Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Tell Us a Secret

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 120 posts

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#71

Post by jhayward »

tertius wrote: post #16
wool_gather wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymous sources that are quoted directly are known to the journalists ; their identity is only concealed from readers. This is about anonymously passing information for further investigation.

So you're saying that no journalist would accept a tip from someone who will not identify themselves?

A tip is just an investigative lead. "Hooker Chemical is dumping massive amounts of toxic waste at Love Canal" would be a tip. It would then be up to an investigative reporter to investigate, and report what the investigation uncovers.

You may be thinking of "unnamed sources" or "anonymous sources". Those people may be quoted on a factual basis, but the reporter has an obligation to obtain the same kind of confirmation of their information as any other investigative lead.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#72

Post by reitanqild »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #54
nostoc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who's talking to who? That can be a problem when you're a whistle blower contacting a journalist.

Sure, that can be a problem. However, it's completely irrelevant to the problem of server-side storage, as the comment I replied to was citing. (Server-side storage is a non-issue, due to the encryption protocols in use. It doesn't matter if you distrust Facebook, they aren't going to be able to read your messages. End of.)

I avoid WhatsApp but this is correct AFAIK (given that they don't push a malicious client at some point.)

The main problems with WhatsApp are as I can see:

- they scoop up metadata

- they upload the data more or less plaintext to Google for backup. (I personally dislike but trust Google but not everyone trusts them.)

- they paid way to much for it to not try to monetize it in all kinds of crazy ways

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#73

Post by reitanqild »

binbag wrote: post #24
myth_buster wrote: post #9

WhatsApp, with more than 1.2 billion active users, is one of the easiest ways to send secure information. “With WhatsApp, it’s as simple as sending a text message — but it’s encrypted,” Mr. Dance explained. I'm not a security expert but I think this is not exactly the best practice. This may have been true pre-fb acquisition but there has been changes to how WhatsApp behaves, especially server side storage. Also the…

Even if the message contents is encrypted, doesn't whatsapp still log the source and destination and their phone number and associate these with real persons? It should be trivial enough to figure out who delivered which tip by knowing a particular person sent something to that tip line.

Yep. And to verify or to find out exactly what was written you just need to get the backups from either the sender or the receiver.

This can be done in a number of ways from subpoenas to hacking to threats/blackmail.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#74

Post by raldi »

dredmorbius wrote: post #67
reificator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use the code formatting for quotes. It makes them nearly unreadable on mobile.

HN could fix this trivially. It's been requested numerous times. They refuse. For years. Sigh.

How would you suggest they fix it?

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#75

Post by walshemj »

nostoc wrote: post #53
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This may have been true pre-fb acquisition but there has been changes to how WhatsApp behaves, especially server side storage. WhatsApp messages are encrypted end-to-end between each person using it. The whole point of end-to-end encryption is not having to trust the server-side storage . Furthermore, WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol-- the state-of-the-art for secure messaging protocols. The worst that WhatsApp ca…

> who's talking to who? That can be a problem when you're a whistle blower contacting a journalist.

Exactly you would never use electronic means to actually transmit information.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#76

Post by burke »

raldi wrote: post #74
dredmorbius wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN could fix this trivially. It's been requested numerous times. They refuse. For years. Sigh.

How would you suggest they fix it?

Make groups of `/^\s+> /` lines turn into a `
`. Render it slightly indented and italicized.

I don't think the major problem is that `/^ {4}/` lines don't wrap in a way that's useful for quotes; it's that there's no way to format quotes so people use the only formatting element HN has.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#77

Post by ssalka »

dredmorbius wrote: post #67
reificator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use the code formatting for quotes. It makes them nearly unreadable on mobile.

HN could fix this trivially. It's been requested numerous times. They refuse. For years. Sigh.

It's not HN's job to inspect every code block to determine if it's _actually_ code. If you use the code syntax, it's code. That's the assumption that every markdown renderer makes, and I wouldn't expect anyone to assume otherwise.

Format your posts appropriately - that's the sole burden of the writer, no one else's.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#78

Post by thaumasiotes »

burke wrote: post #76
raldi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest they fix it?

Make groups of `/^\s+> /` lines turn into a ` `. Render it slightly indented and italicized. I don't think the major problem is that `/^ {4}/` lines don't wrap in a way that's useful for quotes; it's that there's no way to format quotes so people use the only formatting element HN has.

there's no way to format quotes so people use the only formatting element HN has.

Technically, HN has a couple other formatting elements.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#79

Post by pests »

urda wrote: post #60
Symbiote wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a -i, they have PGP in upper case, with a public key.

Where, It's literally no where on the linked page: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/reader-center/confidentia... It's not there. Edit: I do see the sub-linked page now, easily missed with it just being a hyper link on the phrase "tips page". But as my original comment mentioned, it's not on the article page (directly) at all. To the user downvoting me: yeah sorry the original comment still stands and is 100% accura…

Sorry you couldn't read.

Yeah, your original comment is 100% accurate. But is it so hard to click another link? You are technically correct but you are just doubling down to preserve your "correctness" instead of admitting you didn't look hard enough.

Re: How to Tell Us a Secret

#80

Post by reificator »

burke wrote: post #76
raldi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest they fix it?

Make groups of `/^\s+> /` lines turn into a ` `. Render it slightly indented and italicized. I don't think the major problem is that `/^ {4}/` lines don't wrap in a way that's useful for quotes; it's that there's no way to format quotes so people use the only formatting element HN has.

> I don't think the major problem is that `/^ {4}/` lines don't wrap in a way that's useful for quotes; it's that there's no way to format quotes so people use the only formatting element HN has.

It is a standing convention to use the following syntax for quotes here:

  > *Quote text here*
Post reply on HN