Roberto Abraham Scaruffi: http://globaleaks.org

Wednesday, 7 September 2011

http://globaleaks.org

GlobaLeaks is the first Open Source Whistleblowing Framework. It empowers anyone to easily setup and maintain their own Whistleblowing platform. It is also a collection of what are the best practices for people receiveiving and submitting material. GlobaLeaks works in all environments: media, activism, corporations, public agencies.

Why we think Whistleblowing is important and what is our vision of the future

GlobaLeaks strives to increase accountability and transparency in our society.

We are interested in fulfilling the needs of diverse public interest use cases. From usage by media to public agencies, from corporations to activists. We use the term framework to emphasize the flexibility of the GlobaLeaks platform. For example, the whistleblower will be anonymous by default, but if the whistleblower chooses to disclose their identity, the framework allows them to do so.

Our belief in the importance of transparency, is a fundamental value that applies to our framework's different contexts. In our vision, the public should demand governments and private companies to be more accountable. People will be held responsible for their actions and Governments and private companies should realize that it is better to embrace trancparency and openess. GlobaLeaks is a framework of tools and information for societies use in adopting our shared vision of trancparency and openness.

"... which of two common types of character, for the general good of humanity, it is most desirable should predominate — the active, or the passive type; that which struggles against evils, or that which endures them; that which bends to circumstances, or that which endeavours to make circumstances bend to itself." --John Stuart Mill

How we will open society and activate citizens

Whistleblowing is a complex problem that, in our opinion, has not been properly addressed in any solution that we analyzed. Coming from a strong information security background the platform is designed to be as secure and privacy-preserving as possible.

During our research we discovered a large ecosystem of whistleblowing organizations and software to support them. There are people who have been active in this field for more than twenty years and are still active. A long term example is Public Concern At Work. Some of these organizations even have different views on whether or not WikiLeaks is whistleblowing or not.

We believe in the value of a range of activities and believe that tools such as the GlobaLeaks suite of software will empower people to stand up anonymously while making a change in their local context.

When setting up a GlobaLeaks node the default should be that the WhistleBlower does remain anonymous (if you are anonymous you can always reveal your identity in a second stage, the opposite is impossible). This should not, however, be a limiting factor in adoption of the tool. The Node Administrator, the person actually running GlobaLeaks software, should be able to customize the platform to suit their needs. If those needs should require them to know the identity of the WB, that is fine.

GlobaLeaks is designed with flexibility in mind, while enabling maximal privacy and security by default. The technologies we use to guarantee the security and anonymity of comunications are called Tor Hidden Services. These technologies protect both the client and the server, so that even the GlobaLeaks node can choose to not expose themselves. Both the whistleblower and node processing the submission are immune to retaliation attacks as possible.

Possible use cases of GlobaLeaks software

Media outlets, Magazines and Journalism association can setup a whistleblowing interface to collect anonymous reports from sources that are by-default protected. Media that already deployedWhistleBlowing site accept "leaks" and follow investigative journalism practices. A large international media organization and a east-european media organization are already seriously considering the use of GlobaLeaks.

Non governmental and informal activists organization can setup independent whistleblowing sites and promote them. The target list will be composed of a certain audience that will listen to what anonymous whistleblowers have to say. Independent whistleblowing sites can be used to spot corruption and malpractice in local municipalities, public agencies or even large corporations. Citizens and/or employee can be engaged with public campaigns to blow the whistle on what they know! ONG could leverage Whistleblowing in very dangerous contexts too. In places where organized crime (mafia) control the territory or basic human rights are not guaranteed. GlobaLeaks nodes could be interested in motivating people to spot environmental malpractice.

Corporations, especially big ones, can setup Whistleblowing sites as a part of their accountability policies managed by the Internal Audit Departments, allowing them to spot corruption and malpractice. They will encentivize employees to blow the whistle to enforce compliance with corporate responsibility law such as USA Sarbanes -Oxley Act or Italian Law 231 (Google translated version).

Public Agencies can use Whistleblowing as an external and internal reporting system. Famous public whistleblowing services are USA IRS, US SEC, EU Antitrust. These systems are used to involve citizens in spotting tax evasion, market manipulation, corruption, malpractice in health environment.

Due to GlobaLeaks flexibility, it's effective role could appear misleading or confusing to our readers, therefore we prepared the following section to clarify what GlobaLeaks IS NOT.

GlobaLeaks is not the new WikiLeaks.

In fact we have nothing in common. We provide a software, they provide a service. We are a blurred community, they're a closed group of individuals operating behind a face. We do not handle leaked documents, they do.
GlobaLeaks is not a corporate whistleblowing service.

GlobaLeaks is simply free and open source software.
GlobaLeaks has nothing in common wih OpenLeaks.

OpenLeaks is a service. Incidentally, GlobaLeaks is designed to potentially allow the creation of many OpenLeaks-like services in no time. This makes GlobaLeaks very different from the service offered by OpenLeaks, a service where users trust OpenLeaks to manage and maintain your data and information.
GlobaLeaks start-up isn't sponsored by anyone.

It is the result of the efforts of a group of independent developers. While it aims to remain independent and will always offer it's services for free, GlobaLeaks team accepts donations from third parties and individuals that support the idea of a better society through transparency.
GlobaLeaks is not lead by anyone.

We're a blurred group of programmers, security experts, lawyers, human right optimists all under the hat of the "Random GlobaLeaks Contributor".
GlobaLeaks doesn't want your data.

When you setup a "GlobaLeaks node" you don't become part of a network, but rather just a node on your own. We invite you to report the existence of your whistleblowing site in LeakDirectory, but that's really up to you.
GlobaLeaks doesn't track anyone.

The website http://globaleaks.org is never requested or anyway connected to any of the running GlobaLeaks nodes. Therefore there's no way we can know how many nodes exists, neither where and when a user interacts with any of these nodes.