a Better Bubble™
Today is one of the most important days in the history of Freedom of the Press Foundation, and especially for SecureDrop, our open-source whistleblower submission system used by over 70 news organizations worldwide. Let me explain.
We have long been strong believers that open source technology — specifically privacy preserving tools that don’t attempt to make money through the traditional surveillance capitalist model — can have an outsized impact on protecting our rights online. In times where governments and tech giants have unprecedented surveillance capabilities, policy and legal protections often don’t shield reporters from having their sources exposed. Projects like SecureDrop are vital for enabling important investigative reporting in the digital age. While news outlets are understandably tight-lipped about how they use SecureDrop, the proof is in the pudding.
But herein lies the conundrum: while open-source software tools can be more impactful in protecting press freedom than anything else, they are also the hardest to fund. Many traditional foundations don’t have the expertise or ability to evaluate software projects, and are wary of directly funding their development. The few grantmaking outfits who specialize in open-source software development sometimes only fund prototypes or new projects, which leaves the tools journalists likely rely on most — those that have a track record of success — in a perilous funding desert.
In many ways, we’ve been lucky. Despite the many fundraising difficulties that open-source tools often face, we’ve had the benefit of loyal support from donors with long-term vision. With their help, we’ve been able to sustain the project. But developing and maintaining high-risk software which is relied on by so many journalists all over the world is also very expensive, and it means cobbling together support from dozens of different sources. SecureDrop represents 40% of Freedom of the Press Foundation’s $4 million budget, yet it is still drastically underfunded compared to for-profit tools of all kinds.
Over the past eight years, we have slowly grown our SecureDrop team by piecing together dozens of general support grants, private donations, and support contracts from news organizations. And while we’ve had great success compared to many other open-source projects, it always feels like a precarious position — especially given how many journalists and whistleblowers rely on SecureDrop for protection.
Today, for the first time, that calculus has changed. We’re thrilled to announce the largest grant in the history of Freedom of the Press Foundation that will ensure SecureDrop survives — and thrives — for years to come. The Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web — a new grantmaking organization whose mission is to permanently preserve humanity’s most important information — is funding FPF at over $1.7 million for each of the next three years, for a total of $5.8 million.
The funding will largely go towards sustaining and expanding our SecureDrop team, funding the development of the next-generation of the system, including exploring a new zero-trust architecture for the decentralized servers. This grant will ensure that SecureDrop will not only be sustainable over the long term, but will be easier to use and hopefully safer than ever. In short, it will have a game-changing impact on how we can build and improve SecureDrop for journalists around the world. You can read about some of our technical plans for the future here.
In addition to helping upgrade SecureDrop, FPF will leverage its collaboration with FFDW to support several other efforts critical to safeguarding free speech, a free press, and the preservation of critical information using the decentralized web. Some of these projects include: publishing our comprehensive U.S. Press Freedom Tracker data on the decentralized web every year, exploring how we can further help news outlets who are under threat of being taken offline, and evaluating state-of-the-art privacy preserving tools within the decentralized web ecosystem that could provide network-level anonymity in decentralized web projects, in addition to our existing reliance on the Tor network.
We are incredibly grateful to the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web for believing in our mission and our results. And we can’t wait to get to work.
This article originally ran in the St. Louis Business Journal on September 28, 2021. With demand for warehouse space at an all-time high, the St. Louis area will get its first speculative industrial warehouse to measure more than 1 million square feet next year in the Metro East. When the fourth warehouse at Gateway Tradeport in Pontoon Beach finishes construction in the […]
The post New Metro East spec warehouse would be largest ever built in St. Louis, over 1M square feet appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.
This article originally ran on BND.com on September 28, 2021. By this time next year, Belleville Township High School vocational and alternative education students will have a newly-renovated center in the former Kings Point facility in Belleville. Originally built as a tennis club and fitness facility at 7645 Magna Dr., the Kings Point property has 100,000 square-feet. Over the next year, the […]
The post With Kings Point purchase, Belleville 201 follows local need for career, tech training appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.
When TGNCDC purchased 3600 Bamberger in 2015 it was known as “the drug house on the corner.” The property had 117 calls for police service over 3 years for drug sales, assaults, and four calls for “shots fired.” 3600 Bamberger was an obvious target for our first property in The Wedge, the area located south of Gravois, north of Chippewa, and west of South Grand, because of its high profile corner location and nuisance issues. This property and our tenants have been the anchor for our redevelopment efforts in The Wedge for the past six years.
