Fun

Blockchain may help whistleblowers of the future

News Feed - 2024-07-19 07:07:17

Alexander Linton1 hour agoBlockchain may help whistleblowers of the futureDecentralized technology might have the ability to offer whistleblowers of the future more secure methods for sharing evidence.138 Total viewsListen to article 0:00OpinionOwn this piece of crypto historyCollect this article as NFTJoin us on social networksJulian Assange is home in Australia thanks to a very, very large Bitcoin (BTC) donation. 


While Bitcoin proved invaluable to Assange, crypto could offer a lot more than just funds — enabling decentralized storage networks for archiving, secure identity management for establishing trust, and safer communication for information dissemination. These are practical applications that can improve reporting and help whistleblowers avoid loss of work, crushing legal battles or, worse, jail cells.


After striking a plea deal with United States authorities, Assange"s last hurrah with the U.S. legal system would take place in the territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. Just one problem — flights to a remote enclave of islands in the Western Pacific Ocean are expensive. Miraculously, a single Bitcoin donation covered nearly the entire cost, delivering Assange back to Australia debt-free.


Related: Crypto won big in the Supreme Court"s Loper Bright decision


This wasn’t the first time Assange received major support from the crypto community, with AssangeDAO raising $53 million to help cover his legal fees back in 2022. But surely crypto can offer whistleblowers something more than lump sum donations.The tech that gets us there


Although whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have successfully delivered reports to the public without especially sophisticated technology, it came with enormous personal sacrifice. A user-facing app that unifies certain decentralized protocols and networks could make it simpler and safer for whistleblowers to gather, share and disseminate evidence for reports in the future.


Archiving applications, such as OpenArchive’s Safe, already allow users to document and store evidence using decentralized backends. With Safe, decentralized archivist communities can leverage Filecoin and IPFS to gather and store evidence of wrongdoing in countries like Mexico — such as electoral violence and ‘disappearing’ people (there are at least 105,000 missing people in the country). While Safe is not a Web3 app or protocol, they have integrated decentralized storage into an app designed to help people expose injustices.Julian Assange"s plea deal. Source: United States Department of Justice


Integrations can go deeper than this — but they haven’t been built (yet). The protocols and networks that could be integrated arebeing built, though, and in some cases they’re quite mature.


Permawebs, such as Arweave, can be used to create data records that are not only decentralized, but immutable. This is useful for tamper-proof reporting — preventing evidence from being altered or destroyed once it’s uploaded.


Adding to this, self-sovereign identity projects, like Sovrin, allow for a simple and verifiable way to prove identity. For example, this gives whistleblowers the ability to prove they actually work for (and therefore have access to information about) the organisation they’re reporting on.


These approaches are vastly superior to current methods of messenger Know-Your-Customer, such as requiring a phone number on sign-up. This is because it allows the whistleblower to share their identity with just the journalist (who may be protected by source confidentiality laws), and not the platform itself. In the past, we’ve seen metadata from encrypted chat apps used to prosecute whistleblowers, such as in the case of WhatsApp and Natalie Edwards — a former Treasury Department official convicted of leaking information to BuzzFeed.


Related: Only Donald Trump can save crypto from Joe Biden


On top of all of these layers, zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), pioneered by projects like Zama, allow us to verify the information required for a report without needing open access to everything. For example, a whistleblower could prove they work for an organisation withoutrevealing their name.


Imagine an all-in-one whistleblower front-end that integrated each of these technologies. A whistleblower could anonymously sign-up, encrypt evidentiary files using FHE, store them in their personal in-app archive using the Arweave, connect with a journalist, trustlessly verify each other’s identity, and start anonymously sharing evidence.


Even if the whistleblower stops responding or the chat is completely destroyed, the journalist will still have access to the files. They can compute a statistical summary of the report without requiring direct access to other private or confidential information — or metadata identifying the whistleblower. If the case ends up in court, the journalist couldn’t name the whistleblower.


Because Web3 is built to be interoperable, we should be able to fit these puzzle pieces together and create a functional crypto-based stack for whistleblowers.


In some places, major organisations, like banks, are required to provide infrastructure and protections for whistleblowers. If we want to protect the whistleblowers of the future, we should be on the front foot advocating for and building decentralized, crypto-first solutions for information gathering and reporting.Alexander Linton is a guest columnist for Cointelegraph and is the director of the encrypted messaging app Session and its nonprofit foundation OPTF. He obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism from RMIT University before attending the University of Melbourne for graduate school.


This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.# Blockchain# OpinionAdd reaction

News Feed

Taiwanese music celebrity’s Solana memecoin sees wild price action after $40M presale
Zhiyuan Sun7 hours agoTaiwanese music celebrity’s Solana memecoin sees wild price action after $40M presaleDespite a largely successful sale, not all participants are happy about the volatile price action.4120 Total vi
Bitcoin Miners Now In Selling Mode For A Year: Should You Be Concerned?
Este artículo también está disponible en español. On-chain data shows that Bitcoin miners have been selling for around a year now. Here’s how much they have sold so
Saudi Arabia and OPEC Reveal Surprise Oil Production Cut; White House Insists Cuts Aren’t Advisable Right Now
Saudi Arabia and OPEC Reveal Surprise Oil Production Cut; White House Insists Cuts Aren"t Advisable Right Now On Sunday, Saudi Arabia and several major oil producers announced thei
Andrew Tate token surpasses MOTHER amid claims of insider activity
Jesse Coghlan3 hours agoAndrew Tate token surpasses MOTHER amid claims of insider activityBubblemaps’ analysis claims a handful of wallets purchased 30% of the supply of the memecoin DADDY before Andrew Tate promoted i
Bitcoin, Ethereum Technical Analysis: BTC Hits 1-Month Low, Following Easter Selloff
Bitcoin, Ethereum Technical Analysis: BTC Hits 1-Month Low, Following Easter Selloff Following a weekend of bearish pressure, BTC’s price fell to its lowest level in over a
South Korean Crypto Transactions Command an Average of $7 Billion per Day on Domestic Exchanges
South Korean Crypto Transactions Command an Average of $7 Billion per Day on Domestic Exchanges An investigation unveiled a growing fever among crypto traders in
Dogecoin Eyes $1 Milestone: Is A $100 Billion Market Cap Next?
Este artículo también está disponible en español. The cryptocurrency known for its climb fueled by memes, Dogecoin (DOGE), is slowly approaching crucial price points that
Bitcoin Sets New All Time High Spiking Over $35,000
Bitcoin Sets New All Time High Spiking Over $35,000 Bitcoin’s record-breaking start to the new year continued on January 5 after the top crypto set another
Brayden Lindrea37 minutes agoCrypto exchange Binance reopens exchange services in BelgiumIn June, Binance was ordered to halt its services in Belgium "with immediate effect," leading to the exchange redirecting
Wirecard CEO Quits as Crypto Card Firm Reveals Missing $2.1 Billion Does Not Exist
Wirecard CEO Quits as Crypto Card Firm Reveals Missing $2.1 Billion Does Not ExistWirecard chief executive officer quit as the crypto card payments firm revealed that the €1.9
FTX Execs Gave $70 Million to Both Democrats and Republicans Heading Into the 2022 US Midterms
FTX Execs Gave $70 Million to Both Democrats and Republicans Heading Into the 2022 US Midterms After the collapse of FTX, a number of journalists reported on the fact that FTX exec
US Bank Outflows and Concerns Mount: 11 Banks Bail Out First Republic Bank From Collapse
US Bank Outflows and Concerns Mount: 11 Banks Bail Out First Republic Bank From Collapse After the fall of Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and Signature Bank (SNBY), Fi