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Independent journalists start here

For freelancers, one-person outlets, and citizen journalists. The threats match those facing a staff reporter, while the budget and the available support do not, so the order of priorities has to be rearranged.

If you have an editorial desk, legal counsel, and IT, see the newsroom path. Every link below points at a page that already exists here.

Three things you are probably dealing with

One phone and one laptop carrying both the work and the life

The same phone contacts sources, contacts family, and logs into your bank. When a device is lost or seized, what you lose is everything at once, and the source contact history is in there too.

Start with maintaining multiple online identities, which covers compartmentalization generally.

No institutional address, so sources can only reach you through a personal account

They message your public profile, and both the content and the fact of the connection stay with the platform. You need a channel you can post publicly, one a source can evaluate for themselves.

See first contact. One person can run this.

Reporting abroad, with devices to bring through a border

Device inspection at entry is routine in parts of the region, and both unlocking and refusing carry a cost. If source contact history is on the device, the risk lands on the source.

See device minimization and border crossings in Asia, covering fourteen jurisdictions.

Three pages for your first twenty minutes

  1. Journalists and source protection: first contact through publication, read once end to end for the overall shape
  2. Threat model checklist: three questions, and it flags mismatches such as naming a state-level adversary while budgeting the lowest possible effort. What you type stays in the browser tab and is gone on reload
  3. Maintaining multiple online identities: one person sustaining several identities does it through rules rather than tools

Building the foundation over a week

Separate the work from the life

What one person can still do

  • What is Tor?: research without showing the subject that you are researching them
  • OnionShare: a source can send files without an account, and you do not have to run a server
  • What is Tails?: a clean working environment for the most sensitive material
  • File metadata stripper: strip coordinates and device details from photos and documents before filing

Going out to report

The regional angle

What to take with you

  • Press "copy summary" after the threat model checklist, paste it somewhere you choose, and fill it in again when you change beats
  • Invisible character detector: scan a document when you receive it, since invisible markers are a common way to identify who leaked it
  • Matrix, CryptPad, and Send at community services are open for use, so a one-person outlet does not have to self-host
  • Ask in the public Matrix room, or send sensitive files to whisper@anoni.net

What this path does not cover