"This war on whistleblowers is not ancillary to journalism, but actually it directly affects it," says Trevor Timm, Executive Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), a nonprofit that works to provide funding, encryption tools, and other resources to journalists who expose government secrets. "And it's making it much more difficult for the public to get the information they need."
Timm sat down with Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller to discuss what he refers to as the need to "bring the First Amendment into the 21st century" by employing greater levels of encryption to thwart government spies. Several high-profile journalists and media figures sit on the board of FPF, including journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Pentagon papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, actor John Cusack, and, most recently, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The discussion includes topics such as why encryption matters, what tools journalists, whistleblowers, and others who value privacy should be using to protect their communications, and what FPF plans to do if it's ever targeted by the government for funneling money to entities such as Wikileaks.
Approximately 8 minutes long.
Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick, Alexis Garcia, and Tracy Oppenheimer.
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http://reason.com/reasontv for downloadable versions of this video.
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