Recently, 2 serious and stimulating
papers have been published looking at the state of journalism, particularly
investigative journalism, in the Age of Obama.
Both the collective writers at the TOW Center, who have directly addressed
their remarks to the President’s Panel on NSA surveillance issues, and former
Washington Post editor Len Downie, in his brilliant essay for The Committee to
Protect Journalists (where I was a founding member, a past Chair, and Executive
Board member and still serve of the CPJ Advisory Board) consider the impact of
Mr. Obama’s unmatched record of aggressive criminal prosecution of suspected whistleblowers,
leakers, and the journalists with whom they communicate.
Both are well worth your attention.
http://towcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Letter-Effect-of-mass-surveillance-on-journalism.pdf
Reading them has stimulated me to
pose a series of questions, whose answers may well define, not just the future
of American journalism, but of American democracy.
1)
In a democracy, do citizens have the right to
know everything their government is doing (in their name and with their money)?
2)
Or do governments have a right to keep secrets
from citizens?
3)
If the answer to 2) is “Yes,” what should be the
limits on what can be kept secret?
4)
Must official secrets be limited to those deemed
essential to the security (or just the interests) of the nation and its people?
5)
Who should be empowered to monitor what is to be
kept secret, and to make sure the specified limits on secrecy are strictly
observed?
6)
Under what rules should these monitors work, and
what guarantees of access to secret materials should they have?
7)
How should their work be made accessible to
citizens?
8)
What (in addition to these institutional
monitors) is the role of the free press in reporting on government secrecy and secrets?
9)
Have press revelations of secrets ever actually damaged
national security?
10)
Is the public better off for the press’ exposure
of government “secrets”?
11)
Would the public be worse off if the government
had absolute power to protect its self-declared secrets, backed by the threat
of criminal or professional sanctions against those who make them public?
12)
If the government forecloses secure press access
for dissenters or whistleblowers will it leave these “witnesses” no other
choice than immediate and total “publication” of dissident information via the
internet?
13)
Is the government’s and nation’s interest better
served by securing access for whistleblowers to journalists, who focus their data-gathering,
winnow both data and sources, do further reporting for context and reactions,
consult with and solicit comment from government, before presenting and distributing
their information, or by sending whistleblowers (with often inchoate, unchecked,
information) directly to the global digital audience?
14)
How can protections for whistleblowers and
journalists be institutionalized to guarantee maximal public access to important
information or judgments, without endangering national security?
15)
And what protections should citizens have to
protect their privacy, and limit the intrusive powers of government?
Let’s assume the government has
access to and registers all digital – phone, internet, and US mail communications.
What problems do those capabilities
create? We’ll seek answers through the
journalist’s 5 basic questions: who, what, where, when, why?
Targeting: Potentially? Worst case? The answers to, “Who
can be targeted?” are: WHO? Everyone. WHAT? All communications. WHEN? Whenever.
WHERE? Everywhere. WHY? Because government can.
Actually? We need answers to these questions.
16)
WHO? Whose
communication file be opened, examined, and further processed?
17)
WHAT? Once a communications file is opened, what
kinds of data can be examined?
18)
WHEN?
Should investigations be time-limited? For keeping files open? For analyzing
what’s in them? For taking action based on collected data?
19)
WHY? Should
investigations and analyses be broadly issue-specific,-- to protect national security, to combat major criminal
activity, to serve the public interest?
20)
Should they be narrowly case-specific, limited
to data relating to particular threats or crimes?
21)
Should they simply be target-specific? With what threshold for targets, for
secondary targets, for wider examinations based on networks of secondary or tertiary communicants?
22)
Should there a defined threshold for suspected “security
threats” or suspected criminal activities to predicate violations of personal communications
data?
23)
Are simple keywords sufficient predicates for opening,
and processing communications data?
24)
Who (in government and out?) can know your
secrets?
25)
What right and mechanism of appeal would
citizens have to contest government surveillance of their communications?
I’m sure this list
is only the beginning for a discussion of the highest importance. Please feel invited to join.
Thanks for posting these links, and for posing these questions. Think we'll get some answers?
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