that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.” Such discussion, he added, must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

To the court, the civil-rights context was key: The ad was “an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time,” and Alabama officials could not shut down that criticism, even though it contained minor errors. “Erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate,” Justice Brennan reasoned, and “must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need to survive.”

With this in mind, the court announced a new “actual malice” standard that requires a public official to prove that the defendant knew the statement was false, or recklessly disregarded its truth or falsity. (Private citizens rightly have a lower hurdle to clear; generally, they need only show that a falsehood is the result of negligence.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/public-editor/lodestars-in-a-murky-media-world.html

Public Editor

Lodestars in a Murky Media World

MARCH 8, 2014

Margaret Sullivan

THE PUBLIC EDITOR

ARE today’s college-age journalists doomed, entering a business in free fall that is incapable of allowing most of them to earn a living? Or are they lucky, coming into a media world bursting with new possibilities?

And given the strange new territory, still largely unnavigated, are there any stars to steer by?

I got a chance to consider these questions recently before speaking to several hundred young journalists in San Diego for the Associated Collegiate Press convention. From St. John’s University in Queens to the University of California at Berkeley, many of them are the top editors at their college papers and will be among tomorrow’s journalistic leaders.

I took a hard look at the state of journalism today and tried my best to provide some guidance, based on my own experience (including plenty of mistakes and missteps), which began as a reporter in the 1980s and included running the newsroom of a metro daily as chief editor for 13 years. These days, I’m immersed in social media and teach a course in “Audience and Engagement” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. I hope that sharing those thoughts here will be of interest to Times readers.

Two parts, then: the uncertainty that is journalism today; the certainty that some values will endure.

First, the uncertainty — and some trends. Because we are in the midst of such radical change — the most monumental communications change since the invention of the printing press, as the New York University professor Clay Shirky has observed — we can’t see clearly what’s going on. We do know that the old model, in which newspaper journalism was mostly funded by print advertising, is broken.

No one can say what the landscape will be, even five years from now. (In the question period of my talk, I was asked to make a prediction for 100 years out; I just laughed.)

But some trends in the new business of journalism are emerging.

To name a few: In some cases, paywalls — in which readers buy access to news through digital subscriptions — are finding a degree of success. That includes the one at The Times, where consumer revenue now outpaces advertising revenue, a landmark change.

Meanwhile, single-subject websites like the education-oriented Chalkbeat and the environmentally focused Inside Climate News are making strides. Data-driven journalism is coming on strong. And news organizations that are nimble and keep their overhead costs low give themselves a great advantage; those that aren’t, and don’t, have a huge ball and chain weighing them down.

A lot of fine journalism is being done amid all the change. My biggest worry is the toll on local watchdog journalism, traditionally the role of regional newspapers, with their scores of skilled and serious-minded reporters. As those newsrooms shrink, that crucial work — raking the muck at a hundred city halls, for example — is fading.

Second, a few certainties. I talked to the students about the enduring journalistic values that I believe are more important than ever to readers as they seek a safe harbor in today’s media maelstrom. First, integrity. Real journalists are not for sale, not for insider access, a free lunch or the prospect of a future book contract. The best journalism is about truth-seeking and truth-telling; it’s meant to serve the public. Integrity also means not borrowing from others without credit. If you want to put your name on it, don’t cut corners. Do the work — or give the credit.

Another thing I’m certain of: that the press is not supposed to be cozy with the powerful. Journalists are supposed to be a check on power, and that means not being afraid to be adversarial when needed: to dig out the truth when people don’t want us to, to state it clearly and let the chips fall where they may. The Times reporter James Risen, at risk of jail as he protects a confidential source despite government pressure, can speak to that.

Another certainty is the need to get it right. Journalism needs the strongest possible commitment to accuracy and its close cousin, fairness.

Yes, we’re all in the biggest rush in the world to get the news out fast. But verifiable truth is more important than ever, and sometimes it’s better to slow down. In a recent example, many outlets were quick to report last week on a deadline that the Russian military gave the Ukrainian Army in Crimea. By waiting, The Times was able to report the news with more context, and to include conflicting reports from Ukrainian and Russian Interfax sources. It was a reminder about the importance of coolheaded reporting, particularly in the face of a turbulent situation.

New ventures like the Dublin-based Storyful, a news service that uses social media to help validate breaking news, could play an important role in verification. But you also can’t beat old-fashioned double-checking and smart, experienced editing.

Integrity. Challenging the powerful. Truth and fairness. No matter what the technological changes, these are never going to go out of style. And neither are the reasons that talented and idealistic young people continue to be attracted to journalism: their compassion for society’s underdogs and their desire to make the world a better place.

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Follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and read her blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com. The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.