Survey about legal and criminal threats experienced by journalists and security researchers

Researchers who try to responsibly disclose leaks, vulnerabilities, and other security breaches or mishaps may face legal threats or lawsuits. Similarly, journalists may find themselves threatened with lawsuits or other legal consequences if they report on leaks or breaches. Both researchers and journalists also face threats by criminals ("threat actors") if they report on them in ways the threat actors find unflattering or harmful. In our many years of reporting on leaks, breaches, and criminal gangs, DataBreaches.net and Zack Whittaker have often exchanged "war stories" about what threats we have received or had to contend with. After one particularly tiring week, we wanted to conduct a survey of researchers and journalists to ask about their experience with threats. We are using a broad definition of "researcher" to include self-defining or volunteer researchers (and not just academic or vendor-based researchers), as well as a broad definition of "journalist," to include bloggers and anyone who regularly reports on news and research, including commentary sites. Here are our questions, and we hope you will respond. Responses can be anonymous, but it will be helpful if you provide a real name or moniker and contact information, so we can follow up if we have questions. (Responses are encrypted in transmission and at-rest in line with Google's privacy policies. We plan to close this survey by end of day January 18, 2026.) Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. (To report a survey bug, please reach out.)

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