Protecting sources when national security is involved

Sources courageous enough to leak classified documents to the media do not benefit from any legal protection in Europe. Although the Tshwane principles have been supported by the Council of Europe since 2013, the October 2017 European Parliament report calling for a directive to better protect whistleblowers says very little about national security. It will be years before the situation improves.

In the meantime it falls on the journalists to protect the anonymity of the sources that trust them with classified documents. In recent years surveillance has become increasingly sophisticated and using encrypted e-mails or the Tor network is not enough.

This panel will discuss tools and techniques that significantly improve the chances that a source anonymity is not compromised. It ranges from sophisticated techniques such as operating an airgap workstation to guidelines as simple as: "remove advertisement tracking from the contact page".

Organised in association with the Freedom of the Press Foundation.