Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

founded in 2012 to fund and support

free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...

and

freedom of the press Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exerc ...

. The organization originally managed crowd-funding campaigns for independent journalistic organizations, but now pursues technical projects to support journalists' digital security and conducts legal advocacy for journalists. The foundation's SecureDrop platform aims to allow confidential and secure communication between journalists and their sources, and has been adopted by more than 65 news organizations globally. It also manages the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a database of press freedom violations in the United States. The organization's board of directors has included prominent journalists and whistleblowers such as

Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the '' Pen ...

Laura Poitras Laura Poitras (; born February 2, 1964) is an American director and producer of documentary films. Poitras has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for '' Citizenfour'', about Ed ...

, Glenn Greenwald, and Xeni Jardin, as well as activists, celebrities, and filmmakers. NSA whistleblower

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

joined FPF's board of directors in 2014 and began serving as its president in early 2016. Jardin left the board in 2016.

Crowdfunding

The organization's founding was inspired by the WikiLeaks financial blockade. In late 2012, FPF's launch re-enabled donations to WikiLeaks via Visa, MasterCard, and

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

, after the payment processors cut off WikiLeaks in late 2010. In December 2017, after five years of processing donations on behalf of WikiLeaks, FPF's board unanimously found that the blockade was no longer in effect, and severed ties with WikiLeaks as of January 8, 2018. FPF has also crowd-funded support for a variety of other transparency journalism organizations, as well as encryption tools used by journalists, including:

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

MuckRock MuckRock is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which assists anyone in filing governmental requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public record laws around the United States, then pub ...

, the

National Security Archive The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The N ...

, The UpTake, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the

Center for Public Integrity The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to ...

Truthout Truthout is a non-profit news organization which describes itself as "dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues". Truthout's main areas of focus include mass incarceration, prison a ...

, the LEAP Encryption Access Project,

Open Whisper Systems Open Whisper Systems (abbreviated OWS) was a software development group that was founded by Moxie Marlinspike in 2013. The group picked up the open source development of TextSecure and RedPhone, and was later responsible for starting the develo ...

, Tails, and the Tor Project. In May 2013, FPF raised over $100,000 in online donations to hire a professional court stenographer to take transcripts during the trial of whistleblower

Chelsea Manning Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning; December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage A ...

after the government refused to make its transcripts available to the public. They posted the transcripts online at the end of each day of the trial for members of the media to use in their reports. Secrecy expert

Steven Aftergood Steven Aftergood is a critic of U.S. government secrecy policy. He directs the Federation of American Scientists project on Government Secrecy and is the author of the Federation publication '' Secrecy News''. Life and career Aftergood has a BS ...

later called the crowd-funding effort "unprecedented", saying "it eloquently demonstrated public expectations of openness...the court and the prosecutors may have been shamed into reconsidering their habitual secrecy." In October 2014, FPF raised over $28,000 for New Zealand independent journalist Nicky Hager to fund his legal challenge against the government of New Zealand after his house was raided by police. The raid reportedly was an attempt to uncover one or more of Hager's anonymous sources used in his book ''

Dirty Politics ''Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment'' is a book by Nicky Hager published in August 2014. The book is based on emails hacked from Cameron Slater's Gmail account and on Facebook chats. These c ...

''. A court later ruled the raid of Hager's house was illegal. In 2015, FPF raised more than $125,000 in online donations for Chelsea Manning's legal defense stemming from her conviction under the Espionage Act for leaking information to WikiLeaks. Notwithstanding the January 2017 commutation of her sentence and May 2017 release from prison, Manning's military appeal is ongoing. As of June 2018, FPF accepts donations with crypto-currencies. On April 16, 2021, Edward Snowden raised 2,224 ETH (around $5.4 million) to benefit Freedom of the Press Foundation through the sale of an NFT on foundation.app. This signed work, titled "Stay Free", combines the entirety of a landmark court decision ruling the National Security Agency's mass surveillance violated the law, with the portrait of the whistleblower by Platon. This is the largest donation in the history of the organization.

Technical projects

In October 2013, FPF took over the development of SecureDrop, a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

whistleblower submission system developed in part by the late programmer and transparency activist

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...

. Swartz developed SecureDrop with Kevin Poulsen and James Dolan. Dolan moved it to FPF upon the death of Swartz. The SecureDrop system facilitates anonymous communication between two parties using the

Tor Network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

, and allows whistleblowers to contact journalists without ever exchanging one another's identities or contact information. The system is now in use at more than 65 news organizations, including ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'',

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

, ''

HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'',

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's v ...

, and ''

The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially report ...

''. According to a study done by the Columbia Journalism School, it has since successfully led to the publication of many stories at the news organizations that use it. FPF also teaches journalists how to use other encryption methods and digital security tools to better protect their sources. In collaboration with The Guardian Project, FPF released a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

mobile app named Haven in 2017. Haven turns an Android device into a security sensor and, optionally, alerts the device owner to activity occurring in its vicinity.

Legal activism

Freedom of the Press Foundation has been involved in several

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

cases surrounding journalists' rights and government transparency. In January 2016, FPF's lawsuit against the

Justice Department A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

revealed that the US government has secret rules for targeting journalists with

National Security Letter A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena issued by the United States government to gather information for national security purposes. NSLs do not require prior approval from a judge. The Stored Communications Act, Fair Cr ...

s (NSLs) and FISA court orders. In March 2016, another FPF lawsuit showed that the

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

secretly lobbied against bipartisan Freedom of Information Act reform in Congress, despite the bill being based word-for-word on the Obama administration's supposed transparency guidelines.

Awards

FPF co-founders Daniel Ellsberg,

John Perry Barlow John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...

, Trevor Timm, and Rainey Reitman won the 2013

Hugh Hefner Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of ''Playboy'' magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obsc ...

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

award for their role in founding FPF. The organization was the recipient of the

Society of Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...

' James Madison award in 2016.

References

External links