Safe space: Connecting sources to journalists, securely
It tends to be hard for sources or whistleblowers to flag a sensitive story, or share confidential documents, without revealing their identity; not everyone knows how to encrypt communications, and the barrier to entry is high.
At the Walkleys Editors Lab media hackathon in Sydney, a team from ABC News built a tool aiming at solving this problem. The theme for the hackathon was ‘audience engagement’, and the team — Ben Spraggon, Simon Elvery and Colin Gourlay — wanted to build a better way for readers to engage and interact with journalists.
“Any member of the public should be able to securely contact a journalist when he or she has something sensitive to share,” says Spraggon. “And an equal problem is that journalists don’t know how to accept or securely communicate with sources either.”
Their target audience is anyone who has something sensitive to share — confidential documents, classified information, perhaps a victim of sexual assault who wants to report the crime without unveiling his or her identity.
The tool, called Initiate, allows a reader to contact a specific journalist with encrypted information; and the journalist to decrypt it, both without needing to know the technical skills involved. It leverages an existing platform, Keybase, an open source security app that works as a trusted database for encryption keys.
The journalist needs to have a Keybase account. The Initiate widget can embed into any page, website or news story, and users click it to reach initiatecontact.com, the tool’s landing page. A step-by-step guide shows how it works.
If you have a lead, you can get in touch with a specific journalist and send them a message, anonymously if you prefer.
Every keypress is encrypted in your message as you type. When you hit send, this encrypted message is sent to the Initiate server. This message is now emailed to the point of contact — importantly, Initiate cannot read your messages. The point of contact uses a private key that’s exclusive to them to read the messages.
The prototype is functional, and the domain is running, but the team would like to refine the user experience before it is embedded onto the ABC News website.
“Along with being an encryption tool, we’d also like Initiate to become an educational tool,” says Gourlay. “It teaches you how to communicate securely, without the technical hurdles.”
