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.
The second smart thing is using the app’s own data flows to make leaks indistinguishable from regular...
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