Hackers On Planet Earth

Source Protection and Digital Security Techniques Under Surveillance

Smitha Khorana

Surveillance has become so ubiquitous that no one knows how to protect oneself from it. This talk is about how to shield journalists, activists, and sources from surveillance, and ways to think about the threat. Smitha is a journalist who has reported in the Yemeni American community about passport revocations before Trump. She will talk about methods she used to approach sources in vulnerable communities and make them feel safe. She will discuss how to “threat-model,” new approaches to educate sources and help sources give information, and the laws that make it difficult for whistleblowers and sources.

The second part of the talk discusses public education campaigns for sources to pass information on safely to newsrooms and journalists, as well as data protection laws and ways to protect data from surveillance in communications between journalists and sources. It will cover ways to bolster a global movement against surveillance and data retention by multinational corporations to enhance privacy and to protect the act of journalism globally. The Espionage Act will be examined and examples of sources and whistleblowers being prosecuted will be discussed.

Saturday 1000 Crystal Ballroom

Smitha Khorana is trained as a journalist and recently completed a chapter, “Surveillance and Source Protection,” for the book Journalistic Source Protection in the Age of Democratic Backsliding, forthcoming by Springer in 2026. She has researched source protection and surveillance in Türkiye and co-edited the book Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State. She has done reporting on the Yemeni American community for The Guardian and The Intercept. She has presented this work at the Journalist’s Safety Conference in Oslo, Norway for two consecutive years.