After reading about the “suicide” of yet another whistleblower, it got me thinking.
When working at large enough company, it’s entirely possible that at some point you will get across some information the company does not want to be made public, but your ethics mandate you blow the whistle. So, I was wondering if I were in that position how I would approach creating a dead man’s switch in order to protect myself.
From wikipedia:
A dead man’s switch is a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness, or being bodily removed from control. Originally applied to switches on a vehicle or machine, it has since come to be used to describe other intangible uses, as in computer software.
In this context, a dead man’s switch would trigger the release of information. Some additional requirements could include:
- No single point of failure. (aka a usb can be stolen, your family can be killed, etc)
- Make the existence of the switch public. (aka make sure people know of your mutually assured destruction)
- Secrets should be safe until you die, disappear, or otherwise choose to make them public.
Anyway, how would you go about it?
A whistleblower doesn’t need a dead man’s switch as they’d just release the document.
A muckracker does.
I think its useful for situation where I’m in process of collecting evidence, so I can keep tge switch just in case I get caught in the process but at least the evidence so far can be public
A whistleblower is likely to have access to sensitive data or other forms of leverage not directly linked to whatever they’re whistleblowing on. Of course this sort of insurance policy would be useful to them.
You may not be able to collect more if you publish everything at the start
True that…
If you really have secrets, you shouldn’t have a dead man’s switch.
You should have released it all on day one.
“What makes them keep you alive then?”
It’s not like corporations are going to get punished for killing you regardless.
Another thing to consider is that you won’t know immediately that the information you stumbles upon is incriminating. Sometimes it may take years until you have all the pieces of the puzzle.
Fwiw I’ve actually thought about a dead man’s switch for a while now. When my partner and I were going through end-of-life stuff, having the ability to delete or open things as needed after you’re dead can be important.
I have a rough design in my head where you register various monitors (e.g. checking email, logging into Lemmy, etc) and so long as you reach a specified threshold you’re considered alive.
Build in a duress code or dead code that can be entered by your next of kin, then you got something workable.
For a dead drop like you described in your OP, I agree that instructions to an attorney is probably your best bet. But in the scenario you’re describing, it sounds like having this code won’t be valuable.
The problem with releasing them on day one is that you then can’t gather more. If you’ve only just exposed the edges of the malfeasance you need time to get the rest before exposing it. Go too early and the rest of the evidence can be destroyed, covered up or those holding it coearsed into silence.
Having a dead man’s switch is a way to ensure whatever you’ve gathered gets released if you’re no longer in a position to gather more. As such I disagree with the poster about making it public knowledge before release. Keep it secret until you have everything, then release it.
Well there are various services that let you disclose info to certain people upon death. examples: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-prepare-your-digital-life-accounts-for-your-death
So you could create those and send them to various journalists or whoever you think would be interested. Then ensure in your will that they are notified of your death. Will them a small object or something.
Tbh I think the concept of a dead man switch is fantasy. You always hear about them in place but then nothing happens when the person dies.
Has there EVER been a dead man switch that worked?
Didn’t Epstein have one? I think if something that incriminating can be eliminated, the concept as you said doesn’t work.
Epstein has been dead for years… what did his switch trigger?
That’s what I mean. Maybe I’m misremembering, but didn’t he have one that was supposed to put out a list of names online or some shit? And then he died and nothing happened, likely because feds got to it.
Well then it didn’t work. If it ever existed in the first place.
And there were no other replies to my question, so my hypothesis stands. :D
(Tho I looked at this thread on the original instance and it has 96 comments vs 32 here on hb; likely few people saw it due to non-federations.)
Set up several solar powered raspberry pies with cheap iot SIM cards, each will check a vm in the cloud or at home for a key. If the key isn’t present or can’t be reached they release the info. Could have several servers to store keys to check. Everyday you enter a code to prevent the key from being removed.
You would need to account for temporary connection issues to make sure it doesn’t send it after a network outage or something.
Nice try Boeing.
My lips are sealed
This one works if you are an inbox-zero sort of person. Write a script to send yourself an email daily. Have another utility look for your reply. If you go too long without replying, have it trigger whatever other emails/actions you would like to happen.
they can just smash the computer with the scripts running
Anyone with less capabilities of a medium sized nation-state will not be able to “just smash” an AWS datacenter.
that’s right, they can just ask amazon to shut it down
How will they even know it exists until the switch is triggered?
The fuck kind of information you sitting on there!?
He knows the real identity of the Hamburgler
The McDonald’s CEO? He’s a criminal after all
Nothing atm, but you never know what you may find. I would assume that most whistleblowers didn’t know they joined a shady organisation until years down the line…
- An automated SMS message to activate something or something
- As Back-up, automated email that is checked if received or not (in cases where no mobile connection but there is internet)
- Final Back-up, none of the two maybe, radio that disables the mechanism for 48 hours just incase
One issue from a legal/prosecutorial point of view (even assuming there is a willingness for the government to prosecute) is that the rules of evidence require authentication of documents. In the case of a whistleblower, they are themselves a witness and can authenticate (that is, attest to the genuine nature of) any supporting documents they bring in. If a whistleblower is killed, even if the government has the documents the whistleblower intended to authenticate, it becomes a lot trickier to use.
