Data journalists can now gain access to previously secret data—leaked or hacked from government or other sources—through a recently launched service called Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets). Fronted by noted FOIA filer and national security journalist Emma Best, the DDoS archive helps data journalists find leads, flesh out stories, and discover second or third sources for their stories.
Best adds that DDoSecrets itself will not attempt to extract stories from its massive data cache. “Agendas creep into press releases, and biases, misrepresentations or misunderstandings get repeated,” Best says. “We’ve seen this with releases from some other platforms. By simply saying, ‘Here’s the data, it should speak for itself,’ it’s easier to accept.”
Sam Thielman tells us more about DDoS in this excerpt from an article from the Columbia Journalism Review:
The site, which has existed since December of last year, publishes huge volumes of raw data through Tor Hidden Services, an encrypted amenity provided by the Tor Project. In January, for instance, DDoSecrets released a huge dump of emails and messages from Russian officials that Wikileaks had declined to host on the grounds that they were “already public” (many were not), detailing the deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine in 2014, which the Kremlin categorically denied was happening at the time.
Reportage and opinion based on that data is left to traditional deadline journalists, but DDoSecrets’s archive, which includes dozens of document troves from around the world, is carefully—journalistically, even—designed. State-sponsored hacks are flagged, as are hacked materials that cannot be verified and may be adulterated. Independent journalists like Marcy Wheeler and major organizations like The New York Times have built stories on DDoSecrets’s publications. Wikileaks, too, has been the source for major news stories, but it has consistently earned criticism for not vetting its sources in the way that DDoSecrets claims to do. (Wikileaks did not respond to request for comment.)
Best says she and another member, called The Architect, began the project last year. “In 2018, The Architect came to me with their desire to see a new platform for leaked and hacked materials, along with other relevant datasets,” she says. “We’ve known each other for some time, and they were willing to bring their technical expertise to the project. We pooled our resources, along with those of people who chose to not be directly acknowledged, and worked on the initial archive which publicly launched in early December 2018.”
