Panel tells Club audience national security can co-exist with government transparency

Despite heightened concerns over government surveillance in the wake of Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and the prosecution of New York Times reporter James Risen, government transparency and national security are not the oil-and-water concepts they are often made out to be, panelists said at a Jan 21 freedom of the press event sponsored by the National Journalism Institute.

The government can't hide everything, the panelists told the National Press Club audience at the event: "Government Transparency vs. National Security: Press Rights, Limits & Ideals in a Post-9/11 World."

Increased transparency would create a higher degree of confidence in federal institutions and lead to fewer confused debates on national-security policy, said Ellen Shearer, co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative and editor of Whistleblowers, Leaks and the Media.

“A big problem is how much information -- in my opinion unnecessarily so -- the government deems as ‘secret’ or ‘necessary to national security,’” Shearer said.

Less than 24 hours after President Barack Obama promised a report next month explaining how the government has protected both national security and privacy interests in his State of the Union address, most of the evening’s discussion centered on legislative and legal mechanisms which increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse.

Ubiquitously, panelists called for a strong federal shield law broadly protective of reporters and employee education on whistleblower policies in government agencies.

Beyond government policy, the journalists on the panel also agreed that some of the responsibility to protect privacy and combat government overreach also lies with the Fourth Estate. Rachel Oswald, a national security and foreign policy reporter for CQ Roll Call, and Courtney Radisch, a former reporter who is now the advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, outlined simple but effective steps members of the press can take to protect themselves, their work and their sources from government spying.

From the simple -- using paper instead of a computer to keep notes -- to more complex methods of data encryption through public-key cryptography, practices which defend vulnerable data needs to move from being the exception to the rule of effective reporting.

Radisch pointed out that of the more than 2000 messages intercepted by the government in 2013, only 2 percent of those emails were encrypted -- an unacceptably low number given widespread surveillance concerns at home and abroad.

All of the panelists agreed the current culture of mistrust between the press and government was less than ideal, but an unfortunate reality given the still-evolving nature of privacy law in the Internet era and the murky relationship between national security and civic rights.

“The horse has left the barn” as new communication technologies and other innovations have outstripped legal frameworks and regulations designed to protect privacy, said Harvey Rishikof, chair of the Advisory Committee for the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

In spite of all these challenges, the event concluded on an optimistic note as panelists cheered the State of the Union nod and start of a larger national conversation about privacy.

“These issues are tough,” said George Jameson, former senior counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency. “There needs to be a growing dialogue on privacy so we don’t continue to deal with them in 30-second sound bites.”