The Spy in Your Pocket: Mobile Journalism’s Risk

The risks of working in a war zone were familiar, but the apparent dangers of using a telecommunications device common among foreign correspondents represented a new uncertainty. Experienced journalists struggled to understand what the technology could reveal about their locations, and to grasp the possibility [that they could be] singled out by the Syrian army precisely for their ability to transmit news from a city deliberately denied communication links. Journalists’ phones were being used to broadcast the atrocities taking place in the city, and for that reason, the authorities might have sought to trace and eliminate those transmissions at the source.