[IP] more on Security vulnerabilities in journalism

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Hal Stucker <Hal@halstucker.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 13:04:28 -0400
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Security vulnerabilities in journalism

It is difficult to understand the angry reaction to the UIUC project among
journalists, given the fact that Deep Throat's identity is no less safe now
than it has been for the last thirty years.  Regardless of how compelling a
circumstantial case Mr. Gaines's class may have put together, there is
always the distinct possibility they are wrong. The only people on the
planet who know who Deep Throat really is -- Woodward, Bernstein, Ben
Bradlee, and Deep Throat himself -- aren't talking and until one of these
four does come forward with the definitive answer, all speculation will be
just that, speculation.

John Dean put out an ebook about a year ago on his own search for Deep
Throat and made an interesting statement in an interview with Salon shortly
after publication that could show how far off the mark the UIUC groups'
conclusion might be.  The UIUC group fingered deputy White House counsel
Fred Fielding, though Dean said in the interview (referring to an unedited
manuscript of All the President's Men he had used in his research):

³I had developed a profile of Deep Throat, based on Woodward's and
Bernstein's clues in "All the President's Men," and their unedited
manuscript. Remarkably, all the clues pointed at one of my former
colleagues, whom I had earlier considered only a remote possibility. But
there he was, right in the middle of my Throat-searching radar. I spent
months trying to figure out how I could be wrong. Then I tested the material
on a couple of attorney friends who are very familiar with Watergate. They
found the case overwhelming that I was right. I then tested the material on
a few news organizations. They, too, felt I was correct. To make a story I
tell in the book very short, I turned out to be wrong²

The "former colleague" could very possibly be Fielding.  Also, some years
back, an article in the Atlantic Monthly put forward a very convincing case
that one or more higher-ups at the FBI could have been responsible for the
Deep Throat leaks.  Nixon had nominated L. Patrick Gray as head of the
Bureau the day after Hoover died.  This was seen as a naked grab for control
of the FBI, as Gray was considered Nixon's man and someone who would almost
certainly take his orders directly from the White House.   This article puts
forward two FBI agents -- Charles Bates and Robert Kunkel -- as the prime
suspects.  They had a powerful motive (something most "Deep Throat"
candidates lack) and access to the evidence Nixon was trying to deep six.
And Watergate did bring down Gray -- he resigned on April 27, 1973 after it
was revealed he had destroyed records given him by John Dean.

And so the guessing will continue until Woodward, et al., decide to let us
know for sure.  Far from being irresponsible, I think Prof. Gaines's
teaching methods are quite novel.

Best,
H.S.



> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Matt Blaze <mab@crypto.com>
> Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 01:41:13 -0400
> To: dave@farber.net
> Subject: Security vulnerabilities in journalism
> 
> There was a short piece on NPR's _All_Things_Considered_ yesterday (26
> April) about Bill Gaines, a journalism professor at UIUC, and his
> students.  They claim to have discovered the identity of "Deep
> Throat," the confidential source who famously led Bob Woodward and
> Carl Bernstein to break the Watergate story, which ultimately brought
> down the Nixon administration.  As I understand it, the UIUC project
> took facts from previously published material and applied the basic
> techniques of investigative journalism to eliminate, one-by-one,
> possible Deep Throats until, finally, only a single candidate
> remained.
> 
> As interesting as it was to learn the (possible) identity of this
> important figure of modern American history, I found even more
> interesting the reaction of some of Professor Gaines' colleagues to
> his research.  Several prominent practitioners and scholars of
> journalism roundly condemned it as irresponsible and unethical. I
> could not help but be reminded of how the discovery of computing and
> cryptologic security vulnerabilities sometimes draws similar
> reactions, and in particular of how we ultimately recognize that
> vigorous research aimed at uncovering flaws is the only known way of
> discovering and correcting them.
> 
> The NPR report included comments from Tom Rosenstiel of the Project
> for Excellence in Journalism, who worried that this work will cause
> potential confidential sources to be reluctant to talk with
> journalists for fear that their identities won't be protected
> properly.  Perhaps, but if so, it seems to me that those fears may be
> well founded.  I have always though of Woodward and Bernstein's
> protection of Deep Throat's secret as something of the "gold standard"
> of journalistic confidentiality.  If indeed this turns out to have
> been a failure, future Deep Throats would do well to ask their press
> contacts what they intend to do differently, and future Woodwards and
> Bernsteins would do well to have an answer for them.  To the extent
> that sources ask these questions and journalists develop practices
> that allow them to give better answers, I would think that the
> profession of journalism is being advanced.
> 
> But it seems instead that we have someone claiming to seek
> "excellence" in journalism apparently advocating that something as
> fundamental as source confidentiality would be best served by not
> asking too many questions.  I hope that's not what he meant, or at
> least that his quote was taken out of context.
> 
> Even more disheartening was Carl Bernstein's angry reaction, quoted in
> the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he calls for Professor Gaines to be
> "spanked" for investigating this subject:
> 
>    "The last thing students in a journalism class should be doing is
>    trying to find out who other reporters' sources are," said
>    Bernstein, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine who
>    broke the stories with colleague Bob Woodward. "They should be
>    learning how to protect sources."
> 
> Doesn't Bernstein realize that that was exactly what they were doing?
> 
> As computer security researchers (and spies) know well, it is very
> difficult to keep secrets.  Critical clues, whether they concern
> cryptographic keys or the identity of a mole, tend to slowly leak and
> accumulate over time and can eventually point toward a single,
> unambiguous, answer.  Avoiding this phenomenon in computing systems
> requires great care and is well recognized as a difficult problem --
> it is frequently the subject of scholarly research.  Surely
> journalists, too, recognize that secrecy in their own domain is a
> challenge; one hopes they also understand that this kind of research
> ultimately raises, rather than degrades, our confidence that they are
> up to it.
> 
> Matt Blaze
> 27 April 2003
> 
> 
> Links:
> Plain Dealer article:
> http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1051263572302
> 521.xml
> 
> All Things Considered piece:
> http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1245255
> 
> 
> 
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