I guess it would be more of a public court thing
Give the encrypted file to one person, the key to another and do not keep either yourself. They exchange them if you die.
Why not keep a copy?
Also, both people are single point of failures. Maybe, 5-6 people where each has an encrypted payload and the keys to decrypt everyone else’s payload.
IIRC Julian Assange had something like that set up. There used to be a file you could download from WikiLeaks that was encrypted and supposedly contained something very spicy, and if anything happened to him the password would be released somehow.
No idea if that’s still a thing or not though.
It doesn’t make any sense. If you are a whistleblower is because you already published the information. They are not killing you so the information does not get revealed. They are killing because you already did.
you just need more information and then you need to prove that you have more information so they can kill you anyways
There are very few situations where a dead man’s switch would have helped these whistleblowers.
Once they have gone public and are at risk of being “suicided” they should have already released everything they knew. Sitting on it after already going public in any way only helps if the goal is to blackmail or extort the company, rather than to expose the company or protect others.
A lot of people have latched onto the idea of a dead man’s switch (and I get it, technical solutions are fun to create), but the only part of the scenario it would help is before the whistleblower goes public, while they are still gathering information and haven’t yet been discovered by the company. Even then, it wouldn’t protect them from being killed, it would only ensure that the partial work is released in case they were discovered and prevented from finishing it.
A “live-man’s switch” might be a better idea. If you’re in such a high profile situation and you’re scared enough that you think you need a dead man’s switch, make frequent unprompted public declarations that you’re healthy and not suicidal, and that should anything happen to you, you blame the company.
Btw, that sounds a lot like warrant canaries, where you say that no subpoena orders were recieved as of the date xxxx and if it doesn’t get updated it means that a subpoena was recieved.
Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
An example of a canary from the web mail service cock.li: https://cock.li/canary.asc.txt
Didn’t help McAfee
Interesting!
make frequent unprompted public declarations that you’re healthy and not suicidal
I’ve worried that this could be abused
The hardest part would be how to trigger the kill-switch periodically without showing it to your adversary whilst keeping it easy. Having your device queried directly would be a dead giveaway. My idea without involving people would be as follows:
- Set up a program that syncs files to a remote third-party cloud
- Sync it to a directory that frequently changes when you use your device (your docs, for example)
- Have a server that queries the third-party drive for that synchronised directory
- If there are no changes, trigget the alarm
But since this plan relies on the secrecy, it’s kind of ruined now. That, and I think your threat model is a bit too extreme.
Well, you’d need to send a message to some people that you know would care, when you die or are kidnapped.
There are plenty of services for sending any sort of message.
You’ll send the data with a private key and hand out the paired public key before you die. That way any tampering with the data will be obvious to the receiver.
I’d just send a link to the data. For example store the data on Proton drive with a share link.
Now you’d need to detect that you’re dead or kidnapped. You could have a timer of say a week or a month, and whenever an email or message is received it resets it. You could also send a warning message to yourself before it goes off, so you have a chance to deal with errors such as an email not arriving.
You’d need a 2nd service to check if the main service is running. Or perhaps it just replies once you send it a message once a day or week or month.
You’d also have to make sure that your reset message to the service is secured. Most likely it will be as long as it isn’t absolutely obvious, like you japping on about it at work. But one idea would be to use a proton mail address and keep a pin lock on the app. If you want to go the extra mile the email should also contain something only you can know.
Quite frankly I don’t think they’d even expect you to have any such system set up and they wouldn’t hack you before you’re dead. But maybe I’m wrong. If you really suspect that you’d need someone who is specialized in infosec.
I’d say go look for an existing service that can do this entirely via email, I’d bet it exists already. Otherwise you need to be able to code a bit or find a coder.
I’d say go look for an existing service that can do this entirely via email, I’d bet it exists already.
I think any official service that offers this could be immediately captured or bribed to suppress signalling by a larger more powerful entity, since it would be an easy goto that they could trap for.
I reckon implementing it as chaotically and as distributed as possible, might be the only viable solution, albeit with multiple fault entry points.
I used to build automation tools (shudderVBAshudder) that the “proper” technology wouldn’t be bothered to make. Over 15 years I had over 200 tools built out. I had tied all my code to a single file that I would use to keep everything updated. I had imagined in so many ways of setting up a dead man’s switch to start slowly corrupting and degrading everything or to just implode everything… Would have worked except our company got bought out and everything became useless and I got laid off lol. Got a nice pay check out of it
You wanted to ruin your company? Why?
Ha well it was more of a “oh crap we need to bring him back ASAP” kinda thing to get my job back. And as others said this was all mainly for fun thinking about it. The intrusive thoughts
When did they say they wanted to ruin their company?
The slowly corrupting and degrading everything part.
But when did they say they wanted to do that? They just said they imagined it. I’ve imagined ways to screw over my workplace as well, it doesn’t mean I want to
I think you are being needlessly pedantic.
I’m not being pedantic at all. The entire premise of your question was them “wanting” to ruin their company. There’s no other way to interpret that
If you want to rephrase what you said to clear up the confusion, I’m all ears
