General Introduction

Over the past couple of decades, the World Wide Web has grown enormously. Along with becoming the most popular method of communication, it has inevitably also become a convenient place for monitoring the actions and behaviors of the public and of individuals.

When you bring this into the context of whistleblowing - and in particular, high-profile whistleblowing cases - one can understand why people may get nervous about disseminating any information through this medium. However, assuming one employs the correct methods, these new communications technologies become a boon for whistleblowing instead of a minefield. It is crucial to get the method right, and that is where we come in.

To understand our niche, one must first have knowledge of the process involved in digital leaking, which consists of two parts that are required in order to function properly. First the recipient has to securely receive the documents, and second, she or he needs to be able to publish them in a robust, uncensorable, and effective manner. OpenLeaks specifically focuses on the reception of data. Enabling whistleblowers to get a document to where they believe it can do some good, without fear of any kind of punishment, is the essence of what we are trying to accomplish.

Watch our video for a short description of the leaking process and how OpenLeaks works differently in comparison to existing whistleblowing projects.

Leaking and receiving leaks is especially precarious if one feels oneself to be in unknown territory. We not only intend to provide a secure infrastructure for leaking, but also to help discover and analyze the best ways to provide a sound legal base for whistleblowers and OpenLeaks community members in their respective jurisdictions. This should enable them to receive and process source material. This information, along with the purely technical advice, will be documented in our openly accessible Knowledge Base; though every whistleblower has to be aware that information can be incomplete or outdated and that they should therefore verify locally to avoid legal problems.

Leaking even the most profound document may not have any impact if it is never seen by someone who is fully able to do something about it. OpenLeaks actively seeks to connect whistleblowers with established institutions that are more likely to make full use of this specifically leaked material. These include NGOs that focus on, e.g. environmental protection, human rights, or transparency issues; along with more traditional media outlets, unions and similar groups, as well as other organizations that have a good reason to promote transparency.

The process of leaking with OpenLeaks

From the whistleblower's point of view, there is no difference between the submission of valid material that is not released, and censorship. Whether and how something is released depends on the policy of the party to whom the data is given.

We do our best to protect the identities of all parties participating in the process of leaking.

Within our community however, it is up to the source to decide where and how data is leaked. We give them the control to either allow the entire OpenLeaks community access to the data, ensuring that it is analyzed and possibly published, or to leak to a specific participant within the community. OpenLeaks does not interfere with this decision. We envision and anticipate that this fundamental structural change will make leaking far more opportune and successful.

At the end of the process of leaking is the public, and although we do not publish leaked material ourselves, we do encourage the publication of full document releases by our members through the available resources and impact multipliers that are already out there. In fact, the community itself is intended to foster an open relationship among our participants whereby, should any leaked material be misrepresented or censored upon publication, it would be relatively easy to locate the cause. Furthermore, it is likely that another member within the OpenLeaks community would bring the material to full publication.

Our goal is to increase direct leaking for socially localized, and not just global, issues and to balance the availability and security of the data that is of potential interest to the public. We want to explore all that is possible, and share the lessons we learn along the way with the rest of the world.

Watch this space for more details about how the OpenLeaks community will function, the types of databases (spools) it is built upon, and a clear description of our future user models.