Filecoin Foundation Ensuring That SecureDrop Can Continue To Help Whistleblowers And Journalists

from the some-good-news dept

Earlier this year we were excited to see the Filecoin Foundation give the Internet Archive its largest donation ever, to help make sure that the Internet Archive is both more sustainable as an organization, and that the works it makes available will be more permanently available on a more distributed, decentralized system. The Internet Archive is a perfect example of the type of organization that can benefit from a more distributed internet.

Another such organization is the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which, among its many, many projects, maintains and develops SecureDrop, the incredibly important tool for journalists and whistleblowers, which was initially developed in part by Aaron Swartz (as DeadDrop). So it's great to see that the Freedom of the Press Foundation has now announced the largest donation it has ever received, coming from the Filecoin Foundation for the Distributed Web (the sister organization of the Filecoin Foundation):

Today, for the first time, that calculus has changed. We’re thrilled to announce the largest grant in the history of Freedom of the Press Foundation that will ensure SecureDrop survives — and thrives — for years to come. The Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web — a new grantmaking organization whose mission is to permanently preserve humanity’s most important information — is funding FPF at over $1.7 million for each of the next three years, for a total of $5.8 million.

The funding will largely go towards sustaining and expanding our SecureDrop team, funding the development of the next-generation of the system, including exploring a new zero-trust architecture for the decentralized servers. This grant will ensure that SecureDrop will not only be sustainable over the long term, but will be easier to use and hopefully safer than ever. In short, it will have a game-changing impact on how we can build and improve SecureDrop for journalists around the world. You can read about some of our technical plans for the future here.

This is great to see as SecureDrop is another one of those tools that is so key, but as an open source project is often in a precarious position without the financial support to make sure that there is active development.

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, decentralization, filecoin, free speech, journalism, securedrop, whistleblowers
Companies: filecoin foundation, freedom of the press foundation