{"id":15201,"date":"2025-05-20T02:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T02:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15201"},"modified":"2025-05-20T02:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T02:05:48","slug":"for-tech-whistleblowers-theres-safety-in-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15201","title":{"rendered":"For Tech Whistleblowers, There\u2019s Safety in Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Amber Scorah knows<\/span> only too well that powerful stories can change society\u2014and that powerful organizations will try to undermine those who tell them. In 2015, her 3-month-old son Karl died on his first day of day care. Heartbroken and furious that she hadn\u2019t been with him, Scorah wrote an op-ed<\/a> about the poor provision for parental leave in the US; her story helped New York City employees win their fight for improved family leave. In 2019 she wrote a memoir about leaving her tight-knit religion, the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, that exposed issues within the secretive organization. The book cost her friends and family members, but she heard from many people who had also been questioning some of the religion\u2019s controversial practices.<\/p>\n

Then, while working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. \u201cThere is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again,\u201d she says. \u201cYou expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In September 2024, Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections\u2014with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays.<\/p>\n

Psst\u2019s main offering is a \u201cdigital safe\u201d\u2014which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org<\/a>, where they can enter a description of their concerns. (It accepts text entries only and not document uploads, to make it harder for organizations to find the source of leaks.)<\/p>\n

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