Additional resources
If you enjoyed Senses of Security and would like to understand IoT threats and countermeasures in more detail, please find below additional publications and resources that resulted from Anjuli’s research.
Publication Highlights
Journal Article, in International Association for Media and Communication Research
“It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you”: Navigating risk to journalists when connected devices are everywhere
“The significance of this classification system for IoT devices is that it clearly demonstrates the ubiquity of these devices and their integration into daily life in all spheres. This taxonomy highlights that the IoT has the potential to pose an intentional or ambient threat to journalists’ privacy, sources’ confidentiality and therefore the security of both.”
If you don’t want to read an academic paper, try:
How the Internet of Things poses a threat to journalists
(The Journalist’s Resource)
“Bearing in mind the most likely journalistic workflow, my research has divided the common environments in which to consider IoT threats into four categories: (1) private homes, (2) public spaces, (3) workplace and (4) wearable devices. There is overlap between the categories — for example, many journalists’ homes are also their workplaces — especially amid the pandemic and budgetary cutbacks that are closing physical newsrooms. Still, this method of categorization should enable journalists to get an initial idea of the scale of the issue, and to cross-reference relevant categories, as needed. Each of the four sections has been further subdivided by function of device, to make it easier for journalists to spot these likely poorly secured devices as they hide in plain sight.”
Journal ArtIcle, in journalism practice:
“The long, strong arm of the law: legal Internet of Things threats to journalists globally”
“The most frequently mentioned IoT-related threat to the press that interviewees perceived was domestic government overreach through legal means: via state agencies using mechanisms in legislation to access data that could include information on journalists and their sources. Their fear was that this would enable surveillance, including pattern of life analysis, which could divulge source identities or unpublished story details to domestic state actors…Key reasons why interviewees reported fears about government are that there is an absence of information available as to countries’ authorities’ capabilities regarding the consumer IoT, and that laws and policies meant to protect the media from technological threats are insufficient.”
If you don’t want to read an academic paper, try:
Trust under siege: why we need to recognise democratic infrastructure (Australian Strategic Policy institute)
“Cyber risks are often treated as discrete, including AI hallucinations, microtargeted propaganda and insecure devices in the internet of things. Using a strategic term such as ‘democratic infrastructure’ could help policymakers and the public understand that these are in fact interconnected assaults on trust.”
Journal Article, in Springer Proceedings in Complexity:
“Threats to Journalists from the Consumer Internet of Things”
“Due to the commodification of data as integral to the technology industry, a theme underpinning all categories and their contents is that information collection is an intentional feature of IoT technologies, rather than a bug. As a result, threats can occur in tandem; for example, a fitness tracker dataset of millions of users may allow easy isolation of a specific journalist’s account data, which would potentially identify their home address and the locations where they meet sources if usernames are cross-referenced with information found on the public-facing social media page of a high-profile journalist… The complexity of multiple steps, as detailed in this example, may make such an attack less likely than a single example from one category, but the compounding potential of these threats is an important feature of networks such as the IoT.”
If you don’t want to read an academic paper, try:
Expert Commentary: 6 ways the Internet of Things poses security threats to journalists
(The Journalist’s Resource)
“The IoT is particularly menacing because even if you opt out of interacting with one device, you can’t necessarily escape its friends...This means that threats can overlap deliberately (with attackers deliberately employing multiple threat categories), or inadvertently (because journalists may be reluctant to report IoT issues due to hostility from law enforcement).”
List of publications
FORTHCOMING “Online Surveillance”, in Springer Nature’s The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cyberpsychology.
FORTHCOMING “The long, strong arm of the law: legal Internet of Things threats to journalists globally” [open-access], in Taylor and Francis’ Journalism Practice.
Aug 2025: “Trust Under Siege: Why We Need to Recognise Democratic Infrastructure”, published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist.
Dec 2024: Co-author of “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar” (Volume 1), a comic book about a ransomware-fighting freelance cyber insurance investigator, published by Green Archer Comics.
May 2024: Co-editor and author of “Newbie-ginnings: A Cyber Security Comics Anthology”, published by Green Archer Comics.
May 2023: “Threats To Press Freedom In The COVID-19 Era”, published by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Jan 2023: “Threats to journalists from the consumer Internet of Things”, in Springer Proceedings in Complexity: International Conference on Cybersecurity, Situational Awareness and Social Media (Cyber Science 2022).
Oct 2022: “Expert Commentary: 6 ways the Internet of Things poses security threats to journalists”, published by Harvard’s The Journalist’s Resource.
July 2022: “‘It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you’: Navigating risk to journalists when connected devices are everywhere”, published by the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR 2022).
Jan 2022: “The Security Implications of Robotic Surveillance Pigeons” (co-written with Dr. Neil Ashdown), published in The Sciences Po Cybersecurity Association’s Academic Journal.
Nov 2021: “Expert Commentary: How the Internet of Things poses a threat to journalists”, published by Harvard’s The Journalist’s Resource.
June 2021: “Legal tiptoeing: the Integrated Review, Data-Sharing, and the EU”, for Wavell Room.
Nov 2020: “Investigating the Information Commissioner’s Office: Is It Fit for Purpose?” (co-written with Dr. Miranda Melcher), published in RUSI Newsbrief.
Oct 2020: “Now You [Don’t] See Me: How have the GDPR and a changing public awareness of the UK surveillance state impacted OSINT investigations?”, in the Journal of Cyber Policy (volume 5, issue 3).
Sep 2020: ““Security should be there by default”: Investigating how journalists perceive and respond to risks from the Internet of Things”, at The 5th European Workshop on Usable Security (EuroUSEC 2020).
Aug 2020: “Reading the investigators their rights: A review of literature on the General Data Protection Regulation and open-source intelligence gathering and analysis”, in the peer-reviewed publication The New Collection.
July 2020: “Police surveillance of Black Lives Matter shows the danger technology poses to democracy” (co-written with Dr. Jason R. C. Nurse) for The Conversation.
Jan 2020: “Growth of privately held data increases risk of espionage” (co-written with Dr. Neil Ashdown) for Jane’s Intelligence Review.