Foreign journalist rescued from Homs...

Jillian York and Trevor Timm write for the Electronic Frontier Foundation that: "Authorities can find the position of a satellite phone using manual triangulation, but in order to track a phone in this manner, the individual would need to be relatively close by. Nowadays, however, most satellite phones utilize GPS, making them even easier to track using products widely available on the market .... Some of these products allow not only for GPS tracking, but also for interception of voice and text communications and other information."

Whether calls can be listened in on or not, using a GPS satphone or a VSAT for Internet access is like putting a sign over a location that reads to Syrian officers "there's something interesting here." A rebel, a civilian activist, a foreign reporter? The Syrian military don't appear to be interested in those distinctions at the moment.

Stephen Farrell at The New York Times writes that this latest round of conflicts feel far more dangerous than the Iraq and Afghan wars, where the practice of embedding and the luxury of fortified bureaus helped keep reporters safe. But not entirely safe. Mr. Farrell and his translator Sultan Munadi were abducted in Afghanistan in 2009. Mr. Munadi was killed in the British-led raid that freed Farrell, as was Cpl. John Harrison. In March 2011, Farrell, Mr. Shadid and two other New York Times journalists were detained by Libyan government forces in Ajdabiya. The foreigners were released about a week later. Their Libyan driver has been missing since, and is presumed to have been murdered.

Farrell writes:

As the correspondents of this era seek to adjust to the ever-shifting hazards of war reporting, there is a sense that the conflicts in Syria and Libya are taking even more of a toll on this generation of foreign correspondents than the latter years of the Iraq and Afghan wars. And all these countries remain infinitely more dangerous for the reporters, photojournalists, citizen journalists, translators and fixers of those countries who, unlike foreign correspondents, cannot jump into a taxi or aircraft when it gets too hot and do not have the protection of a foreign passport or an embassy when at the mercy of their own governments."

Certainly any presumption that Mr. Assad will treat reporters, foreign or local, as anything but enemies at this point is be misplaced. State media has been running an intense campaign seeking to brand foreign reporters as spies and worse, much as Qaddafi tried to do in his war. Shortly after the deaths of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik, Syrian state television (video clip with subtitles below) speculated that they must have been in Syria with "ulterior motives: foreign intelligence, military spies, or terrorists."

The claim is preposterous and false. But it's a signal of Assad's intentions. And with the foreign journalists left in Homs trying to get out, the chances for full, independent reporting on what's happening there have grown dimmer.

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