J Dey, Akhilesh Pratap Singh, Rajdev Ranjan, Pushp Sharma, Karun Mishra.
What do these journalists have in common? Death and arrests for knowing and reporting information. Freedom of speech has become a growing concern for journalists in India.
A compilation of statistics by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reveals that since 1992, 64 journalists have been killed in India, most of them, from smaller towns, being reporters who expose corruption.
Read: News in Numbers: How Deadly Is the Life of a Journalist in India?
Journalists must be protected, because it is their job to tell stories whether good, bad or ugly. In order to protect journalists from feeling threatened, CPJ has released a highly secure network to send information, so journalists can get “speedy support”.
To protect the identity of journalists in the world, CPJ has launched an encrypted submission system, which allows journalists to contact the organisation with reports of press freedom violation in a safe and anonymous manner.
SecureDrop, provides “robust protections” against network-based surveillance, the report says. SecureDrop allows journalists to submit messages and files to CPJ without revealing one’s identity, location or contents of the message to potential interceptors.
This project is maintained by the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). SecureDrop is easy to use but difficult to compromise, CPJ says.
In hope that every journalist’s identity is secured, FPF in collaboration with CPJ has come up with a method that makes all information into and out of a computer anonymous.
Here’s hoping for a safer environment for journalists to give honest reportage.
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