Using Technology to Protect Anonymous Sources?

A not-so Anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "The New York Times has a story describing how newspapers are looking for new ways to hide the identities of anonymous sources from prosecutors. This seems like a something the Slashdot crowd might know something about. How can a newspaper setup an IT system that completely hides every trace (including emails, phone calls notes, logs and so forth) of an anonymous source's identity?"

Re:anonymous remailers?

[learn fast]

You may be thinking of anon.penet.fi [wikipedia.org]. Was popular on usenet while it lasted.

Please inform the special prosecutor

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you obviously have information not available to anyone else about whether or not a crime was committed.

Considering that Plame was last overseas undercover in 1997 and the name became public in 2003 (and it may very well not have been leaked considering Joe Wilson's wife is listed in "Who's Who"...), it would be a bit hard to break a law with a five-year limit, now wouldn't it?

You need to read Plame's Lame Game [msn.com] and A Nutty Little Law [msn.com].

Some excerpts:

Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.

and

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, notionally violated by this disclosure, is a ridiculous piece of legislation to begin with. It relies in practice on a high standard of proof, effectively requiring that the government demonstrate that someone knowingly intended to divulge the identity of an American secret agent operating under cover, with the intention of harming that agent.

Note that under the law in question, for a crime to have been committed - even if the five-year limitation weren't exceeded - the leaker would have to knowingly leak the information with the purpose of causing harm to the agent. Simply leaking the name to providie proof positive that her husband is a liar wouldn't make the leak a crime.

Get over your hatred of all things Bush. It makes uou sound like a paranoid twit.

FreeNet

[cryptelligence]

The safest and most anonymous protocol I've seen is Freenet [sourceforge.net]. If anyone was lucky enough to see the Freenet presentation at DEFCON [defcon.org], they illustrated how a message could theoretically be sent over a trusted social network, location-independent and subsequently anonymous. The theory proposed that instead of a massive random anonymous freenet node network, Freenet would begin to integrate normal human-like social networks, allowing users to "validate" the identity of other users without compromising anonymity (Somewhat like a PGP-key signing party). Each user would pick a random number, and based on their social network of trusted friends, their number would be switched with other users, giving the illusion of proximity. Not only was the proposed theory location-independent, they also illustrated how a man-in-the-middle attack couldn't happen without being completely obvious (In the presentation, it was illustrated that a message to a false "John Kerry" would take a large and noticable amount of hops (if the message got there at all) because "John Kerry" doesn't have a normal social network that would be apparent with a prominent political figure). Of course, I do see how this method could possibly be vulnerable (As we all know how easy social engineering can be): A) A "trusted" person who is being used as a hop point could intercept the message and compromise security. (A risk you take when trusting friends, and friends-of-friends) B) The message sender or receiver could be compromised, and a person could theoretically follow the chain of hops to the other party involved.

Re:Regarding Portable HDs

[Petrushka]

How 'bout a country that had 13 of it's citizens drive planes into two of our office buildings?

That one seems to be beyond our reach...

I take it you mean Saudi Arabia? You know, the one that has US military bases plastered all over it?

Martus

[christefano]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Benetech's Martus [martus.org], a free, open source and multi-platform for encrypting and anonymously distributing information about human rights violations.

Why can't the news media use something like this?

Frankly, I'm even more surprised that nothing turned up when I searched /. to see if anyone had mentioned Martus in the past.