[tails-news] French journal Mediapart supports Tails, others…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: Tails - News
Date:  
To: amnesia-news
Subject: [tails-news] French journal Mediapart supports Tails, others should too
We are very excited to announce that [Mediapart](https://www.mediapart.fr), an
independent French investigative journal, has decided to support Tails
financially every year.

![](https://tails.boum.org/news/mediapart/mediapart.png)

In the past years, Mediapart has played a central role in the revelation and
investigation of several major French political scandals. As such they are
well aware of the digital threats faced by their sources, their journalists,
and their readers.

Tails has gained recognition by being used by Edward Snowden and the
journalists reporting on his NSA leaks in 2014. [According to Barton
Gellman](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/help-support-little-
known-privacy-tool-has-been-critical-journalists-reporting-nsa):

« _Privacy and encryption work, but it's too easy to make a mistake that
exposes you. Tails puts the essential tools in one place, with a design that
makes it hard to screw them up. I could not have talked to Edward Snowden
without this kind of protection. I wish I'd had it years ago._ »

Since then [many journalists around the world](https://tails.boum.org/news/who
_are_you_helping/index.en.html#journalists) understood this approach and
adopted Tails to make it easier to stay safe. As Jean-Marc Manach puts it:

« _War reporters have to buy helmets, bullet-proof vests and rent armored
cars; journalists using the Internet for their investigations are much
luckier: to be as secured as war reporters, they only have to download Tails,
burn it on a CD, install it on a SD card, and learn the basics of information
and communication security, and it's free!_ »

In the same way that news organizations invest in physical security or
proprietary software tools to do their work, news organizations should also
invest in free software tools that, as [security experts like Bruce
Schneier](http://boingboing.net/2013/12/15/bruce-schneier-and-eben-
moglen-2.html) have repeatedly stated, are going to be safe:

« _I think most of the public domain privacy tools are going to be safe, yes.
[...] I think that Tails is going to be safe. [...] You know, the NSA has a
big lever when a tool is written closed-source by a for-profit corporation.
There are levers they have that they don't have in the open source
international, altruistic community. And these are generally written by
crypto-paranoids, they're pretty well designed._ »

As such, Tails has been the recommended secure platform for use with the
[SecureDrop](https://securedrop.org/) and
[GlobaLeaks](https://globaleaks.org/) whistle-blowing platforms.

Talking about the challenges of the adoption of encryption by journalists, the
Internet freedom expert [Christopher Soghoian said at
#EncryptNews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JktB6h-qnKA), a conference on
digital security and journalism:

« _News organizations need to also contribute to this community pool of tools.
We need to have [reporters] contributing patches to PGP, OTR, and Tails. These
organizations need to be funding $5.000 or $10.000 improvements to make these
tools better. Because everyone is relying on these tools and none of the major
organizations that are actually benefiting them are actually contributing to
their development._ »

Mediapart is the first news organization to officially endorse Tails and
answer our call for donations. We hope they are not going to be the last.

If your organization is also interested in becoming a regular donor, please
contact us at [tails-accounting@???](mailto:tails-accounting@boum.org)
([OpenPGP key](https://tails.boum.org/tails-accounting.key)).

[Donate](https://tails.boum.org/donate/index.en.html#mediapart)



URL: https://tails.boum.org/news/mediapart/index.en.html