Letter from the grave (2009)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
During the time I lived in Mexico there were 10 journalists killed in the state of Veracruz where I lived. They were journalists that spoke out about government corruption or cartel violence.
During the same time the entire police force of Veracruz were fired in one day and the navy replaced them.
Currently there's blogo del narco, borderland beat and a few other places online to read uncensored stories, but almost all have the writer's name. Something like Wikileaks for safe, anonymous reporting would be great for these countries.
Couldn't agree more. If anybody is interested in building something in this area, please get in touch with me.
I'm part of a group of investigative journalists looking at organized crime and corruption (http://occrp.org/). Security is a big worry for us -- our journalists regularly receive threats and other harassment. We've talked about setting up an anonymous publishing system, but don't have the capacity to build it ourselves.
I'd love to talk with anybody who has thoughts on how to do anonymous reporting. Especially, how do you put something up anonymously or pseudonymously, but still publicise and get a decent readership for it?
Of course this is the 'less hairy' technical side of anonymity; probably what you have in mind would involve social as well as network/software-based infrastructure, especially if outreach / readership (as you said) are important (and I suppose they would be rather central, as impact would basically (maybe) very much be / is a function of / directly depend(s) on readership sizes etc.) I suppose one would need to answer questions such as e.g. how to maintain an image of credibility(?) etc. if article authors only use pseudonyms. But making sure anonymity of the publishers / authors is possible at least in the narrow internet networking sense might be a start, perhaps.
I have read a few of those stories and what I saw haunts me to this day. Never did I imagine that people would do such a thing to another human being.
but almost all have the writer's name
Part of me wants to call it bravery, but to me it's way too dangerous. You simply do not take any chances with such savages: they'll kill, rape, torture and then chop up you, your wife, daughter /son and everyone else dear to you. For all practical purposes the narcos have unlimited money, they have thousands of 'soldiers' in USA and can either pay them, wipe a debt off, initiation or just call in a favor. One phone call and it's done.
My respects for a man who walked tall despite the threats to his family and life.
Admins, the community is telling you something: this site has become a Reddit clone with a more highbrow tone.
Edit: if you downvote, please reply too.
True – neither of which is the mandate of the site. The mandate is to be intellectually interesting. I found it interesting to read such a lucid letter by a man who knew he would be murdered and didn't seek to avoid that fate. I also find a journalist whose primary commitment is to truth to be as interesting as the other rare species people sometimes post to HN.
>>Admins, the community is telling you something: this site has become a Reddit clone with a more highbrow tone.
Please, don't speak in the name of the community. Actually, it's the main reason I downvoted you.
While I can't see how much he's been upvoted, I suspect many feel the same way he does. I certainly do. HackerNews of late has very little to differentiate it from other discussion sites like reddit and MetaFilter.
I like to see hacker news on Hacker News.
Another huge benefit of non-hacker submissions that you clearly overlook is that it gets hackers out of the Silicon Valley tunnel vision and starts to get them thinking about other industries, cities, countries, and problems.
The argument can be made there are "other" forums where I could digest this information, but I don't really check "other" forums - I visit HN. I'm glad to get an occasional diversion from the otherwise fairly insular SV-centric content.
Perhaps I lack your sensibilities regarding what constitutes acceptable content on HN, but this is not a post / contribution I would think of flagging.
I, for one, find myself energized. Too often I get lost in the micro-problems of tech & software, and forget that there are larger fish to fry in this world.
Where do we start this discussion?
EDIT: I think the problem isn't that HN is getting off topic so much as it is getting trivial:
PayMill. Is it really a clone of Stripe?
Tips for work-life balance
Shell startup scripts
The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
Perhaps hackers are the few technorati that can effect transparent information sharing without journalists and editors being threatened and murdered.
just a thought
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "
The article in question certainly does satisfy my intellectual curiosity. It shows a disturbing trend of muckrakers being shut down by dictatorial governments. In addition, the intercourse that is currently being carried out on this particular is very interesting and also satisfies my intellectual curiosity.
I can't downvote you, but even if I did have enough karma to do so, I wouldn't anyway. I'd rather people have misconceptions and have them resolved rather than have people punished for those misconceptions.
Diego has been on HN over 5 years and has enough karma to be able to downvote 10 times over. Dismissing his comment as a misconception of how HN works seems a bit ridiculous on your part. His observation is a legitimate one -- if there are no real limits on what material is appropriate, then how do we define ourselves as a community in a way that helps newcomers understand what is appropriate and how our litmus test differs from other sites?
> if there are no real limits on what material is appropriate, then how do we define ourselves as a community
Let me stop you right there. There is a limit on appropriate material; in fact, it's from pg himself, and I included it in my original comment. The article in question qualifies as appropriate material, which is where diego is incorrect.
Even experienced people are not infallible; everyone makes mistakes.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it -- "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is not a limit at all as it can be extended to literally everything depending on where each person's curiosity lies.
(And, incidentally, the stories on HN tend to get rather off-topic over the weekend when, I imagine, much of its core user base is not checking the site. I wouldn't sweat it too much.)
2) this covers a bunch of stuff that is deeply interesting to hackers. Anonymous information sharing; secret information sharing; some way of having signed but anonymous information sent from the field to an office.
Why do you care about downvotes? Are you actually checking your comment score?