NR-Jahreskonferenz 2022

Digital security is of increasing relevance for journalists and their research. Although there are a lot of secure
tools available and journalists use them more and more, it often remains an important question: Is my security
level enough? Are my devices well secured, or do I have malware on my computer that tells my attackers what
I'm doing? As journalists aren't experts for IT security, they often feel uncomfortable using their regular
devices for sensitive investigations.

The operating system Tails takes an approach that is different to computers we are familiar with: Tails can be
started from a single USB stick on every computer, and it leaves no traces on the computer. On top of this,
everything a user does is anonymized through the Tor network. Even the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden
used Tails to communicate with journalists. Tails can serve for both as a tool for investigative research as well
as for traveling to countries with a high risk of surveillance.

However, Tails is till today only abstractly known in the journalistic community, while only few are constantly
working with it. This hands-on workshop aims to help journalists with their first steps using Tails: How is Tails
started on their computer? How to browse the internet anonymously? How to manage files and share them
securely with newsrooms?

In the workshop, the participants will get a USB stick with the latest version of Tails which they can use right
after the workshop on their own devices. The trainers are a developer of Tails and a journalist working with
Tails on a regular basis. They will give an introduction to tails and answer concrete questions that arise during
the training. Therefore, the workshop is meant for beginners and should clarify which kind of investigations
might be easy to be done with Tails, while also showing the limits of the operating system Tails for specific
researches.