Jorge Luis Sierra | May 15, 2015
More than ever before, journalists
who work in dangerous zones understand the importance of technology to improve
safety and reduce risk.
Xiomara Orellana,
Daniela Aguilar,
Ernesto Aroche and Javier Garcia are
four such journalists. Their experiences provide useful examples of what can be
achieved with proper security training and the right technologies.
Orellana, an investigative reporter
for La Prensa, Honduras, works in San Pedro Sula, which has the highest murder
rate in the world, with 186 murders per 100,000 people. Unwilling to
investigate stories with only phone interviews, she enters the turf of drug
cartels to interview victims of violence.
During sessions on safety and
security, she learned how to protect the integrity of both her data and
communications, how to check if the connection to the Internet was safe or not,
how to navigate the Internet anonymously, and how to create strong passwords.
“I was able to build my own security
protocols,” Orellana says after attending safety training workshops I
conducted in my role as an ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow.
Safeguarding from cyberattacks
Another experience, this time from
Ecuador, shows how partnerships with technology organizations might help young
entrepreneurs deal with cyberthreats. Last September, Daniela Aguilar, a
journalist who launched La
Historia, reported that her website had been attacked after covering
several sensitive stories. One involved the father of Ecuador’s vice president,
who had been accused of child sexual abuse.
The website had suffered a massive
distributed-denial-of-service attack, better known in the cybersecurity world
as a DDoS attack. I put Aguilar in touch with Deflect, a Canadian organization with resources to mitigate
against DDoS attacks and protect online voices. Deflect was able to work with
La Historia and quickly get it back online.
Aguilar said the assistance had
“helped to keep our voice from being silenced.”
Protecting physical safety
Photojournalist Javier Garcia has
received training to cover demonstrations in Mexico City and avoid being
physically assaulted both by local police officers and unknown masked people.
“I learned how to predict the
movement of police forces, identify potential routes of escape and organize to
protect ourselves and make better coverage,” Garcia says in an interview via
email.
Garcia and his group FotoreporterosMX promptly
changed all their communications and started to use encrypting applications.
Learning to assess risk
Ernesto Aroche, editor of LadoBe, an online news portal
based in Puebla, Mexico, has also learned the importance of risk assessment.
“It has become a regular practice in
LadoBe to plan and systematically monitor colleagues who go on a trip to
dangerous zones,” Aroche says. “There is today a better awareness of the
need to assess risk in press coverage that didn’t exist before.”
Aroche now designs his own security
protocols, using encrypted chats and emails to contact sources with sensitive
information.
For him, and his colleagues,
learning to use technology might represent a matter of life or death.
Orellana, Garcia and Aroche show us
that planning is crucial when reporters are going to dangerous zones. It
doesn’t mean that journalists are not going to face a sudden challenge, but
they will be better prepared to face it.
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