Encryption is not journalism
Seems not a day goes by that I don't hear someone try to sell encryption as some kind of panacea for journalism, as if all we need to do to strengthen journalism and hold power accountable is to download crypto apps and harden our mobile phones. It is a sham and a racket infused with a rightwing ideology. But it's taken as divine wisdom these days.
I'm preserving my brief Twitter rant on the subject for posterity. The fact that this has to be said out loud is a sign of the degraded politics of our time.
—Yasha Levine
Only people who don't know how journalism works think that it depends on encryption. Snowden, the Intercept, EFF push a self serving myth.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
Journalism is about fighting power and helping people make sense of the world.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
Documents can lie, give a partial story that hides some bigger truth. Secret sources can manipulate. Pure information does not liberate.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
It is sham to focus on encryption when real investigative journalism has all but died and been defunded in our oligarchic society.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
Encryption won't rid America of oligarchs, the true enemy of journalists and journalism.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
The push for journo encryption has a market ideology built in: the belief that we are all rational beings who don't have enough info...
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
...liberate information about abuse/oppression and you will liberate society. People will self-organize and act in their own self interest.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
How did journalists work without computers, without encryption?
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
The sad fact is that most investigative journalists I know —including myself — struggle to make ends meet. Situation gets worse every year.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
Oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar or spook outfits like Radio Free Asia fund crypto because it does not threaten power.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017
But journalism is also useless without being part of a wider political culture/movement — that is something we also do not have.
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) February 14, 2017