It's never -- at last for me -- easy to criticize journalists when they screw up. We almost never have all the information we would like. Deadlines mean we can't delay as long as we'd prefer. The demands of the craft, the attention span of our readers, and the limits of available space can conspire against us. So instead of criticizing Slate, it seems more useful to look at this as an example of the risks of relying on email From: lines as an authentication mechanism. It is of course trivial to change your From: line -- most modern email clients let you, and before that pranksters would telnet to port 25 and forge email the old-fashioned way. Far better to verify an alleged identity through out-of-band verification, digital signatures, or at least clicking "reply." -Declan --- http://slate.msn.com/?id=2062867&device= Slate Gets Duped This week's Diary by an "automotive CEO" proves to be a hoax. By Jack Shafer Posted Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 4:45 PM PT On Monday and Tuesday of this week, Slate published Diary dispatches by "Robert Klingler," who purported in his bio note to be "the North American head of a European auto manufacturer." When Slate readers pointed out to the editors that neither Google.com nor Nexis searches produced any hits for a "Robert Klingler and the automobile industry," we assumed the worst and took the entries down from the site. A phone call to the European auto company in question confirmed that no "Robert Klingler" works for them. How did Slate, and by extension its readers, get duped? "Klingler" first identified himself as an automotive CEO in correspondence with the editor of Slate's "Fray" discussion area, where he had posted messages. In subsequent e-mails to another Slate editor, he agreed to write the Diary. One of "Klingler's" many e-mails appeared to originate from the auto manufacturer he claimed to head. In it, he asked Slate to correspond with him through his AOL e-mail account because he wanted to keep his personal and business correspondence separate. Also, so that he could write with more candor, he asked that we ID him as "the North American head of a European auto manufacturer." We agreed on both counts. We shouldn't have agreed to either of his terms. Any correspondence with "Klingler" through his auto company e-mail address would have immediately revealed the hoax. (From our Hindsight is Golden Department, we can report that repeated e-mails sent today to "Klingler's" business e-mail address bounced back as "undeliverable.") Had we not given "Klingler" the benefit of partial anonymity, he probably would have withdrawn his offer to write. Or he would have been unmasked as a fake by the car company within hours of his first Diary posting. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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