Proposal to adopt Shatter Secrets project

Short description

Shatter Secrets uses strong cryptography to distribute “shares” of a decryption key to people on the other side of an international border so as to technically prevent their compelled disclosure. Existing approaches are subject to subtle weaknesses in their protocol, such as allowing border agents to intercept secrets during transmission, or employ social engineering against remote confidantes. Our approach uses threshold cryptography so that some minimum number of designated secret keepers must meet physically in person at the destination before the protected information can be recovered, with special care taken in its design to prevent common compulsion techniques and social engineering vectors. This work will be done in partnership with journalists and activists in Iran, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, with a focus on user research to explore their needs, workflows, and use cases, as well as subsequent evaluation of our tool.

Budget

This would be need to be funded by a grant. Full budget breakdown in grant proposal.

Conflicts of Interest

This proposal does not directly financially benefit any board member.