In October of 2015, after some renovations and tenant screening through HomeScreen, new tenants started moving into 3600 Bamberger including Jessica.* Jessica stayed with us as we set up a police substation in her building and worked to abate nuisance behavior on the block. She saw calls for service drop 71% in the first year. Jessica stayed with us as we purchased and rehabbed 11 other buildings with 40 rental units in the Wedge. Jessica stayed with us as we formed a partnership between HomeScreen and Prosperity Connection and took advantage of their free financial coaching. Now, bittersweetly, Jessica is moving on. She has purchased a house for herself and her family, one of her long-term goals.
At TGNCDC, our mission is to make sure our tenants are supported and feel like valuable members of our community. Jessica has been a prime example of how our mission comes to life through our tenants. We will miss her! Please read the statement below from Jessica about her time as our tenant.
When I moved to St. Louis I found myself in the classic slum-lord situation. They wanted all the money with none of the maintenance. After the first year they raised my rent and I thought “okay, that sucks”, but rolled with it. Over that year they would just show up and do things to my place without notifying me and my presence was not needed. Coming home to stuff being moved around, messes made, to find someone has finally fixed a drippy faucet months after you sent the maintenance reports was unsettling. The following year they raised my rent again and so I decided it was time to move on from the unkept building I found myself in. A friend approached me and introduced me to TGNCDC. When they showed me the place I was soon to reside in it was like all of my hopes and dreams were coming true. The place had the right price, the right location from work, and gave peace of mind, with a police substation below my building.
To say they are an excellent company to rent from could only be an understatement from my perspective. If it was broken they promptly fixed it, and did it with excellent communication. Often telling me the day before so I could have the opportunity to make a mad dash to clean around the house so I wouldn’t be ashamed. They are what one would expect from a rental agency but are hard to find.
The thing that makes them exceptional is how they are there for you on another level. When the Ferguson Riots came to my neighborhood they reached out to make sure I felt safe. When life had ups and downs they were there for me. They would connect with me. They didn't abuse or betray my trust. When Covid-19 left me out of work for several months they were ready with programs to apply for rent and necessities assistance. Including them walking me through how to apply for food stamps.
When my parents started feeling unwell I started to pressure them to move next to me. My step-father is disabled and on parole and could not move to my state without an address to go to. I talked to them and they allowed me to put my address as his landing spot. Over a year later I got a call telling me my step dad was going to be paroled to me in two weeks. Two weeks was not enough time to find a place for myself and my step dad. So I went on the process of buying a house. They were more than patient during this rough transition. Letting my step-father stay there while I made ready the house. They also referred me to electricians and contractors that I felt I would need, being a first time home buyer. It was in no small part due to TGNCDC that I was able to get the house. They never once raised my rent. The money I would have spent on the trajectory that my previous rental company was charging equates to a large part of my down payment.
Leaving my apartment is by far the hardest part of my move. It feels like losing a part of myself. Although the door on that part of my life is closing as I walk through to the next adventure, I foresee myself missing that apartment throughout time. A place that wasn’t just my apartment, it was my first home.
If you would like to support TGNCDC’s efforts to create more safe, stable housing in the Wedge, please donate!
Continue reading "Making Missouri: Examining Missouri’s First Statesmen"
Today, Yahoo News published a long and deeply-sourced investigation that the CIA, led by Trump appointee Mike Pompeo, repeatedly and seriously considered kidnapping and even assassinating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The agency engaged in so many shocking and extra-legal actions that the whole report needs to be read in full to be believed.
Yahoo News also reported that intelligence officials, in disturbing disregard for the First Amendment, pushed to have other journalists—including FPF board members Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald—re-categorized as “information brokers” for their award-winning reporting on the Snowden disclosures. Yahoo said that the purpose was to open up “the use of more investigative tools against them, potentially paving the way for their prosecution.”
The following statement can be attributed to Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) executive director Trevor Timm:
“The CIA is a disgrace. The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department. The Biden Administration must drop its charges against Assange immediately. The case already threatens the rights of countless reporters. These new revelations, which involve a shocking disregard of the law, are truly beyond the pale.”
Previously, a coalition of groups focused on civil liberties, human rights and press freedom—including Freedom of the Press Foundation—urged the Biden administration to drop its charges against Assange. The letter to Biden’s Justice Department was signed by the ACLU, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and many more.
The Preservation Board agenda for their September 27th meeting has several developments for consideration. There’s an expansion of the Rung Foundation in Fox Park, a new funeral home on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in The Ville, and a few infill projects. Infill is a boost to the solvency of a city because the land is rendered […]
The post Developments Going Before the Preservation Board at September Meeting appeared first on NextSTL.
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