There’s nothing new about governments or criminal gangs spying on journalists or activists they fear might expose or discredit them. You assume that your conversations are being read by someone else.” What happens is that you’re just paranoid all the time. “A lot of people are scared of writing me, they’re scared that my phone is watched. “I know for a fact that a lot of people are scared to talk to me,” she said. But working under the constant threat of surveillance has made her job that much harder. Since then, Alami has continued to write and report for The New York Times and other publications. That was when Alami realized that just about every precaution she had been taking was now obsolete. However, the Facebook disclosure showed that surveillance software could be inserted onto any phone via any app. Like Signal, WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption to scramble all calls, messages, audio, photo, and video both in transmission as well as on the company’s server – an important security feature that prevents governments from intercepting or subpoenaing communications. Moroccan authorities had allegedly exploited this now-patched flaw to gain secret access to the phones of journalists and activists, including Aboubakr Jamai, CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award winner in 2003. That feeling of safety from using end-to-end encryption evaporated in 2019, when WhatsApp-owner Facebook revealed a vulnerability that allowed hackers to infiltrate smartphones simply by calling someone via the messaging app, without the target having to click on a link. “For some time, we felt really safe on Signal,” she told the Committee to Protect Journalists in an interview. She avoided using certain keywords and full names in her communications and conducted interviews over Signal, a messaging app that encrypts all content before it leaves a phone. As a journalist from Morocco, a state with a track record of intercepting phone calls and messages of political rivals, activists, and journalists, she habitually took precautions to protect her sources. How zero-click surveillance threatens reporters, sources, and global press freedom By Fred GuterlĪida Alami has always been wary of surveillance.
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