"After consulting Post lawyers, I developed what we felt was the safest possible sourcing system. If I planned to use someone in a story, I asked them to send me a picture of their government ID, then tried to forget it. I kept notes from reporting conversations in an encrypted drive, never writing down anyone's name. To Google-check facts and identities, I used a private browser with no search history."
"(Then I started moving contacts into two-person group chats, which I could still rename.) Three weeks later, FBI seized the phone on which all those contacts were labeled with aliases. When they searched her home, she was logged into the Slack on which she had shared all those leads with colleagues. They seized the encrypted drive on which she had her notes."
A journalist used multiple measures to protect source anonymity: identity photos, encrypted drives, private browser searches, and renaming Signal chats by agency, later using two-person group chats. Security analysts evaluated which protections succeeded and which failed. Investigators were unable to access the personal phone due to lockdown measures, but obtained Signal messages via a work laptop accessed by fingerprint. Law enforcement seized a phone containing alias-labeled contacts, a logged-in Slack with shared leads, and the encrypted drive holding reporting notes, undermining many of the applied source-protection practices.
Read at emptywheel
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