Distributed Denial of Secrets
Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a non-profit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks.[2][3][4][5][6] The site is a frequent source for other news outlets and has worked on investigations including Cyprus Confidential[7][8] with other media organisations.[6][9] In December 2023, the organisation said it had published over 100 million files from 59 countries.[10][11]
Type of site
English, but the source documents are in their original language
Journalism
No[1]
None
3 December 2018
Online
Sometimes referred to as a successor to WikiLeaks,[12][13][14][15][16][17] it came to international attention for its June 2020 publication of internal police documents, known as BlueLeaks. The group has also published data on Russian oligarchs, fascist groups, shell companies, tax havens and banking in the Cayman Islands, as well as data scraped from Parler in January 2021 and from the February 2021 Gab leak. The group is also known for publishing emails from military officials, City Hall in Chicago and the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
The site's leaks have resulted in or contributed to multiple government investigations, including the second impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.[18][19][20] During the Russo-Ukrainian War, they were considered one of the best public repositories of all the Russian files leaked since the invasion began.[21][22]
History[edit]
Distributed Denial of Secrets was founded by Emma Best, an American national security reporter known for filing prolific freedom of information requests, and another member of the group known as The Architect. According to Best, The Architect, who they already knew, approached them and expressed their desire to see a new platform for leaked and hacked materials, along with other relevant datasets. The Architect provided the initial technical expertise for the project.[6] At its public launch in December 2018, the site held more than 1 terabyte of data from many of the highest-profile leaks. The site originally considered making all of the data public, but after feedback made some of it available only to journalists and researchers.[23]
Best has served as a public face of the group, which lists its members.[24] In February 2019, they told Columbia Journalism Review there were fewer than 20 people working on the project. According to Best, several early members of the project were driven to radical transparency work by their past background with the state, which they compared to Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers. In the February 2019 interview Best said, “Those associations all ended well prior to DDoSecrets coming together and were internally disclosed early on.”[6] In April 2021, their website listed 10 members and advisors.[24]
In December 2019, Distributed Denial of Secrets announced their collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.[25] In May 2020, DDoSecrets partnered with European Investigative Collaborations and the Henri-Nannen-Journalistenschule journalism school.
In December 2020, the group announced their affiliation with Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science.[26]