Icon by Anubisza

Many governments agencies around the world collect communications data as a matter of course. In the past, governments have downplayed privacy concerns around this data collection by emphasizing that they don’t collect the actual content of communications but rather so-called “metadata” – that is, the number called, what time the call was made, how long the call was and where the call was made from. A number of recent studies have demonstrated, yet again, that this metadata can be incredibly revealing.

And this is where journalists need to pay attention because if they want to keep a story they’re investigating under wraps or protect contacts, they need to understand how their metadata can be used to discover their activities and movements.

Who are you calling?

Researchers at Stanford University in the US, for example, are asking volunteers to install an app called MetaPhone on their mobile phones. The app collects their metadata. The results so far, says researcher Jonathan Mayer on his blog, “took us aback”.

By searching telephone directories, it was often easy to find out who exactly people were calling. And by analyzing patterns of calls, the researchers were able to uncover highly sensitive information, such as medical conditions, pregnancies or interest in firearms.

The researchers gave several examples of what they found out purely by looking at phone data – here’s three of them.

• “Participant A communicated with multiple local neurology groups, a specialty pharmacy, a rare condition management service, and a hotline for a pharmaceutical used solely to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis.”
• “Participant C made a number of calls to a firearm store that specializes in the AR semi-automatic rifle platform. They also spoke at length with customer service for a firearm manufacturer that produces an AR line.”
• “Participant E had a long, early morning call with her sister. Two days later, she placed a series of calls to the local Planned Parenthood location. She placed brief additional calls two weeks later, and made a final call a month after.”

Simple to map movements and daily routines

Plotting the movements and communications of an individual from their cell phone data has been done before. But a new visualization showing the mobile phone and email data of Swiss politician Balthasar Glättli highlights once again how much the data reveals when it is collected in bulk. (The Greens party politician released his communications data in protest at a proposed extension of Swiss data retention laws – you can read more about this here.)

The analysis of six months of Glättli’s metadata shows the pattern of his daily activities such as when he normally goes to sleep, when he starts and finishes work, who he regularly meets with and when and how often he talks to certain people.

Created by OpenDataCity (an English version is not available)

When people send an email or SMS to several people at once, this information is also included in the metadata. As such, access to Glättli’s communication data enabled the analysts to create a picture of not just who Glättli was in contact with, but also who his contacts were in contact with.

Norbert Bollow from the Digital Society Switzerland, one of the Glättli visualization project members, says that metadata is even more dangerous when information from multiple people is put together.

“Then it really starts getting dangerous,” he said in a Skype call with onMedia. “You can start making connections between people and with little effort, start profiling people and knowing about their medical conditions, their religious views and their political beliefs.”

What does this mean for journalists, activists or whistleblowers?

Glättli’s contact network by OpenDataCity

Bollow warns that agencies can easily reconstruct a journalist’s research or retrace a source’s movements from metadata.

“You can make a real time profile of what kind of story they are working on and more dangerously, who they are talking to,” he said.

“A journalist who wants to know what is going on at an oil company will try to make contact with someone who can give him information. And the secret service will know immediately who are those insiders who have had contact with journalists.”

Where to find out more

It’s not just phones that create metadata, but virtually everything we do in the digital world – from surfing the internet to paying with a credit card in a store. To find out more about ways in which journalists can be more secure in their digital communications, take a look at the posts and sessions from DW Akademie’s digital safety workshop.

Tactical Technology Collective’s Security in a Box also has an excellent array of digital security tools and tactics in a variety of languages.

DW Akademie’s Steffen Leidel will also be talking on how digital safety can best be taught to journalists at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia on Thursday 1 May at 14.00 in the Sala Perugino (Hotel Brufani).

Written by Kate Hairsine

Graphic: flickr/mmapstone

Most reporters use a whole bunch of different online tools and apps such as Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Gmail, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress and Dropbox to make their work easier. To commemorate this year’s Safer Internet Day, onMedia highlights a few risks associated with some of the most popular journalism tools and suggests possible, more secure alternatives.

Skype

Functionality: Video conferences, chats with newsmakers, interviews and interview recordings.

