The ability to remain anonymous can liberate journalists and facilitate research that would otherwise be impossible. The internet provides unique opportunities to conduct serious research while protecting your identity.
Anonymity becomes more important as regimes place added restrictions on journalists’ ability to speak freely. Regardless of the measures governments take, however, journalists are still able to publish stories through the use of “proxies”.
why anonymity is useful to journalists
Hiding your identity while doing research
Anonymous browsing techniques may protect your identity and thereby provide greater access while conducting research.
Allowing you to perform repetitive research
Anonymity may protect you if performing automated or repetitive research tools.
Pretending that you are somewhere else
With certain techniques, you can conduct research while appearing to be doing so from another country.
Protecting your sources
Your sources may use anonymity techniques to either protect their identity or to make their story possible.
Defeating national digital defenses
Anonymity techniques can defeat national firewalls and get information out to the rest of the world.
rights to anonymity
Nations have varying views of anonymity and anonymous use of the internet. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v Ohio Elections Commission reads:
“Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views… Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority… It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation… at the hand of an intolerant society.”
A number of nations tightly control access to websites and other online resources.
an introduction to the internet
Your IP address may identify:
Your country (location)
Your organisation, through reverse DNS look-ups www.lookupserver.com
Possibly you!
anonymous email
Anonymous email is possible via a product called Nyms, which allows the creation of disposable email addresses via the Nyms network.
proxies
Proxies act as intermediaries and protect your identity. There are different typs of proxies from different sources:
Open proxies are servers that either intentionally, or because of misconfiguration, allow people to connect through their network, and assume one of their network IP addresses. Open proxies are best avoided.
An example of website that lists open proxies is
www.xroxy.com/proxylist.htm
There are also commercial proxies that do a better job. For example, Anonymizer
Tor
Another proxy alternative is the Tor project. Tor is the proxy network that facilitates journalism from some of the most hostile environments in the world. It is free software and an open network that helps protects against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.
Tor was originally developed for the US Navy for the primary purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists and many others.
It protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.
Installing Tor
Tor for Firefox optimising Tor in Firefox
Installing a proxy in your browser
From the Tor site
How Tor works
Getting up to speed on Tor’s past, present, and future
Download Tor
This page is based Mike Schrenk’s talk at the CIJ Summer School – July 2009.
useful links
Pretty Good Privacy
Computer program that encrypts files and documents on hard drives. Can be used for emails.
Scramdisk
Computer program that encrypts hard drives.
Security in a Box
A collection of Hands-on Guides, each of which includes a particular freeware or open source software tool, as well as instructions on how you can use that tool to secure your computer, protect your information or maintain the privacy of your Internet communication.