Geoffrey King/CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator
San Francisco-based CPJ Technology Program Coordinator Geoffrey King works to protect the digital rights of journalists worldwide. A constitutional lawyer by training, King also teaches courses on digital privacy law, as well as the intersection of media and social change, both at UC Berkeley. Follow him on Twitter at @CPJTechnology. His public key fingerprint is 4749 357C E686 71B1 4C60 F149 9338 5A57 27FA 494C.
Obama must chart clearer course on surveillance policy
Tonight President Obama has another opportunity to redirect the country’s out-of-control surveillance programs during his annual State of the Union address. He should seize it. The president’s much-anticipated January 17 speech about U.S. surveillance policy, which came in response to outrage over National Security Agency spying, left much unsaid–and many of the commitments he did…
Obama’s legacy on the line with surveillance policy
When President Obama takes the lectern to discuss U.S. surveillance policy, as he is expected to do Friday, those hoping for sweeping reform are likely to be disappointed. As reported in The New York Times, the president appears poised to reject many of the recommendations of his Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, a…
On Internet freedom, India’s perilous trajectory
By the time the first story based on former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures splashed across the front pages of the world’s newspapers, India had reportedly begun deployment of its own major surveillance architecture, the Central Management System (CMS). The system is a $132 million project that allows central access to all communications content and…
While tech companies call for spying reform, telcos silent
On Monday, eight of the world’s leading technology companies set aside their rivalries to issue a direct challenge to U.S. lawmakers: lead the world by example and fix America’s broken surveillance state. Although the tech companies’ statement sends a powerful message, notably absent from the letter’s signatories is the appearance of a single telecommunications company,…
Journalist faced prison for posting media relations number
Carlos Miller is not one to back down. As the founder and publisher of Photography is Not a Crime, a leading blog about free speech and press rights in the U.S., Miller has made it his mission to publicize examples of government overreach and the suppression of journalists’ and other newsgatherers’ rights. And although he…
NSA hack compromises Al-Jazeera sources, US credibility
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported this week that the U.S. National Security Agency hacked into the internal communication system of Al-Jazeera. If the report is accurate, the targeted hacking of a news organization represents an assault on press freedom qualitatively different from — and in many ways more disquieting than — the perils posed…
Journalist Barrett Brown faces prison for posting hyperlink
Tomorrow, a federal judge will weigh a prosecutor’s motion for a gag order in connection with the U.S. government’s prosecution of journalist Barrett Brown. The motion represents a troubling turn in an already-troubling case for press freedom–a case that could criminalize the routine journalistic practice of linking to documents publicly available on the Internet, which…