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Snitches get stitches: On the difficulty of whistleblowing

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Conference Object

Change log

Authors

Ahmed-Rengers, M 
Halatova, D 
Shumailov, I 

Abstract

One of the most critical security protocol problems for humans is when you are betraying a trust, perhaps for some higher purpose, and the world can turn against you if you're caught. In this short paper, we report on efforts to enable whistleblowers to leak sensitive documents to journalists more safely. Following a survey of cases where whistleblowers were discovered due to operational or technological issues, we propose a game-theoretic model capturing the power dynamics involved in whistleblowing. We find that the whistleblower is often at the mercy of motivations and abilities of others. We identify specific areas where technology may be used to mitigate the whistleblower's risk. However we warn against technical solutionism: the main constraints are often institutional.

Description

Keywords

cs.CY, cs.CY, cs.GT, cs.SI

Journal Title

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

Conference Name

Security Protocols Workshop 2019

Journal ISSN

0302-9743
1611-3349

Volume Title

12287 LNCS

Publisher

Springer International Publishing

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Thales e-Security