In a dangerous era for journalism a powerful new tool to help protect sources
The Guardian: “Today, the Guardian launches a unique new tool for protecting journalistic sources. Secure Messaging is an important new technological innovation that will make it easier for people to share confidential information with us.
Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing has always taken bravery. As threats to journalists around the worldincrease, so does the need to protect confidential sources. One of the most dramatic global shifts against whistleblower safety comes as part of the Trump administration’s continued assault on the free press. Investigative reporting is extremely important to the Guardian; we have been exposing wrongdoing and scrutinising power with complete independence for decades. We know first-hand how impactful investigations depend on trusted reader-reporter interactions.
From the Frank Hester revelationsto the Pegasus project, Uber files, Pandora papers and the Michelle Mone/PPE Medproscandal, many of our most powerful recent investigative projects – as well as our biggest stories throughout the decades – have relied on sources feeling confident they can safely share information with the Guardian or our reporting partners. Secure Messaging is the latest tool in our armoury to protect whistleblowers. Built by our product and engineering team, in partnership with the University of Cambridge’s department of computer science and technology, Secure Messaging is unlike traditional information-sharing platforms.
The technology behind Secure Messaging conceals the fact that messaging is taking place at all by making the communication indistinguishable from other data sent to and from the app by our millions of regular users. By using the Guardian app, other users are effectively providing “cover” and helping us to protect sources…”
NiemanLab: “If you download the new mobile apps The Guardian released today, in a small way, you’ll be helping protect whistleblowers around the world. Okay — so it’s a very small way. But because of an ingenious new leaking-to-journalists protocol — created in concert with Cambridge computer scientists — regular app users are actually running interference for those who need to reach reporters securely and safely. If smoking out a whistleblower is like finding a needle in a haystack, Guardian readers are now a giant pile of extra hay.
The feature, called Secure Messaging, is based on a tool called CoverDrop, first proposed in 2022. Its source code is available on GitHub — letting other publishers use it in their apps and giving security researchers the ability to poke around for holes. Secure Messaging does two especially smart things. First, it uses the newspaper’s own mobile apps as the vehicle through which a whistleblower’s communication happens.
No need to push people to a separate app, explain what a Tor browser is, or get tech mortals to understand PGP. Someone looking to leak to The Guardian probably already reads The Guardian — and having a news app on your phone likely won’t spark an employer’s suspicion in the same way that Signal might. And, most importantly, a news organization has control over its app’s underlying code base in a way it can’t with a third-party option…”
