Boingboing has a story about how some newsrooms in the United States have restricted Internet access using filtering such as Smartfilter or Surfcontrol. Among the newsrooms mentioned – LA Times and CBC (Canada). Goes to show you – tools for getting around censorship are not just for folks in China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Tunisia. I gave a talk earlier this year at the Foreign Correspondents Club about practical security tools, and I emphasized it even then – these are tools for all journalists, not just for those working in locales that are non-democratic or have a weak rule of law.

There is a reason why medical, legal and journalistic work are clinical professions – practitioners require complete access to “direct observation” of evidence to perform their jobs.

A doctor needs access to view unclothed patients without being labeled a sexual pervert; a lawyer needs to consult with a client without being called an accessory to the crime; and a journalist needs an unfiltered information feed, without being called a loafer, slacker or prurient observer.

Ironically, there are likely sites that can be seen from the newsroom of China Daily, but not from the LA Times.