Risks for journalists: Skype was always assumed to be safe because of its end-to-end encryption. But the Snowden revelations have revealed that the NSA has been listening to Skype since 2011 and it’s unclear to what extent other agencies are able to intercept the service. Skype “can no longer be trusted to protect user privacy,” says Eric King, head of research at Privacy International.

Possible solutions: Use Skype as if it were a public forum. Everything you say or write may be used against you.

Alternatives: Jitsi (encrypted text, voice and video messaging), Linphone (encrypted voice and video chat), Mumble (encrypted voice chat).

WhatsApp

Functionality: WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the word. It lets you send messages without having to pay for sms services although the person you are sending to also has to be using the app. It’s an easy way to stay in touch with the newsroom and colleagues while in the field, especially as you can exchange images, video and audio.

Risks for journalists: Currently, WhatsApp claims messages are encrypted but because the company won’t say what method they use, it’s difficult to know how secure the service is. There are reports that WhatsApp messages sent over wifi and other public channels can be decrypted. There are apps out there which try to make WhatsApp more secure.

Possible solutions: Resort to more secure apps

Alternatives: Pidgin (off-the-record messaging), TorChat (anonymous P2P chat), ChatSecure (formerly Gibberbot) and Xabber for Android.

Facebook

Functionality: You don’t really need to have Facebook explained to you, right? Journalists use this global social network to share their work, crowdsource information, stay in touch with colleagues and newsmakers, follow companies and news on their beats, subscribe to important people and participate in groups.

Risks for journalists: Facebook is a huge data collector. The list of your friends may influence the decision of local authorities to grant you a visa to work in a certain region, and the open groups you are a member of let strangers know about your interests even if your profile is closed to external visitors. Also, Facebook is constantly experimenting with new tracking methods.

Possible solutions: Be very careful publishing information on Facebook. Once it’s online, you lose control of it. Go to the privacy settings in the upper right corner of your Facebook page and make sure you have all the precautionary measures taken. Always log out of your Facebook account when surfing other websites.

Alternatives: To be able to use other, private social networks, you’ll need a certain level of technical proficiency. Of course you need to remember that it’s difficult to have the same reach as Facebook when using its alternatives. Diaspora is a community-run, distributed social network that allows you to be in control of your information. Other alternatives: Buddycloud, Friendica and RetroShare.

Twitter

Functionality: Twitter is good for following breaking news and breaking news yourself. You can also use it to collaborate with others, find communities, and follow trends and topics.

Risks for journalists: Everything you do on Twitter is visible. If you have geotagging enabled, it can be easy to locate you. The service is also a haven for malware attacks.

Possible solutions: Be careful what you post and whom you follow. Don’t create open lists unless you are absolutely sure you won’t get into trouble by doing this. Disable geotagging.

Alternatives: Sorry, there isn’t really one.

Gmail / Googlemail

Functionality: This is one of the most popular email clients with integrated tasks, contacts and calendar.

Risks for journalists: Gmail has fairly robust security for everyday use but it’s not advisable if you need to keep your communications secret. Google scans your email’s content to better target you with ads and also complies with government requests for information. Kapersky has more information about the risks here.

Possible solutions: Don’t use your Gmail account to discuss sensitive issues. Add two-step verification to your account to prevent third parties from cracking it.

Alternatives: MyKolab (hosted in Switzerland), Riseup.

Google Drive

Functionality: Create, store and share documents, presentations and spreadsheets in the cloud. The service is connected to your Google account.

Risks for journalists: Your information can be made available to government agencies.

Possible solutions: Use Google Drive only for documents with no great importance. Use local physical backup (external hard drives, USB flash drives) when possible.

Alternatives: ownCloud, SparkleShare, Tahoe-LAFS.

Google search

Functionality: Google search is pretty much the gold standard and definitely the most popular option for research on the web. There are a number of techniques such as advanced search that help you achieve better results.

Risks for journalists: Google stores your searches. This information can be made information available to government agencies upon request.

Possible solutions: Try other search engines.

