Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The Reporters Committee urged a federal court on Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request for an emergency order that would block the publication and distribution of a highly anticipated memoir written by former National Security Adviser John Bolton. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Reporters Committee argued that the requested injunction amounts to an unconstitutional prior restraint. “Such an extraordinarily broad injunction would be a clear prior restraint that violates long-settled constitutional law,” said Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “The court must reject this effort to censor the free flow of information to the public about government activities.”
In addition to Trump’s response to Bolton’s published memoir, several journalists were targeted in a large-scale hacking operation. After a journalist contacted The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto in 2017 about a suspicious phishing attempt, researchers recently uncovered a huge hack-for-hire operation, dubbed “Dark Basin,” that targeted thousands of people in journalism, business, banking, law, and especially the nonprofit sector.
Researchers linked Dark Basin to BellTroX InfoTech Services, an Indian tech firm owned by Sumit Gupta. Gupta, who in 2015 was indicted on federal hacking charges in California, denied the allegations in an interview with Reuters.
Dark Basin targeted a range of organizations and, in several cases, the journalists connected to them. For example, hackers attempted to infiltrate American environmental advocacy groups, including the Rockefeller Family Fund, Greenpeace, and 350.org, as well as “multiple major US media outlets” who covered the groups’ work on the #ExxonKnew climate change campaign. The hackers also targeted Free Press and Fight for the Future, organizations that advocate for open internet policies.
Despite the danger, a recent report by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that many journalists are not particularly careful with their digital security. In newsrooms short on time and money, digital security may seem like an unnecessary burden, and some journalists believe as long as they are not covering “sensitive” topics they will not be targeted. Often newsrooms that adopt security protocols do so informally, with some journalists becoming trainers for others.
