Markoff/NYTimes : "Big Brother & the Computer Age"
Since I haven't seen any mention of this yet: On the D1 (business section) page, in the top center, in today's [May 6] New York Times, is a diagram and 38" story on issues re: Clipper. Given that it's a finals week, I don't have time to enter much from the article, but will note the following: The first two paragraphs: Can the nation trust its secrets to its spies? That question underpins a fierce debate over a recently disclosed plan by the Clinton Administration to secure the privacy of the nation's phone calls and computer data with a standard set of computer codes. The first quotation (and the only one appearing on D1) in the article is from Eric Hughes: "This plan creates the ears of Big Brother, just as Orwell warned," said Eric Hughes, an independent software designer in Berkeley, Calif. ... - Lee
The quotation of mine in the NYT today was one I gave to John Markoff three weeks ago when the story first broke. I called him up on the afternoon of the announcment--his office is in SF, across the bay--and told him I wanted him to give him an opportunity to quote me. I was surprised to see it in today's article. The hook for this article was the recent FOIA disclosures. Newspaper articles usually don't get written unless there is something that has changed, something that is "new." An ongoing situation won't get reported on until something specific happens; this specific happening can be an event made just for the press--a press conference, a press release, a public statement, or some publication. For further reading on this subject, look at _Reading the News_, an anthology by Pantheon Press. The FOIA disclosures about NSA's involvement in NIST was the hook, but that wasn't the point of the story. The facts of the FOIA were at the back of the story, but they were there. This illustrates another principle of the newspaper: once you have a hook, there's lots of stuff you can hang on it. It really is easy to get quoted, but to do so, you have to make yourself available to the press. The recent FOIA story is a good hook. All the recent crypto events should be enough for a Sunday article (but are not enough without a hook!). I would encourage all of you to make contact with your local media and offer to explain this abstruse subject to them. Reporters have little enough time to learn about what they talk about as it is. If you can present yourself as a bona fide expert (and this does not necessarily mean as an academic) and make an offer to tutor someone on the subject, not only will the quality of coverage improve, but a friendship will have been made. Eric
Eric writes:
The hook for this article was the recent FOIA disclosures. Newspaper articles usually don't get written unless there is something that has changed, something that is "new."
I know that John Schwartz is working on a major piece for the Washington Post--a kind of intro to the subject. --Mike
participants (3)
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Eric Hughes
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Mike Godwin
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William Lee Nussbaum