Alternatives: DuckDuckGo (anonymous web searches), Startpage (private, unlogged web searches), YaCy (decentralized web search), Seeks Project (open decentralized platform for collaborative search).

Dropbox

Functionality: Store text, audio and video files in the cloud. Dropbox comes in handy when you need to synchronize your data across different devices.

Risks for journalists: Your data might be available to third parties.

Possible solutions: Always encrypt your data before moving it to Dropbox. You can use Boxcryptor or free encrypting tools like TrueCrypt or AxCrypt. Read more about file encryption here.

Alternatives: The same as for Google Drive: ownCloud, SparkleShare, Tahoe-LAFS.

Tumblr/Blogger/WordPress

Functionality: Publishing platforms for text, audio and video. They help journalists blog on issues, establish a web presence and thus become more visible to their audience.

Risks for journalists: Your data might be available to third parties.

Possible solutions: Try self-hosting. This will help you stay in control of your data. For example, WordPress offers an option to self-host your data.

Alternatives: WordPress.org (self-hosted website publishing), Noblogs (blog publishing platform based on WordPress), MediaGoblin (decentralized media publishing platform), Zenphoto (self-hosted media management system).

For more free alternatives to proprietary software, check out the website PrismBreak.

By Natalia Karbasova

Photo: flickr/CyberHades

DW Akademie devoted the whole of the week December 2- December 6, 2013 to the issue of Digital Safety for Journalists. As well as live online sessions on the topic, we also tackled issues on our digital safety blog important to reporters who want to or need to keep their activities away from prying eyes. Here is a list of some of the posts that can put you on the road to a more secure digital life.

A good starting point is to determine how much digital security you really need. In What’s your threat? Working out your security needs, we talk with Jonathan Stray, a Columbia Journalism School professor, about how to put together a “threat model” for yourself and your situation, and how to act based on it.

We’ve also talked with someone who knows first-hand about the uncomfortable reach of some government authorities. In Know your enemy!” Security tips from Tunisian cyberactivist Slim Amamou, readers will get real-world advice about what to do if your fear persecution because of your online activities.

Several posts look at ways to maintain your privacy and our authors test drive software to see how easy or difficult it is to install and use.

Using the Tor network is cited by many security experts as a good way to keep your internet activities under wraps and bypass censorship. In Hiding your online identity: Trialling Tor in Cambodia, we take this global system of routers that can throw spies off your tail for a test run in Cambodia.

Secure your surfing with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) explores another way to stay anonymous online. VPNs create “tunnels” though which your data goes over the wider internet, shielding it from others. They’re especially important for people who travel or use networks they don’t own, like at a café or airport.

Graphic: flickr/One Way Stock

Continuing on the topic of surfing, Your browser’s ‘fingerprints’ and how to reduce them looks at how advertisers and others with more malevolent intentions can identify you by collecting bits of information about your browser. We talk with IT expert Henning Tillmann about how it works and how you can make your fingerprint harder to read.

Some people think Skype is the way to go to keep their conversations private. Well, the post Think Skype is safe? Think again will disabuse you of that notion, and give you alternatives.

In the wake of revelations about the NSA’s spying program, some privacy advocates have almost thrown up their hands in surrender. But they shouldn’t. Is encryption still worth the trouble? You bet it is discusses why people who should know say encrypting your sensitive communications, while not a failsafe, it still the way to go to avoid interception.

But if a virus or other malware gets on your computer, even the best defenses against spying can be circumvented. That’s why strong anti-virus protection is an absolute must. Read Anti-virus software: Boosting your digital immune system for the basics of these nasty bugs and how to keep your computer and mobile devices healthy. We also test drive virus detection software that runs from your USB, so you can make sure the internet café computer you’re using is safe.

Services, apps and platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Gmail, Dropbox, etc. are incredibly useful for journalists. But What are the risks of using Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and Co.? explores their downsides regarding privacy and discuss ways to user them more safely.

There’s lots more on the blog, including wrap-ups of our workshop sessions, so surf on over and get more useful information on staying safe and secure online.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

Photo: flickr/WarzauWynn

All of this week, DW Akademie is exploring the topic of digital safety for journalists in a free open online workshop with live panel discussions and online sessions. Follow this link to participate in the live sessions from December 2 to 6.  There you’ll also find more digital security posts like this one by journalist Kyle James, who takes the anonymous surfing tool Tor on a test drive in Cambodia.

