1 [[!meta date="Thu, 15 Dec 2016 12:34:56 +0000"]]
2 [[!pagetemplate template="news.tmpl"]]
3 [[!meta title="French journal Mediapart supports Tails, others should too"]]
6 We are very excited to announce that
7 [Mediapart](https://www.mediapart.fr), an independent French investigative
8 journal, has decided to support Tails financially every year.
10 [[!img mediapart.png link="no"]]
12 In the past years, Mediapart has played a central role in the revelation
13 and investigation of several major French political scandals. As such
14 they are well aware of the digital threats faced by their sources,
15 their journalists, and their readers.
17 Tails has gained recognition by being used by Edward Snowden and the
18 journalists reporting on his NSA leaks in 2014. [According to Barton
19 Gellman](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/help-support-little-known-privacy-tool-has-been-critical-journalists-reporting-nsa):
21 « *Privacy and encryption work, but it's too easy to make a mistake that
22 exposes you. Tails puts the essential tools in one place, with a design
23 that makes it hard to screw them up. I could not have talked to Edward
24 Snowden without this kind of protection. I wish I'd had it years ago.* »
26 Since then [[many journalists around the
27 world|news/who_are_you_helping#journalists]] understood this approach
28 and adopted Tails to make it easier to stay safe. As Jean-Marc Manach
31 « *War reporters have to buy helmets, bullet-proof vests and rent
32 armored cars; journalists using the Internet for their investigations
33 are much luckier: to be as secured as war reporters, they only have to
34 download Tails, burn it on a CD, install it on a SD card, and learn the
35 basics of information and communication security, and it's free!* »
37 In the same way that news organizations invest in physical security or
38 proprietary software tools to do their work, news organizations should
39 also invest in free software tools that, as [security experts like Bruce
40 Schneier](http://boingboing.net/2013/12/15/bruce-schneier-and-eben-moglen-2.html)
41 have repeatedly stated, are going to be safe:
43 « *I think most of the public domain privacy tools are going to be safe,
44 yes. [...] I think that Tails is going to be safe. [...] You know, the
45 NSA has a big lever when a tool is written closed-source by a for-profit
46 corporation. There are levers they have that they don't have in the open
47 source international, altruistic community. And these are generally
48 written by crypto-paranoids, they're pretty well designed.* »
50 As such, Tails has been the recommended secure platform
51 for use with the [SecureDrop](https://securedrop.org/) and
52 [GlobaLeaks](https://globaleaks.org/) whistle-blowing platforms.
54 Talking about the challenges of the adoption of encryption by
55 journalists, the Internet freedom expert [Christopher Soghoian said
56 at #EncryptNews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JktB6h-qnKA), a
57 conference on digital security and journalism:
59 « *News organizations need to also contribute to this community pool of
60 tools. We need to have [reporters] contributing patches to PGP, OTR, and
61 Tails. These organizations need to be funding $5.000 or $10.000 improvements
62 to make these tools better. Because everyone is relying on these tools
63 and none of the major organizations that are actually benefiting them
64 are actually contributing to their development.* »
66 Mediapart is the first news organization to officially endorse Tails
67 and answer our call for donations. We hope they are not going to be the
70 If your organization is also interested in becoming a regular donor,
71 please contact us at [[mailto:tails-accounting@boum.org]] ([[OpenPGP
72 key|tails-accounting.key]]).
74 <div class="donate-button"><a href="https://tails.boum.org/donate/?r=mediapart">Donate</a></div>