Are you a security researcher or a journalist in the cybersecurity/cybercrime space?
DataBreaches.net and Zack Whittaker at this.weekinsecurity.com are conducting a survey on the types of threats that researchers and journalists have experienced, including legal threats or legal process and threats of violence by cybercriminals.
The survey is at https://forms.gle/. The survey runs until January 18, so please participate now and share this with your friends and colleagues.
In recent news, we have learned that the FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson. Konstantin Zhukov of Indiana University and the Institute for Humane Studies writes about the threat such actions pose to an independent media and free speech.
But it is not just the government engaging in such concerning behaviors. DataBreaches has noted an uptick in the number of breached entities obtaining injunctions from courts to prevent the download or sharing of breached data.
While such injunctions are ineffective in stopping criminals from sharing, leaking, selling, or misusing the data, they may have a chilling effect on a free press and reporting on the breaches, and not necessarily just in the country where the injunction was issued. A recent post on SuspectFile provides a painful but instructive example of how a court injunction from a high court in the U.K. not only affected an Italian journalist’s reporting on one incident, but has had a lasting emotional and chilling effect on his reporting in other incidents.
Do you have a story to share about any threat(s) you have received? Please take the survey and share your experience with us and others!
The survey is at https://forms.gle/.