Enigma Streamlines Anonymous Whistleblowing

On July 12, 2007, at 10:44 EST, a video, later released by Wikileaks, was recorded. "Collateral Murder", as it was called, was an exposé of indiscriminate airstrikes by two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters on eighteen civilians, in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad in Iraq, ten of which were standing and talking in a public square. Among those killed were Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, and driver Saeed Chmagh. There were also some adults and children in a van, which stopped to help - who were shot as well. The two children in the van were seriously injured.

Later tanks arrived at the scene and soldiers joked over their radios that they were driving over dead bodies.

The soldier who had enough of a conscience to release the video, Bradley Manning, was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment - including the torture of solitary confinement -, reduction in rank, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. Fortunately, Manning was eventually pardoned by President Obama at the end of his presidency, and released - after nearly ten years of captivity.

Incidentally, I had a trailer of my book quietly removed from YouTube without explanation, likely because it included some segments from the video. After several inquiries, I have, as of yet, not been offered a single response or explanation of any kind.

While it is now almost universally accepted that the Iraq war was unjustified, its casualties greatly exceed the number of deaths from the twin towers incident, which was the war's casus belli. The real motives for the war remain shrouded in mystery, as do the details surrounding the American Airlines security breach, and the similarity of the collapse of the towers to a controlled demolition. Operation Himmler, a similar false flag operation in Nazi Germany, as well as a miriad of modern real-world conspiracies, await detailed investigation, but are hindered due to the likely unpleasant fate of contemporary whistleblowers.

On May 20, 2013, another conscientious whistleblower, who had just quit his job with the NSA, Edward Joseph Snowden, disclosed, according to the Pentagon, around 1.7 million NSA documents, which provided definitive proof of massive, covert snooping on innocent American - and foreign - citizens. His revelation included the PRISM electronic data mining program. He had hoped that this incriminating information would bring about a Constitutional challenge.

But a month later, the U. S. Department of Justice charged Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of "government property", and the Department of State revoked his passport. Snowden was stuck in an airport in Russia for over a month, until Russia granted him temporary asylum.

Snowden is now stuck in Moscow, and is unlikely to be pardoned by any politician.

Although his actions have opened debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, "national security" and information privacy, Snowden is being punished for his dedication to human dignity and basic human rights.

Julian Paul Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and came to international attention in 2010, with the publication of Collateral Murder, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, CableGate, and a quarter of a million diplomatic cables in 2010, as well as the Guantánamo files in 2011. Like clockwork, the U S. federal government launched a criminal investigation as the flow of information increased.

Wikileaks publishes incriminating secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. By 2015, WikiLeaks published more than 10 million documents, described by Assange as "a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents".

Now a citizen of Ecuador, Assange has remained in its Embassy in London since he was granted asylum there in August 2012. Like Manning and Snowden, Assange is a captive - the fate of the modern big-time whistleblower.

Aside from the fact that a bulletproof platform for whistleblowing needs to better address anonymity - particularly for those on the front lines, Wikileaks has some additional vulnerabilities that can also be resolved via Enigma's Secret Stores protocol:

1) Wikileaks is a human organization with a small paid staff and a few thousand volunteers. It could be disrupted. The organization is centralized to the extent that could enable its administration to be shut down. Smart contracts, in contrast, are inherently decentralized, peer-to-peer, and permanent.

2) There is an encrypted “insurance” file, the key to which could fit into Twitter messages, that would be released in the event that Assange is killed or Wikileaks stops functioning. If the key is released, then those decrypted files will reportedly be available instantaneously. The insurance file has reportedly been downloaded more than 100,000 times. There are more than 1,000 sites mirroring Wikileaks and its content. Wikileaks has made available downloadable files containing its entire archive of released materials to date.

Nevertheless, such a release could be prevented if the keyholder(s) disappear. The information contained in the release is temporal, and we must trust that it exists, and that the information would have an impact regardless of when it is released, &c. In short, it relies too much on a human chain and technology that will, at some point, become obsolete.

3) Websites require a domain name, which is obtained through the domain name system (“DNS”), which is hierarchical. Information travels from root servers down to zones containing lower-level servers. A domain can stop working for a variety of reasons. It could be overloaded with traffic intentionally or unintentionally, causing breakdown.

4) Wikileaks has had to switch hosts due to pressure by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman. This could happen again. Smart contracts, however, are unstoppable.

5) The means of collecting money, already difficult, could be made even more difficult. Smart contracts allow any digitized currency to be used. The Enigma protocol adds the required layer of anonymity.

It should be immediately apparent that those who achieve power through corruption would like to keep it that way. Unfortunately, whistleblowers often do not come forward because, as we have seen, their lives can be in danger. If these three conscientious individuals came forward against such dangers, imagine how many more will speak openly once the dangers are removed.

As long as witnesses to malicious acts are prevented from coming forward, corruption will reign supreme. Once exposed, the corrupt, and their systems of corruption will retreat.

Whistleblowing should be a constant enterprise with markets for such information adding incentives for providing much needed information. The bigger the conspiracy, the greater the reward for exposing it. Valuable information attracts a premium.

In a bounty system empowered by the Secret Stores protocol, funding parties will be anonymous, whistleblowers will be anonymous, and documentation can be readily reviewed - including evidence.

While some progress has been made over the last few years regarding anonymity in corporate whistleblowing, the leaker still must deal with fallible politicians. There is currently no guarantee that the human to which the incriminating evidence is reported does not have a vested interest in keeping the information concealed, or that the reporter is safe from harm. Over time, the probability that a malicious individual has access to the person's identity increases - particularly when the leak involves high level politics.

By using an automated and fully anonoymous smart contract, no human can ever see the identity of the reporter.

Having Secret Contracts in whistleblowing will, at a minimum, result in less corruption.

If implemented on a large scale, the Secret Store protocol will have the potential to topple tyrannies from small to large.