SecureDrop Is The DropBox For Whistleblowers, Based On Swartz’s DeadDrop

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has taken over the late Aaron Swartz’s DeadDrop project. DeadDrop has been renamed to SecureDrop by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and they’ve also worked to simplify the usability of the service. The goal of SecureDrop is still the same – get news organisations to utilise the service to provide their sources with a secure way of leaking documents, communicating anonymously or “blowing the whistle”.

To encourage news organisations to use SecureDrop the Freedom of the Press Foundation is managing and updating the SecureDrop service itself (which is totally open source) and it will also help news organisations set it up and train their journalists on how to use it.

SecureDrop is based on the anonymity software Tor and it uses a hidden server to allow users to submit things anonymously. Journalists then access these submissions on a secure encrypted server and can exchange messages with the original source without ever knowing who that person is.

“Essentially, it’s a more secure alternative to the ‘contact us’ form found on a typical news site” states the FAQ for the service.

The final part of the update over DeadDrop is that the whole interface and usability aspect has been addressed. DeadDrop was criticised for its complexity and the level of technical knowledge required to use it. For this reason SecureDrop is much simpler to use and in combination with the training offered by the Freedom of the Press Foundation it should have a relatively smooth implementation.

Half a dozen major news organisations have already expressed interest in the service.

More details here.

Image courtesy of SecureDrop