In December 2017, Laura Halminen, a journalist at Helsingin Sanomat, a major newspaper in Finland, destroyed her laptop. Finnish law enforcement had just launched an investigation into an article that listed Halminen as an author, and she wanted to protect her sources and unfinished work—not least a story about Finnish law enforcement—from a possible search of her home. The search would soon come: in the process of smashing up her laptop, the battery caught fire, triggering a callout from the fire department, which in turn triggered police attention. Officers confiscated electronic devices belonging to Halminen. The officers were, at least, “discreet and polite,” she told me.
Origen: Overclassification, the Finnish way – Columbia Journalism Review