Keeping your identity anonymous on the Internet can have major advantages. If you’re a political activist living in a country with a repressive regime, disguising your Internet identity might just keep you out of jail, and alive. Alternatively, if you’re a reporter working on a story your government doesn’t approve of, surfing anonymously can help you bypass your country’s censorship or filters.

One of the best known and easy-to-use systems for doing this is Tor. But Tor has some disadvantages – many complain it slows down their surfing. So what happens when you use it somewhere like Cambodia that already has slow internet?

What is Tor?

Originally an acronym for “The Onion Router,” Tor works by using a software bundle and an open network of internet relays strung around the world.

Tor was originally developed by US Navy researchers and its primary purpose was to protect government communications. Today it’s used by everyday people, activists, law enforcement officials, and, of course, journalists who want to escape prying eyes on the Internet. Reporters without Borders recommend Tor as part of their Online Survival Kit.

How does Tor work?

The “onion” part of the acronym refers to the many layers that Tor directs your internet traffic through to keep it hidden. Those “layers” are the more than 4,500 relays run by volunteers around the world.

Tor keeps your surfing secret by bundling internet data into a packet and encrypting it several times. Then the packet is randomly bounced among the relays, each link in this circuitous chain knowing only about the link before and after it. It’s been compared to a person taking a roundabout way along city streets to shake a pursuer. (For more information on how Tor works, see here.)

This method conceals a user’s location and usage from network surveillance and traffic analysis efforts. The Tor software will make it difficult, if not completely impossible, for people to see your webmail, search history, social media posts or other online activity. They also won’t see what country you’re in or get an IP address.

Needless to say, such privacy can be very useful for journalists

Installing Tor

For such a complicated system, Tor is remarkably easy to install and use. Your author, no tech genius himself, simply went to the Tor Project page and downloaded the Tor Browser Bundle. It’s available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices.

iPhone users can use it, but it’s a bit more complicated to get it set up.

The Tor bundle contains a version of Firefox which you use just like an ordinary web browser but this particular version is preconfigured to send traffic through the Tor network. You don’t need to configure your own system, change lines or code or have any more technical knowledge than simply knowing how to download basic software.

NOTE – I did have to disable Gatekeeper on my Mac since it identified Tor as an “unidentified developer” and initially refused the download. I went into my Mac’s Security & Privacy settings and told it to accept the program. Since I was downloading from the actual Tor site, I felt fine doing this.

The Tor Project offers videos showing installation for Windows, Mac and Linux. Or check out this video for Mac installation or this one for Windows.

Surfing in Secret

Once installed, you’ll see the Vidalia control panel, which controls the Tor software. Here is where you start and stop Tor, set yourself up as a relay, look at the network, change your identity and a bunch of other things.

I simply hit the start button and my specially configured browser popped up.

I was ready to surf in secret.

The biggest reported drawback with Tor is that surfing can get very sluggish, and the World Wide Web becomes the World Wide Wait. That’s due to traffic having to jump through at least three relays and it’s the price you pay for anonymity. As more users sign up, the problem is evidently getting worse. Tor is aware of the issue, releasing a troubleshooting guide a while back.

For people who already have fast internet connections, the difference in speed that Tor makes might be very noticeable and very frustrating. But here in Cambodia, my connection speed is pretty mediocre on a good day. So for me, the difference was negligible. Although, admittedly I wasn’t accessing a lot of audio and video, mainly since Flash is disabled with the Tor browser on installation.

Surfing the web with and without Tor, I compared 12 sites that I visit often – both Cambodian ones and ones based the other side of the world. I found that a few of them did load more slowly using Tor but it wasn’t at all as slow as I’d feared.

Some sites that took around three seconds to appear using my normal browser took five or six seconds using Tor. This wasn’t enough to send me jumping out of a window. In fact, some pages seemed to load just as quickly as they always did. Happy day!

