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Comment by toddrew | Hacker News Reader

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_t...

During the time I lived in Mexico there were 10 journalists killed in the state of Veracruz where I lived. They were journalists that spoke out about government corruption or cartel violence.

During the same time the entire police force of Veracruz were fired in one day and the navy replaced them.

Currently there's blogo del narco, borderland beat and a few other places online to read uncensored stories, but almost all have the writer's name. Something like Wikileaks for safe, anonymous reporting would be great for these countries.

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>Something like Wikileaks for safe, anonymous reporting would be great for these countries.

Couldn't agree more. If anybody is interested in building something in this area, please get in touch with me.

I'm part of a group of investigative journalists looking at organized crime and corruption (http://occrp.org/). Security is a big worry for us -- our journalists regularly receive threats and other harassment. We've talked about setting up an anonymous publishing system, but don't have the capacity to build it ourselves.

I'd love to talk with anybody who has thoughts on how to do anonymous reporting. Especially, how do you put something up anonymously or pseudonymously, but still publicise and get a decent readership for it?

I would like to help you with this, or at least talk it through with you, but the site in your profile is down and no other contact information is listed. (You need to put your email in the "about" section for it to show up--the email field is not public.) My email is in my profile :)

I would be happy to contribute to such a project, however security is not my domain and I am therefore ill-equipped to take the lead.

I'd like to do something for this idea if I can. Can you drop me an email (in my profile)? The website on your profile is down, so I don't know how to get in touch with you.

Perhaps consider reaching out to the security folk at e.g. Tor Project? They've multiple mailing lists (https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo) and many friendly people on them. In particular, 'tor-talk' often finds itself engaged in all sorts of general Tor / anonymity-related discussions as well as Tor-specific technical nuances. It is usually rather welcoming and often sensitive to more or less any security-related (especially when Tor software does / can play a role in them) issues and questions.

Of course this is the 'less hairy' technical side of anonymity; probably what you have in mind would involve social as well as network/software-based infrastructure, especially if outreach / readership (as you said) are important (and I suppose they would be rather central, as impact would basically (maybe) very much be / is a function of / directly depend(s) on readership sizes etc.) I suppose one would need to answer questions such as e.g. how to maintain an image of credibility(?) etc. if article authors only use pseudonyms. But making sure anonymity of the publishers / authors is possible at least in the narrow internet networking sense might be a start, perhaps.

I've nearly finished reading this: http://www.amazon.com/El-Narco-Mexicos-Criminal-Insurgency/d... Absolutely fascinating account of the violence and history of the cartels and central America as it relates to the cartels.

Currently there's blogo del narco, borderland beat and a few other places online to read uncensored stories

I have read a few of those stories and what I saw haunts me to this day. Never did I imagine that people would do such a thing to another human being.

but almost all have the writer's name

Part of me wants to call it bravery, but to me it's way too dangerous. You simply do not take any chances with such savages: they'll kill, rape, torture and then chop up you, your wife, daughter /son and everyone else dear to you. For all practical purposes the narcos have unlimited money, they have thousands of 'soldiers' in USA and can either pay them, wipe a debt off, initiation or just call in a favor. One phone call and it's done.

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