[Infowarrior] - more on ... Journalism in the Doxing Era: Is Wikileaks Different from the New York Times?

[Richard Forno]

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: JA
> Subject: Fwd: Journalism in the Doxing Era: Is Wikileaks Different from the New York Times?
> Date: January 17, 2017 at 12:03:23 EST
> 
> Hello Rick,
> 
> In the midst of the "fake news" debates and such, this essay raises many good points and question about leaks and journalism.
> 
> https://www.lawfareblog.com/journalism-doxing-era-wikileaks-different-new-york-times <https://www.lawfareblog.com/journalism-doxing-era-wikileaks-different-new-york-times>
> 
> <<
> [...]
> These are some of the reasons why I doubt there are material differences between WikiLeaks and the Times when it comes to publishing truthful information in the doxing era.  Whether I am right or wrong, the analysis suggests the following hard but important questions:
> 
> 1.     In an era of SecureDrop, how can the Times tell the difference between a whistleblower and a foreign intelligence service running an information operation?  If we are troubled that the Times might have published DNC emails delivered anonymously by Russia, should we question the legitimacy of mechanisms like SecureDrop?  Should the Times rethink its policy of publishing anonymously delivered truthful information?  If not, doesn’t that mean that the Times doesn’t care about the identity or intention of the actor who stole and delivered the information?  
> 
> 2.    If Trump lost a close election and a contributing factor was the public reaction to the Times’ story about his 1995 tax return, would those who are angry now about publication of the DNC emails be angry about the Times’ tax return story?  Would it matter whether the tax return was published by WikiLeaks rather than the Times?  What if we learned that the tax return tip to the Times was an information operation by China that aimed to help Clinton win?  How do we know the tax return tip wasn’t such a Chinese information operation?  Should our reaction to the publication of Trump’s 1995 tax returns differ depending on whether the source was China, Marla Maples, or the Clinton campaign?  Or is the public interest served no matter who is responsible?  
> 
> 3.  Why didn’t the Russians hide their tracks better, and why didn’t they give the information to the Times  a mainstream publication via SecureDrop rather than to WikiLeaks?*  Could it be that—as David Ignatius speculated in the context of the Trump dossier in the news last week—they wanted to be discovered in order to heighten the post-election impact of the revelations?  The information in the DNC emails would have been much less disruptive after the election if it had been published in the Times  a mainstream publication rather than WikiLeaks, and if the identity of the hacker was never revealed.    
> 
> 4.    Will we see a race to the bottom (or top, depending on your perspective) in which both WikiLeaks and the Times will be circumvented entirely?  Recall that portions of the stolen DNC information first appeared on Gawker and then on DC Leaks before being published in much larger quantities by WikiLeaks.   As Susan wrote in comments on an earlier draft: “Any idiot can create a website and post information directly.  That may eliminate the need for press or other intermediaries entirely, which we will eventually need to grapple with as well.”  How will we grapple with this possibility, especially given the extraordinarily destructive impact that the “not particularly sophisticated” and thus easily replicable DNC operation is having on American politics?
> 
> 5.    How much worse is this all going to get when organizational doxing starts to include--as it inevitably will--documents that are mostly accurate but subtly altered, with great consequence?  Will mainstream journalists demand authentication of every element of anonymously tipped information before publication?  Will their less fastidious competitors?    
> 
> *  After publication of this post a smart reader pointed out that the Times’ SecureDrop only went online on December 15, 2016 even though other mainstream publications, like the Washington Post, had launched SecureDrop much earlier.  The Russians thus could not have given the information to the Times anonymously last summer, though it could have given it to the Post or other mainstream publications.  It is unclear why the Times waited so long to create a secure channel for anonymous tips even though other mainstream news outlets had done so much earlier and even though opinion writers in the Times itself had urged such measures as early as 2011.  It is also curious that the Times decided to launch SecureDrop at the height of the controversy over WikiLeaks and the election.   
> Topics: 
> 
>     Secrecy: Press Behavior
> >>
> 

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