Tor also successfully hid my IP address. With my regular browser, I opened geoiptool.com which identified my location. But using the Tor browser, it thought I was in Germany, almost half a world away. If you want to appear to be in a specific country, this video tells you how to use the Tor software to do that.

Overall, I experienced very few problems using Tor. Occasionally when I opened a new tab to do a Google search, I was asked to enter a series of numbers and letters to prove I wasn’t a robot. This was only a small inconvenience.

As I mentioned above, Flash, Quick Time and JavaScript-based plugins are disabled, since they can reveal your IP address. That means YouTube and a lot of audio and video elements of other sites won’t work, although there are workarounds for Windows and similar ones for Mac users.

What journalists should know

Tor is not 100 percent secure and it cannot guarantee absolute anonymity. Very smart hackers and investigators can sometimes connect the dots. In October, the administrator of the underground illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, which could only be accessed through Tor, was arrested by the FBI after an extensive investigation.

As the Tor website points out, users will need to change some behaviors if they want to be really secure – such as always using the Tor browser, not installing or enabling browser plugins, using HTTPS versions of sites and not opening documents downloaded through Tor while you’re online.

Some also say Tor users attract more attention from authorities because governments are more suspicious of people who use the network.

As long as you keep these things in mind, Tor is an excellent option for journalists, dissidents and others interested in online privacy.

Operating Systems: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android

Cost: Free

Languages: English, Arabic, German, Spanish, Farsi, French, Italian, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese

Technical knowledge needed: Minimal. Easy installation. Operates on a modified Firefox browser.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

Twelve renowned journalists from Latin America and Germany are coming together to explore the future of data journalism. Under the motto “Public Data Goes Social”, the journalists and open data experts will meet for three days in Buenos Aires to discuss the most burning issues in the booming field of data journalism.

The talks are part of a Media Dialogue organized by DW Akademie and supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office. You can follow the event, which runs from 13-15 November, on Twitter  via @dw akademie and the hashtag #mdba.

There is a thriving community of data journalists in Germany and Latin America and the two regions are building a reputation for innovations in the field. Read more for a short introduction to the Media Dialogue participants.

Laura Zommer is Executive Director of Chequeado.com, the only NGO doing fact checking in Latin America, and a professor for the Right to Information at the University of Buenos Aires . Her area of expertise are anti-corruption, accountability and open data.

Data projects you like: ProPublica, Poderopedia.

My favorite data visualization: How rumors and unverified information spread on Twitter.

Data set I would like to work with: The designation of judges and prosecutors in the last 15 years in Argentina in order to analyze, for example, what educational background they have or the gender or regional ratio.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Sensitive information that can lead to discrimination, such as sexual orientation, religion and health issues (but only when such data is tied to an identity, obviously not when it’s purely are statistical). Also the names of juvenile offenders.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s a new way of telling stories that allows you to involve citizen in the process.

Question for my colleagues: Do you have any advice on how to do great data journalism even if the data is not always the best?

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Mariano Blejman is a Knight International Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, manages @Mediafactory_vc, runs the Buenos Aires chapter of Hacks/Hackers and is also editor-in-hack at the investigative journalist web platform @analiceme. Previously he was an editor at Pagina/12.

Data project I like: Dollars for Doctors by ProPublica.

My favorite data visualization: Betrayed by our own data by Malte Spitz at ZeitOnline.

Data set I would like to work with: Internet cables in Latin America, something like Submarine Cable Map.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Health.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data journalism isn’t magic, it’s about building teams.

Question for my colleagues: What is more difficult? Developers learning to write or writers learning to code?

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Christina Elmer is a data and science journalist at Spiegel Online. Before that she was part of the investigative reporting team at Stern magazine and worked as an infographics editor for the German press agency, dpa. She also trains journalists in data reporting and online research.

Data projects I like: Interactive German federal election map at Spiegel Online’s data blog and the regional analysis of health indicators at Stern magazine (partly also covered online).

My favorite data visualization: I find the visualization of the drones attacks deaths in Pakistan very impressive, well composed and narrated in an absolute meaningful way.

