The Guardian newspaper has launched a secure server for whistleblowers to allow them to safely submit confidential paperwork. It makes use of well-known anonymizing expertise, which was utilized by journalists working on the Snowden recordsdata.
The SecureDrop open supply whistleblowing platform gives a means for sources to stay nameless and submit information and paperwork, whereas avoiding the most typical types of on-line monitoring, the London primarily based newspaper experiences.
The system will make use of expertise utilized by the journalists who reported on Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA paperwork such because the Tor community and the Talis working system. Plenty of US primarily based not for revenue investigative newsrooms already make use of the expertise, such because the New Yorker ProPublica and the Intercept.
The SecureDrop platform was developed by the US activist and laptop prodigy Aaron Swartz, who dedicated suicide in 2013 after going through felony persecution on costs of the mass obtain of educational paperwork and articles. The platform is now operated and maintained by the not-for revenue Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The SecureDrop web page is hosted on a separate server from the primary Guardian web site and doesn’t use monitoring cookies or logs. The server is put in exterior the UK as final 12 months the Guardian was put below intense strain from the UK authorities over the publication of articles on the NSA paperwork leaked by Snowden.
This resulted within the newspaper relocating all its reporting on the mass surveillance situation and related recordsdata to the USA, after it was pressured by the British authorities and intelligence officers to destroy all copies stored at its UK headquarters.
The editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger stated that the brand new system would assist defend his reporters’ sources.
“Protecting sources is at the core of journalism, and as the Guardian’s revelations from the Edward Snowden documents over the last year have shown, it’s getting ever more difficult,” he stated.
The Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation stated that the event of SecureDrop was a part of a wider marketing campaign to guard journalists and whistleblowers.
“In an age where governments are increasingly using surveillance to uncover sources and chill investigative journalism, technology can help whistleblowers and reporters safely get important stories to the public,” he stated.
But Freedom of the Press Foundation warned that even SecureDrop doesn’t provide 100 % safety.
“Any organization or product that promises 100% security is not telling the truth. SecureDrop attempts to create [a] significantly more secure environment for sources to get information than exists through normal digital channels, but there are always risks,” Freedom of the Press Foundation stated.
