Set up several solar powered raspberry pies with cheap iot SIM cards, each will check a vm in the cloud or at home for a key. If the key isn’t present or can’t be reached they release the info. Could have several servers to store keys to check. Everyday you enter a code to prevent the key from being removed.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Asklemmy
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You would need to account for temporary connection issues to make sure it doesn't send it after a network outage or something.
It doesn't make any sense. If you are a whistleblower is because you already published the information. They are not killing you so the information does not get revealed. They are killing because you already did.
you just need more information and then you need to prove that you have more information so they can kill you anyways
Making the existence of the switch public is often something you don't want. It allows others to do troubleshooting in advance. It also destroys your reputation with many people who might otherwise work with you.
If you are content to keep things secret, share the documents with several different friends or law firms in several different countries along with conditions for release. Don't tell them or everyone who all has the documents. That sounds relatively simple.
Making the existence of something public means you'd need to give away at least some details of who or what it concerned, at which point you're in the situation of either being a target or a blackmailer.
I agree with all of the above, except I’d add encryption to the data.
That way you are not putting your life in their hands, at least until it doesn’t matter / you want the data released. Encryption keys are super lightweight vs data; taken to an unreasonable extreme, a KB could unlock TBs.
Though you’d probably want something more like a passphrase. Anyway, that basic idea is sound but I dunno about the exact delivery/delay mechanism. Gun to my head and I have seconds to decide… scheduled send from a major cloud email provider, pay way in advance, and an increasing flood of calendar events/reminders up to the day it sends. The message would include enough information about the encryption used and formats within that any tier 1 helpdesk level IT person could access the data.
Not perfect, but a good enough balance of simple and robust to start with.
I used to build automation tools (shudderVBAshudder) that the "proper" technology wouldn't be bothered to make. Over 15 years I had over 200 tools built out. I had tied all my code to a single file that I would use to keep everything updated. I had imagined in so many ways of setting up a dead man's switch to start slowly corrupting and degrading everything or to just implode everything... Would have worked except our company got bought out and everything became useless and I got laid off lol. Got a nice pay check out of it
You wanted to ruin your company? Why?
Ha well it was more of a "oh crap we need to bring him back ASAP" kinda thing to get my job back. And as others said this was all mainly for fun thinking about it. The intrusive thoughts
When did they say they wanted to ruin their company?
The slowly corrupting and degrading everything part.
But when did they say they wanted to do that? They just said they imagined it. I've imagined ways to screw over my workplace as well, it doesn't mean I want to
I think you are being needlessly pedantic.
I'm not being pedantic at all. The entire premise of your question was them "wanting" to ruin their company. There's no other way to interpret that
If you want to rephrase what you said to clear up the confusion, I'm all ears
A whistleblower doesn't need a dead man's switch as they'd just release the document.
A muckracker does.
A whistleblower is likely to have access to sensitive data or other forms of leverage not directly linked to whatever they're whistleblowing on. Of course this sort of insurance policy would be useful to them.
I think its useful for situation where I'm in process of collecting evidence, so I can keep tge switch just in case I get caught in the process but at least the evidence so far can be public
You may not be able to collect more if you publish everything at the start
True that...
The whole point in being a whistleblower is to release the documents. Why would you tell everyone what's happening and not provide the evidence? After you release it, there's less chance of being harmed, and your job is done besides showing up to court.
Maybe he wants to release a censored version of the documents and have the dead man switch release the uncensored version.
Pretty easy if you don’t work for google.
- Upload everything to a google drive.
- setup inactive account manager
- add all the news agencies you can get a hold of, government offices, police etc.
- make sure it’s read only access.
If they want to silence you they have to 1. Know about your account. 2. Keep it active.
It relies on the news agencies and such actually caring.
As someone who's been fighting a huge fight against a casino threatening my performance home, lemme tell you that most don't give a single shit
Everything relies on someone caring, in this context.
Depends on your background and industry.
If you work in IT, and are technically adept, you can...
- Store said files on a proton drive or mega.nz drive set to be only accessible to read by those who have the unique URL.
- Create a small server with a cron job that every 24 hours sends you a text message to a Google Voice number accessible anywhere with internet connectivity and you have 60 seconds to reply otherwise the cron job will craft a premade email to all international news agencies as well as government agencies responsible for the control of this issue, along with links to download the information.
60 seconds in 24 hours seems too prone to the possibility of a false positive. What if you forget and take a nap? What if there's a power outage? What if your phone breaks unexpectedly?
All good points, however the purpose of a deadman's switch is that you fear for your life, taking a nap might not be as easy under those circumstances. Also, if you know at what time the SMS is set to arrive you can plan ahead to make sure you have Internet in order to respond, but OK maybe 60 seconds is too short of a time so let's make it 5 minutes. Being that this is using Google Voice, you can receive the SMS over a tablet or laptop so a backup would be a must have.
Even 5 minutes seems short. You're already dead, what's the rush?
You don't want to give the people chasing you time to identify and disable the deadmans switch
That’s why you create a backup deadman’s switch.
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