Data set I would like to work with: Of course, the US surveillance data, to at least be able to show the full extent of their international intelligence actions.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Private information that individuals don’t want to be published.

Something every journalist know about data journalism: Data journalism is more an enrichment than a replacement of fundamental journalistic research methods.

Questions for my colleagues: What was your most encouraging data journalism moment and what motivates you day after day?
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Gustavo Faleiros is a Knight International Journalism Fellow and environmental journalist specializing in data-driven journalism. In 2012, Faleiros launched InfoAmazonia, a digital map that uses satellite and other publicly available data to monitor the Amazon rainforest. This year he has created a multidisciplinary team called Environmental News Lab and has been launching news projects based on the experience of using interactive maps and earth science data.

My favorite data visualization: the interactive feature Racing Against History by the New York Times.

Data set I would like to work with: Carbon monoxide concentrations.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal data, private data.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: That it is just a name for the much larger transformation happening in all journalism processes, from sourcing information to distributing it.

Question for my colleagues: What are the most innovative forms of data distribution you have seen done by a media company or a journalistic project?
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Sylke Gruhnwald is a data-driven reporter with the Swiss media outlet, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. You can find her projects here and here.

My favorite data visualization: Kant – you can read more about it here. Besides this, I prefer bar or line chart over bling-bling maps or fancy stuff.

Data sets I would like to work with: Commercial registry, Swiss income data (Salarium), NSA files

Data which shouldn’t be open: Very personal data such as credit card details, health records, etc.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data driven journalism is not only about fancy visualizations; it is about storytelling with data.

Questions for my colleagues: Why and how did hacking in Latin America develop to the current state? How can one individual foster that development?
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Stefan Plöchinger started as a local reporter for Germany’s biggest broadsheet newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He was then a political journalist at the Munich tabloid Abendzeitung, a production editor for the now defunct Financial Times Germany, and copy chief and managing editor of the German news site, Spiegel Online. In 2011, he returned to the Süddeutsche Zeitung as the editor of the online edition and managing editor for online business.

My favorite data visualizations: US Gun Deaths and I also love the Partly Cloudy app just because it’s a clever redesign of a classic topic

Data set I would like to work with: Traffic jam data over the years to compare the difference made by building new streets or new railway lines – does reshaping traffic systems reduce traffic or lead to more traffic?

Data which shouldn’t be open: Intimate and private data of individuals who have committed no crime whatsoever

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s not about data alone. It’s really about a new way to explore stories that otherwise couldn’t be told or researched.

Questions for my colleagues: What is your experience with readers – which projects did they like the most and which were a lot of work but didn’t resonate?
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Juan Carlos Simo works as a journalist at the daily paper, La Voz del Interior in Córdoba, Argentina and is also part of the national journalist’s NGO, Foro de Periodismo Argentino (Fopea). Even though says he’s not a data-journalism specialist, he has worked on several data projects. One of them is Tragic Roads, a long-term project to build up data about road safety (see for example one of the monthly reports on the subject). Another is about deforestation in Córdoba.

My favorite data visualizations: I love this interactive cartogram made by Andy Tow for Cippec, a local NGO because I think is quite effective at showing the inequity in Argentina and One Race, Every Medallist Ever from the New York Times

Data sets I would like to work with: Homicides related to organized crime in Argentina and femicides. Unfortunately, these aren’t available.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal data that people want to remain private. In Argentina, the government publishes people’s addresses and pictures on a website for election purposes.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data is just the beginning. Without journalism, there is no social use of it.

Question for my colleagues: How would you convince editors and publishers of the need to invest in creating specialized areas of data journalism in local media?
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Julius Tröger originally started off writing for the German daily newspaper, Berliner Morgenpost but now also codes for them too. His latest data journalism projects are an interactive 3D visualization and analysis of the flight traffic above Berlin and an interactive map of the German Bundestag election results in Berlin by polling station.

My favorite data visualization: Gay rights in the US by Fielding Cage and Gabriel  Dance from the Guardian US.

Data set I would like to work with: Data as granular and open as this for all German states

Data which shouldn’t be open: All personal data.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Don’t underestimate the advantage of working with web developers in the newsroom.

