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I would suggest that anyone reporting on tech agencies leave their phones and tablets at home when meeting a source. Use your laptop if you must use a computer
by NotAnEconomist 8y ago
I would suggest that anyone reporting on tech agencies leave their phones and tablets at home when meeting a source.
Use your laptop if you must use a computer or the internet during the meetings, but you'd be better served by an independent (and dumb) tape recorder.
- paulryanrogers 8y agoLaptop running Tails from a clean USB drive, never used in any other computer.
- barneygumble742 8y agoOr carry a dumb/flip phone. Off topic...I recently ran into my high school chemistry teacher at Costco this weekend and he said he lost his passion to teach because school do not enforce their "no phone" policy due to litigious parents. He said the students are constantly distracted by their smart phones. On the drive home I was thinking...why can't schools encourage students to carry dumb/flip phones for emergencies?!
- bilbo0s 8y agoA little further off topic, but can people really sue because a teacher tells their kid not to use their phone in class? That seems counter-productive.
- bluGill 8y agoYou can sue for anything. you might not win, but it still costs them a lot of money
- walrus01 8y ago> because school do not enforce their "no phone" policy due to litigious parents. I have family members that are teachers - and this is one of the reasons why some of the most experienced, highly skilled teachers are leaving to teach at private schools. It's not a good thing, because these private schools' tuition fees ($16,000 per year or more) mean that the children of the top 5% of wage earners in a city are getting a better quality education than the public school children. And this is in a location where the public schools are generally of good quality. Just like any job, teachers who have reached their personal threshold of bullshit-tolerance will leave and go find a job elsewhere.
- ceejayoz 8y agoYou're asserting parents at $16k/year private schools are likely to be less pushy/litigious?
- bluGill 8y agoThe school will kick them out if they are. Public schools have to accept all kids who live in their area, private schools can refuse to accept the kids.
- ceejayoz 8y agoSure, and then they get threatened with lawsuits. I grew up in a very wealthy school district and we had a big private school in the suburb as well. The local cops were leery of disciplining kids, let alone the teachers.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoBecause reporters are constantly moving about and in regular contact with a variety of people, I can imagine having their phone nearby is a big boon to the trade. Does anyone know if portable, packable, and sufficiently effective, Faraday cages exist. Effective enough to block all incoming/outgoing signal? In that case they could deposit their phone in the pack at a random location heading to the meet-up, then remove it at another random location later [without having to leave it behind].
- nokcha 8y ago>Does anyone know if portable, packable, and sufficiently effective, Faraday cages exist Wrapping the phone in aluminum foil will do the trick. But really simply turning off the phone (which you would want to do anyway to kill the mic) should be enough except perhaps if you're up against a state-level adversary.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoHeh, which in some reporters' situations could be the case. Reminded of that NYT piece (2015) from a reporter who went searching for the IRA (Internet Research Agency) in Russia. (Brilliant read, and unnerving: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html)
- NotAnEconomist 8y agoI wanted to add that in principle turning it off is enough -- in practice, with human foibles, you should leave it at home. It's easy to stray into leaving your phone on too long or forgetting one of the times. Leaving it at home is much harder of a boundary to cross without knowing.
- godshatter 8y agoPortable faraday bags are effective enough. They are not much larger than the phone and I can't call one when it's inside the bag. I haven't done any kind of tests to see what signals might be leaking from it.