The latest attempt at incriminating Clare Rewcastle-Brown-Sarawak Report is simply pathetic. It is clearly the work of idiotic ignoramuses. It illustrates zilch knowledge of covert communication, zero understanding of writing and of British style of speech, and very low IQ.

Let us begin our superficial analysis with the simplest thing.

Brown is a supernatural being

The time stamp on the email purported to have been written by Brown, whom we are supposed to believe to have used christian angelo as her pseudonym, arouses suspicion. ‘Christian’ is a male’s name, for goodness’ sake!

At the material time, Brown was indicated in the imagined message to have been in London, but the faux email showed ‘GMT 23:20 GMT+08:00’. That means although Brown was in London, she had sent the email from somewhere in the Far East where the local time was eight hours ahead of GMT.

Brown must be a supernatural being if she could have been extant at two locations simultaneously.

Poor usage of English

The poor usage of English and of punctuation-marks, and the ignorance of when letters ought to be rendered in upper case reveal that the writer was definitely not Brown.

The message read: “Hello. It is most inconvenient to settle things over the phone. Why dont you and the duo come meet me here in London. Nevertheless, i am OK if you guys are OK!”

Brown is a well-educated Brit, and she has worked as a journalist with the BBC. Her usage of English, punctuation, and rendering of letters in upper case where necessary would be far superior to what is illustrated in the faux email.

Brown would most likely to have written thus - “Hello, Pandi! It is rather inconvenient to discuss things over the phone. Why don’t you and the two come and meet me here in London?”

She is not likely to use the word ‘duo’.

The next sentence ‘Nevertheless, i am OK if you guys are OK!’ is a non-sequitur (something that does not follow). And that is quite besides the fact that the 'I’ before 'am’ ought to be in upper case.

A sentence such as ‘But if you guys (or ‘fellows’) insist (or ‘would rather’) that we meet at (location), it is OK with me’ would make sense. Furthermore, being a Brit, Brown would probably write ‘all right’ instead of ‘OK’. But that is a small point, which we can ignore. ‘OK’ is quite OK.

Covert communication

Competent investigative journalists dealing with major scandals such as the 1MDB scam would not communicate with their parties in the manner implied.

Although gmail now provides end-to-end encryption, security is not 100 percent. When ordered by certain authorities to do so, gmail is obliged to surrender what is required.

Speaking of which, nor was (and is) communication by means of a certain smartphone said to encrypt voice and text 100 percent secure.

There is also what is known as ‘man-in-the-middle’ who might intercept - and decipher, if necessary - messages from and to parties of interest to his/her paymaster.

Competent investigative journalists dealing with sensitive matters resort to covert communication with their parties, such as whistleblowers and informers, as well as with their participating colleagues back in their offices.

They typically use special Operating Systems (OS’es), email clients, and browsers, all of which can be installed on a USB drive, in addition to pieces of software that provide superstrong encryption, e.g., PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).

All these help to ensure that the identities (which, of course, include IP addresses) and locations of both journalists and their parties are unknown to snoopers, and their messages stay indecipherable (by snoopers).

What the above also means is that an investigative journalist can use our PC or notebook to do his thing without needing our installed OS or any other pieces of software on our machine, and when he has finished will leave absolutely no trace of his activities whatsoever.

Naturally, such journalists also observe certain other precautions, such as paying for their devices in cash, to maintain anonymity.

Brown is obviously not a greenhorn in this matter. We saw an example when she got the audit report of Malaysia’s auditor-general retyped before publishing it on her website.

Some people have pointed out that if it was the real thing, she should have simply posted it on her website as a jpeg image, pdf file, or something similar for interested parties to download instead of wasting her resources.

Wrong.

She has had the whole report retyped to protect her source. How so?

Many word processors nowadays are so sophisticated that we can adjust the spacing between characters (called kerning) and between lines (called leading) in minute increments simply with a few clicks.

Therefore, we can print off a certain number of sets of a document, each with specific settings, and note down to whom we give which set.

By closely examining a document, or a facsimile/image of it, later, we can tell to which person we have given the original to.

Some types of printers also may print a tiny image unseen to the naked eye on every page. A close examination of a page printed with any of such printers will reveal which printer has been used to print the particular document. And if the printer has been bought, say, with a credit card, investigators can eventually trace it to the buyer.

Now we can see why investigative journalists would buy the devices they need with cash. Or they acquire devices which can never be traced to them.

Conclusion

Those trying to incriminate Brown have a great deal to learn. They are like tots at a nursery trying to out-argue an egghead. And they would do well to forget about it all. For how can you ever incriminate an innocent party - especially if you are very dim upstairs?

ODIN TAJUE is a regular Malaysiakini commenter.