[rnk]

There's a trend of these things happening. Reporters constantly miss what tracking tech does.

Reality Winner's situation, where they gave the actual printout she gave them to the feds and it had secret codes embedded in it to identify when/where printed (a long standing thing in printers, in case you didn't know) completely violated her trust with the reporters.

There was also the situation where the NYT reporter got docs from a leaker about Les Moonves' sexual harassement case. The reporter put in stupid info that outed the lawyer, that was on the line of "the docs has 57 pages" and a couple of other very specific things.

There needs to be some kind of education system for reporters that helps them stop outing sources. We are of course served by extreme misdeeds being exposed in the press, whether it gores your own ox or someone else's. But reporters have to stop doing this. Don't publish and actual photo, please re-encode it, remove metadata, do it twice, try to test it yourselves to find something. Don't put numbers. Don't use exact phrasing. When big companies like microsoft try to find leakers, they have software that slightly changes the phrasing in their big company missives, I was told this by a microsoft exec once.

[giraffe_lady]

The Reality Winner one was especially fucked because IIRC they actually had a trained professional with experience in high stakes leaks on staff, they just didn't use them for her for some reason. Recent Kerry Howley book spent a significant chunk of time on this, it was infuriating.

Reality Winner did not need to get busted. They almost certainly would have realized she did it but with the right lawyers she could have made it. Intercept's hubris and mismanagement did her in.

[rnk]

Great info, I had not heard that, it was needed. You cost someone years of their lives by that. The "authorities" always try to burry the details of the actual improper behavior behind the scandal of the leak, usually successfully.