Business magazine Forbes unveiled Tuesday an online submissions system of the kind pioneered by WikiLeaks for securely, anonymously sharing files and tips with its journalists called SafeSource.
Andy Greenberg of the Forbes staff writes, “Anyone can visit Safesource.forbes.com and use the anonymity software Tor to upload sensitive documents or messages for our reporters. Tor protects the identities of those users by triple-encrypting their traffic and bouncing it through three volunteers’ computers among thousands distributed around the global Internet. The system is designed to prevent anyone – even us – from determining the source of an anonymously uploaded file or message.
“SafeSource is built on the open-source framework known as SecureDrop, which evolved from code originally written by the late programmer and free information activist Aaron Swartz along with security engineer James Dolan. An earlier version of the system, then known as Dead Drop, was implemented by the New Yorker magazine in May to create its own anonymous submission system, which NewYorker.com editor Nicholas Thompson has said proved to be a valuable new channel for communicating with sources.
“Since then, Dead Drop has been adopted by the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, which renamed it SecureDrop and hired Dolan to act as a consultant to media organizations implementing the system. We’re proud to be the first media organization to partner with Dolan and the FPF to put SecureDrop into action.”
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