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GlobaLeaks - Open Source Whistleblowing Framework
- denzil_correa 14y agoIt would be interesting to see how governments around the world react to this. They haven't taken WikiLeaks to kind and in some ways we know their decision. However, it would be great if some governments accept such a framework.
- readme 14y agoIf a government reacts to this, then you know the project was a success.
- denzil_correa 14y agoI think if a government reacts, we would know that this Whistle Blow framework has good potential. Unless adopted, I wouldn't label it as success. It would be another project like WikiLeaks which is waiting to be back door squeezed by the FBI and their equivalents.
- Karunamon 14y agoIndeed. However if this ends up being a peer to peer type project, then it doesn't matter how the government reacts to it. Embrace it, try to stifle it, doesn't matter. A network of GlobaLeaks "nodes" makes the entire process infinitely effectively impossible to stifle at any level, unless you go the route of shutting off the internet as some regimes have done. And even then information finds a way out. I love this idea.
- mooneater 14y agoIt looks like mostly icing on top of http://tor2web.org/ http://tor2web.org/
- taphangum 14y agoI worry about things like this. I'm all for freedom of information and all that, but if that information is all that's keeping one country from launching nuclear weapons at another. That information should be kept very very private indeed,
- yaph 14y agoI understand your concerns, but whoever decides what information will be kept secret is biased in some way and keeping information secret may actually pose a bigger threat than publishing it.
- taphangum 14y agoHow? I've heard this argument many times but can't actually think of any non-idealogical reasons why it would.
- yaph 14y agoFor example, when a government lies to its people to have an excuse for starting a war, disclosure may save many lives.
- noarchy 14y agoWhat would be a non-idealogical reason? States are driven by ideology as much as you and I are.
- ChrisNorstrom 14y agoPlease don't downvote Taphangum for asking a question. If it were chit-chat or a non-contribution style opinion downvote away, but not when it's a quest for knowledge and bettering oneself.
- mkup 14y agoThe only reason keeping one country from launching nuclear weapons at another one is Mutual Assured Destruction principle. Without nuclear weapons, the world would be a much more dangerous place to live. We had two world wars in the first half of previous century. It was a like a loop: as soon as new generation of youth eligible for combatant service grew up, world war started again. Fortunately, nuclear weaponry ended that loop, and Mutual Assured Destruction principle is the only reason for protracted peace at the global scale.
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- ktizo 14y agoGood to see someone trying the Dissent As A Service turnkey business model.
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- sparknlaunch12 14y agoWhistle blowing is not limited to wiki leaks style government secrets publication. What about employees stumbling onto corporate mis behaviour? Victims of war etc etc This may help the Arab spring type scenarios.
- aw3c2 14y agoThe website does not work without Javascript. Javascript is unsafe. I would not trust them with my sensitive revelations.
- driverdan 14y agoSaying JavaScript is unsafe is like saying driving a car is unsafe. If you intentionally run into a wall sure, it's unsafe. If you don't trust a site enough to let them use JS do you really trust them enough to send them your leaked data?
- streptomycin 14y agoJavaScript just adds another thing that could go wrong, in exchange for a potential increase in usability. On a site like this, it's almost certainly not worth it.
- neilk 14y agoUsability is the entire focus of what they are doing. They aim to make it possible for non-programmers/non-sysadmins/non-security geeks to set up their own whistleblowing framework. Think journalists, volunteer orgs, activists, dissenters...
- Hrundi 14y agoI think the word here is accessibility, not usability. Every step of the process can be made usable without the need for JavaScript. From a security stand-point, I don't trust whatever JavaScript engine is running, even more when considering non tech-savvy people. An activist could find himself in a delicate position and discover that many CPU cycles ate away whatever battery was left in their mobile devices, just to display three Canvas elements in a row, with the text "Tulip", "not", "found" in a cool font. Now the browser can crash due to a flaky HTML5 Canvas implementation in addition to the JS engine.
- olalonde 14y agoYour concern is pretty silly. If your life is at stake for whistle blowing, I bet Javascript being unsafe will be the last of your worries! You will probably use Tor in an Internet Cafe with incognito browsing mode.
- aubergene 14y ago> The Target receives the submitted material as a tulip that will expire after a certain amount of downloads Perhaps I am hopeless behind the times, but what is a tulip?
- ewest 14y agoFrom what I found reading through some stuff, 'tulip' is the term used to describe whatever a whistle-blower uploads. It also has some meta-data including a point of discussion, so that the Global Leaks provider (the recipient of information) can ask the sender (the whistle-blower) to upload some more material or explain something. It seems tulips can be set, by the sender, to expire. Here's a link to the tulip controller - you can mostly figure out what it does reading through the well-structured code: https://github.com/globaleaks/GlobaLeaks/blob/master/globaleaks/applications/globaleaks/controllers/tulip.py https://github.com/globaleaks/GlobaLeaks/blob/master/globale...
- 9k9 14y agoWhat happened to openleaks?
- freshhawk 14y agoNote enough people fell for that con I guess
- ChrisNorstrom 14y agoThe vibe that OpenLeaks gave off was that it was founded by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the guy that was rumored to have betrayed (in some way) Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Say what you want about Assange (like him being the Jason Russel or Michael Arrington of whistle-blowing) but with Julian it felt like you were protected and anonymized at all cost. Whereas with Daniel it feels like the moment he's threatened with jail time he'll sell you out. Also, "[OpenLeaks] will allow leakers to anonymously submit information to a secure online dropbox. But unlike [Wikileaks], it won’t publish that information itself. Instead, it will allow the source to designate any media or non-governmental organizations he or she chooses and have that information passed on for fact-checking, redaction and publication." Sorry Daniel, but it doesn't work that way. In the world of whistle-blowing, it's all or nothing. You either publish the leak or you don't. Not go through 3 extra steps and a whole lot of "if/then"s and still not be guaranteed that your leak will be published. A broken model in my opinion.
- olalonde 14y agoI've noticed yet another interesting double-standard on HN: privacy should always be respected except when it comes to the "bad guys". It's all good as long as you agree on who the bad guys are. This is an extremely slippery slope as we can all witness with the US war on terror slowly eroding personal rights for the greater good. In my mind, this line of thinking is analog to the "free speech unless you say something I don't like" mentality. Do we really want to devalue privacy so we can catch a few bad guys? Just saying we should all be extremely careful around the topic.
- nextparadigms 14y agoYou don't really have to make that choice, because these leaks are targeted at Governments. Governments should be transparent with their citizens. When they are not, the leaks will start showing up. I think that's ultimately good for society, even if now and then some secrets are not supposed to come out.
- J3L2404 14y agoGood luck with diplomacy if you have no private communications.
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- magicjuand 14y agoGood luck with "diplomacy" when you have secret communications discussing a secret alternative agenda.
- aestetix 14y agoMy response to the "bad guys" argument has always been: if you asked the bad guys if they were bad, what would they say?