Questions for my colleagues: I would like to ask about the state of open data in Argentina and in other Latin American countries and find out how my colleagues deal with it in their daily work?
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 Miguel Paz is a Knight International Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists and founder and CEO of Poderopedia, a data journalism
website that maps the political and economic links between members of the elite. Paz is also the president of Poderomedia Foundation, which fosters
innovation within the news ecosystem and promotes the use of new
technologies to increase transparency. He is the co-creator of the
Hacks/Hackers Chile chapter and co-creator of OpenDataLatinoamerica.org.

My favorite data visualization: A code status dashboard I saw in a newsroom. It was a small black screen on the wall that worked like a semaphore for the website performance team. Green lines of code meant everything is ok. Yellow lines of code meant beware. Red lights was “run Forrest run”!

Data sets I would like to work with: The NSA archive and metadata on Barack Obama’s emails

Data which shouldn’t be open: Who am I to say? I leave that to judges and ethic masters

What every journalist should know about data journalism: If you can think, read, write, dont’t be lazy and stay hungry, you can do this and any sort of journalism: keyboard journalism, phone journalism, recorder journalism. Names are just references to tools which are often outdated by our working practice. Someday “data journalism” will sound as dumb as “phone journalism” sounds now.

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Sebastian Vollnhals lives in Berlin where he works with OpenDataCity. His projects include Castorticker, a platform of citizen journalism about nuclear waste transports in Germany and Lobbyplag, an evaluation of the influence of lobbyists on the European Parliament.

My favorite data visualization: The display of messages broadcast with Castorticker on a map.

Data set I would like to work with: Beauty and value can be found everywhere so I’d like to work with a data set I’d least expected to work with.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Data openness should always empower people and not be a tool for oppression. Therefore a world without inequality and oppression needs to be built where all data can be free without causing harm. Until then, the question if data should be open is a question about power.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data contains wisdom and it’s your quest to find and share it. Wisdom brings power and it’s your responsibility to use it wisely.

Question for my colleagues: What is the question that needs to be answered next?
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Stefan Wehrmeyer works for the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany as a developer and project lead on FragDenStaat.de, a German Freedom of Information Portal. He also likes to hack on public transport data and government transparency.

Data projects I like: OpenSpending and FarmSubsidy are both great projects I worked on that improve transparency of public money in Europe and around the world.

My favorite data visualization: Of course I appreciate good visualizations but as a developer I’m more intrigued by what possibilities are still out there and what techniques are coming up. One example are vector tiles that will change Open Source mapping. You can see an example here.

Data set I would like to work with: A GTFS (public transport schedule) file of Buenos Aires to integrate into Mapnificent.net.

Data which shouldn’t be open: I wouldn’t mind if all publicly available data was openly licensed. Of course, not all data should be publicly available.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s still journalism.

Question for my colleagues: How can we collaborate better on global stories between different countries?
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Florencia Coelho is the Digital Media Research and Training Manager at La Nacion news organization in Argentina and a member of La Nacion’s data team, @LNdata Editor. She coordinated the translation of the Data Journalism Handbook into Spanish Coordinator and in her past life was a lawyer.

Data project you like: One of my favorites (an oldie but goldie) is the Las Vegas Sun’s 2010 Do No Harm series on hospital care. They analyzed almost 2,900,000 hospital billing records revealing more than 3,500 preventable injuries, infections and surgical mistakes and identifying more than 300 cases in which patients died of preventable mistakes. Six laws where passed after their project.

My favorite data visualizations: Visualizing The US Electric Grid by NPR from 2009 and Wind Map, a newer and cooler dataviz by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg.

Data set I would like to work with: Argentinian hospital care data like the Do No Harm series.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal private data and sensitive information regarding national defense. We also need some creative solutions to certain data such as census information and health information from NGOs so that people aren’t identified (people living in rural areas with very low population can be easy to identify, for example).

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Maybe today you think these skills are kind of nerdy but they will soon be in your daily essential journo toolbox.

Question for my colleagues: What about making a wiki list of ethical and legal circumstances which arise from the data journalism process?

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