creating crowdfunding for whistleblowers

[Auralea]

Good afternoon fellow cryptopians,

I was thinking last night about the possibilities for independent research journalists to fund themselves through a kind of ''crypto-Patreon'' when I got hit with the idea of crowdfunding whistleblowers. We could make a system in which you had an asker of information who made certain criteria for when the money gets released and then all the backers would get to vote on when the money is released. This could for example be once the giver of information goes to the appropriate court system to share their information or when a big unrelated media company judges a particular piece of information to be true or at least relevant enough to be rewarded with an article.

I think this could bring a lot of positive image for the cryptocommunity and it could help to realise the true potential of cryptocurrency, which in my opinion is apolitical money. There are already established organisations to give this money to, such as Wikileaks for whom I carry a great respect and I would encourage everyone to consider giving them your support. However, relying on one organisation to do the heavy work of seeking out the truth no matter the difficulty is not only vulnerable to attack, it is also unfair to the founders and directors of Wikileaks. What I would propose is a more or less decentralised and uncensorable (potentially having the most relevant data stored as plaintext in the actual proposed blockchain) database of leaked whistleblower information. The whistleblowers themselves would obviously be the recipients of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency to fund their independence from the organisation that they are inevitably going to have to leave behind.

I could quite simply make a website that would interface with a second layer solution on ethereum. The whole system is something that I and the people around me could potentially build. Therefore I would like to test the reaction to such a proposal on this webforum. Thank you for reading and I hope to read some interesting replies!

-Auralea

*edit* spelling mistake

[TheCoinGrabber]

Well that sounds like an interesting idea. Thing is, what do they need to do to qualify? Is simply leaking one document enough that they'd be eligible for donations? This could definitely help though, once they start getting harassed with lawsuits, which can get quite nasty.


Anyway, hope you keep posting updates about your project here. Good luck.

[Auralea]

Thanks for your reaction!

My idea was to get a case like this:

Person A asks for information on a subject. He specifies what this ''information'' is. It could be a document, or a public statement, or a witness statement in the court of law of a certain country.

Person A also specifies how much assets he wants to put as the target amount. This is the amount of money / backing that is estimated to be required for the leaker of information to be safe from attacks against his or her income or physical safety.

This is where the crowd comes in. The platform would be a place where people can browse certain investigative journalism projects or requests for information from whistleblowers. If one, for example, cares a lot about freedom of information regarding Russia meddling in the Trump campaign we could all fund an adress that gives the crowdfunded amount of assets to any person able to prove in a US court of law that the Trump campaign was influenced. This is just a random example and not one which I think works the best for a number of reasons. However, it is the intention to provide some financial stimulation for whistleblowers to come forward. It would not even be exclusively for their legal defence costs. It could also just be a straight up financial incentive. Another, perhaps better example: if you could prove with video evidence that multiple top level Hollywood producer displayed unwanted sexual behaviour you would get a million dollars of untraceable cryptocurrency. I have the feeling that this could potentially be revolutionairy in the way we treat the truth and the people in power.

Thanks for reading!

Auralea

[ColdShoulder]

This is not a bad idea... I.would support something like thid

[Auralea]

Thank you for your reaction, we are thinking of proposing it in a couple of other places where people might be interested. It could work perfectly with something like Ethereum. The data would have to be stored outside of the active system in a decentralised way as well though, preferably something resilient.

[Mometaskers]

This is a good idea. Anything to help these brave people would be very appreciated. The good thing with crowdfunding it on a cryptonetwork is that it would not have to go through the banking system, initially. Hopefully there is some level of anonymity to prevent donors being targeted as well.

My idea was to get a case like this:

Person A asks for information on a subject. He specifies what this ''information'' is. It could be a document, or a public statement, or a witness statement in the court of law of a certain country.

Person A also specifies how much assets he wants to put as the target amount. This is the amount of money / backing that is estimated to be required for the leaker of information to be safe from attacks against his or her income or physical safety.

Would also be nice if there's a mechanism to pay for leaks that have already been released without anyone asking for a request. For example, if I know I might be in danger, I might want to immediately release the information, provided I'd have a platform to publicize it and deter assassination attempts.

Ideally, it would be as easy as uploading a video on Youtube. Would this have a format like that? Like, every leak released can be accessed by anyone in the public?

[merchantofzeny]

Thank you for your reaction, we are thinking of proposing it in a couple of other places where people might be interested. It could work perfectly with something like Ethereum. The data would have to be stored outside of the active system in a decentralised way as well though, preferably something resilient.

Would be cool if this have an app and data is somehow spread over everyone that has installed it. I doubt anyone would try to collect all those data. Having an app would also make it much easier to send money.

[Zeneize]

This is not a bad idea at all. I'm sure CIA and NSA will love it!

[Auralea]

Thanks for the reactions everyone.

The idea could definetly contain some mechanism to upload information before anyone has requested it. It could be for a limit price for example, or just released and have an active donation adress attached to it.

As for the intelligence services liking this idea, I think they will be neutral to it. There are some benefits to them such as having a more complete file on certain things or running their own programs on the application for sure. The other side of the coin however is also quite obvious. They might themselves become a target of a leak. I do not think this will be the primary thought of intelligence services to be honest. The most fact of the matter is that the information revealed on such a platform will in general not make much of an impact. Wikileaks often has leaks that go almost completely unnoticed except for maybe by those affected by the leaks.

Thanks for reading, seems to be quite an interesting idea to put on a blockchain.

[Auralea]

The problem with making this an offchain app is that this application could specifically be targeted to retain data at the ISP level. If we would use something like a small ethereum transaction as a way to use certain functionalities within the application, it would be nearly impossible for law enforcement or nation state level actors to get behind the backers of a project or the person leaking the data through our system. It would very much so still be possible to find the leak with counter intelligence techniques of course which is something the system should be very aware of. However to repeat some of my last answer, I do not think intelligence services will be undivided in their condemnation of such a service. As a matter of fact, there might be some very important upsides to such a project for the intelligence community that has nothing to do with revealing the identity of backers or leakers.

Thanks for all the reactions once again!

Greetings,

Auralea

[Bitbratt]

Well that sounds like an interesting idea. Thing is, what do they need to do to qualify? Is simply leaking one document enough that they'd be eligible for donations? This could definitely help though, once they start getting harassed with lawsuits, which can get quite nasty.


Anyway, hope you keep posting updates about your project here. Good luck.


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Lol!