Green Hornet

Freedom of Speech in the age of surveillance

Thursday 14 February 13

Thursday 14 February 131. Problem: 

Censorship. Restrictive and over-reaching legislation. Witch-hunts for whistleblowers. These are the signs of an oppressive regime that works not for its people, but against them. These are the tools that maintain the hegemony upon which dictatorships are built.People in power do things that they're not meant to. Things that are illegal or morally unacceptable. Once whistleblowers blow the whistle their lives are irrevocably changed. They become victims. They become targets of the companies and governments that they've worked for. They are ostracized for doing what is for the best for society as a whole.

Source: { document, authenticity, security, transmission device }

Green Hornet

Green Hornet

TOR

Journalist: { publication, story, proof: { documents, statements, research } }

Thursday 14 February 132. Solution:

Our solution is to create an anonymous framework through which whistleblowers can talk safely and privately with journalists. We are building a tool that lets users connect privately through a computer or mobile phone to a trusted end point where they can send documents, anonymously and securely. We do this by encrypting data on the source’s device, relaying it through the anonymous TOR network, and decrypting it at the other side.

Thursday 14 February 133. What we've done.

We have partnered with Al Jazeera and the TOR Network to create a prototype that will send secure data from multiple devices. Our next steps are to run this through the anonymizing network, to test the solution on multiple devices, and to test and audit the solution for its security.

4. Who we are

GreenHornet is part of a greater initiative - Afridocs. Afridocs believes that the African continent cannot progress without free speech.Therefore, Afridocs is committed to finding, creating and promoting technological tools that will enable Africa’s citizens to fight against oppression, speak out without fear, give us the freedom to access information, and build an informed population of highly educated individuals. The directors of Afridocs are myself, Guy Taylor, businessman and developer with deep hooks into the local and international security industry; Jason Norwood-Young, a developer, entrepreneur and journalist, with lots of experience in the news industry; Theresa Mallinson, a freelance journalist and access-to-information advocate; Phillip de Wet, a senior journalist at the Mail & Guardian; and Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein.

Thursday 14 February 135. How we help civil society.

Green Hornet is not a solution in and of itself - it is a key building block for anyone dealing in sensitive information, where source protection is imperative. Green Hornet will be a free, open source library which will integrate into other organisations’ solutions. Once the product is built, we’d like to be called upon to assist with architecting and building those solutions, along with Afridocs’ other projects around journalism tools, document storage, document distribution and journalism security education.