Terms to Get Familiar With

Burner Phone

A prepaid, disposable and untraceable cell phone used by both journalists and their sources in order to communicate anonymously and privately.

Metadata

Data that provides us with information about said data. "Think of it as a wrapper around data that describes it, like how packaging tells what food is in a box or a container."

Email Encryption

A way to disguise email content so that only the sender and receiver have the key to unlock it. This is used to avoid being spied on by surveillance agencies and individuals.

Counter Surveillance

General tools that "help users detect and prevent unlawful and unwanted monitoring, whether that means detecting hidden cameras, scrambling unseen signals, or creating white noise masking that prevents recording devices from capturing voices."

Wire Tapping

Secretly using a listening device (such as a wire) to monitor and listen in on conversations, phone-calls, and various other forms of audible communication.

Bug

"A hidden listening device. Often a small, concealed microphone combined with a radio transmitter."

Data Mining

Uncovering patterns from sets of data in an effort to generate new information that was previously secret.

HTML

Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is a technological language used for most content on web pages.

Widget

"A widget is a stand-alone application that can be embedded into any third party sites by any user on a page." An example of a widget could be a search bar or a video player within an app.