If Government Kills You, This Company Promises to Blow Your Whistle

“So what if something happens
to you?” A company called Dead Man Zero (DMZ) poses the question.
“Especially if you’re trying to do something good like blow the
whistle on something evil or wrong in society or government. There
should be consequences if you are hurt, jailed, or even killed for
trying to render a genuine and risky service to our free
society.”

Well, Dead Man Zero says it can help you out in these kinds of
situations. If the government (or some other entity) kills you to
try to stop you from leaking important information, they’ll leak it
for you.

The organization says its services became necessary after Edward
Snowden blew the lid on the National Security Agency’s mass
surveillance of the American public, and the Obama administration

responded by “ordering federal employees to report suspicious
actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling
techniques that are not scientifically proven to work.”

Vice contributor Joseph Cox spotlighted the service
yesterday and
explained its basics:

First, you upload your files, encrypted with a password, to a
cloud storage service. Then you include this link, along with the
password and an optional description of your material. The site
will then add its own layer of encryption, too. You are then given
your own unique URL to log in from, accessible only
using the Tor browser.

If you don’t log back into it once a day, week or month
(those are the options), your documents and respective password
will be published on the site, and sent to a list of email
addresses that you provide in advance; most likely journalists you
trust to do the story justice, or your lawyer. The site can also be
accessed via a smart phone, assuming you can browse hidden services
on it.

“If events overtake you, you can still overtake your
adversaries,” the site reads. For a user to upload their archive,
they are required to pay 0.30 Bitcoin (around £70 or $120 at
today’s rate), and according to a counter on the site, 399 sets of
documents have been uploaded, and 17 will be released if their
owner doesn’t log in within the next 24 hours.

DMZ didn’t respond to his request for
more information, but Cox points out some potential issues: First,
no one knows who is behind DMZ; Second, as security expert Bruce
Schneier has suggested about similar setups, it could give someone
incentive to kill a DMZ user, or even just stop them from logging
in; Third, the cloud’s security could be compromised; Fourth,
there’s no guarantee DMZ will be around for years to come.