Salon: This week has been a disquieting one for journalists concerned about protecting their sources. The revelation that the Justice Department had been spying on AP reporters’ phone records, although it came as no surprise to those attuned to this government’s attitude to First Amendment protections, reinforced the importance of enabling the unsurveilled free-flow of information.

It was the right moment then, for the New Yorker to launch Strongbox, an open-source drop box for leaked documents, co-created by late technologist and open-data activist Aaron Swartz with Wired editor Kevin Poulsen.

“With the risks now so high – not just from the U.S. government but also the Chinese government that is hacking newsrooms in the West – it’s crucial that news outlets find a secure route for sources to come to them,” said Poulsen on Thursday.

The code, designed by Swartz and Poulsen, is called DeadDrop; Stongbox is the name of the New Yorker’s program that uses it. The magazine announced that this means “people can send documents and messages to the magazine, and we, in turn, can offer them a reasonable amount of anonymity.” Appropriate to the open-data activism to which Swartz dedicated many of his considerable talents, the DeadDrop code is open for any person or institution to use and develop.

DeadDrop lets users upload documents anonymously through the Tor network (which essentially scrambles IP addresses). With Stongbox, the leaked information is uploaded onto servers that will be kept separate from the New Yorker’s main system. Leakers are then given a unique code name that allows New Yorker journalists to contact them through messages left on Strongbox. Like any system, it is not perfectly unbreakable, but it has already received high praise in reviews. [Continue reading…]