Research abounds whose authors conclude that journalists often do not receive adequate training or support. And similarly, academic papers and professional analyzes proliferate in which the growing number of agents that must be faced to avoid digital damage that could be increasingly acute is revealed. Most cybersecurity guides for whistleblowers are geared toward legacy devices: laptops, mobile phones, or touch tablets.
These threats have not gone extinct. There's spyware, for example, to prove it. However, experts add that it is vital to identify and address the risks posed by other systems of the fifth industrial revolution. According to Reporters Without Borders, in three quarters of the 180 countries they have studied, press freedom is totally or partially blocked. To the traditional impediments, now we should add the digital ones.
In this case, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things occupy a central position, starting with virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa. The multiplication of connected elements, both in public spaces and in private places, is one of these dangers, which affects editors, but also their sources and the public, since it makes them more vulnerable to hacker attacks, as highlighted by Anjuli Shere, attached to Harvard University (United States).
Based on the proceedings of the International Conference on Cybersecurity, Situational Awareness and Social Media, this professor maintains that the priority is to help professionals and audiences to "navigate the uncertainty that surrounds the Internet of Things": during a face-to-face interview or by video call, when printing a document via bluetooth, when giving voice instructions from the car, when consulting a smartwatch... All this without ceasing to be aware of the "regulatory gaps" of the present, which complicate, even more if possible, this environment .
The very name of these systems, “internet of things”, explains why certain problems are being triggered. Thus, by definition, these devices form complete ecosystems. For this reason, the challenges end up overlapping, as hackers tend to deliberately employ various categories of tools. On this level, as evidenced by recent experience, communication between the media and the authorities is almost nil.
Shere has already announced that it is designing a set of instruments so that the members of this group understand what harm technology can cause, without this meaning demonizing it. Protection and reduction of impacts are at the center of her initiative, which is based on the conviction that companies in the sector, the self-employed and the rest of the social actors have no choice but to collaborate in an extremely complex task.
