Media leaders, including ISOC’s Senior Director for Global Internet Policy, Constance Bommelaer, gathered at the World Press Freedom Day 2017 event in Indonesia to approve the Jakarta Declaration, which calls on governments to support encryption and on all journalists to use encryption to protect their research, their communications, their sources, and themselves. This is an important and positive signal to the international community.
Also during the World Press Freedom Day 2017, the 2017 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was awarded to Dawit Isaak, an Eritrean-Swedish journalist who has been imprisoned by the Eritrean government since 2001. He was represented by his daughter, Bethlehem Isaak, who shared her last memories of her father and gave a moving speech on the importance of supporting endangered journalists, by all means.
Encryption and anonymity can play an important role in protecting the free press.