Strongbox Lets Anonymous Sources Share Info With New Yorker Writers

The New Yorker has created an online drop box system that changes the way sources can give information to the publication’s reporters. Called Strongbox, the tip box and file sharing system allows users to share tips anonymously with writers.

Kevin Poulson, an editor at Wired, wanted a more secure way than email for anonymous sources to share information, Folio magazine reports. He pointed out in a blog post that emails can be easily accessed by anyone who wants to find out the identity of a reporter’s source.

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"There’s a growing technology gap: phone records, e-mail, computer forensics, and outright hacking are valuable weapons for anyone looking to identify a journalist’s source,” Poulson wrote in his blog. “With some exceptions, the press has done little to keep pace: our information-security efforts tend to gravitate toward the parts of our infrastructure that accept credit cards."


Sources submitting information using Strongbox can use a code name and not their real name.

Folio magazine calls the launch of Strongbox “more poignant now given the recent devlopments between the Associated Press and the Justice Department.”

In May, it was revealed that the Justice Department secretly collected two months of telephone records from Associated Press reporters and editors. It was called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”

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