Forbidden Stories – The Safe Box Network

Every day, journalists around the world are subjected to harassment, threats and violence. In many cases, evidence is destroyed. Victims and witnesses are silenced. The lack of security means that other journalists do not dare to investigate further. In this project, the Swedish Postcode Foundation, together with the Freedom Voices Network (FVN), wants to protect threatened news material and thereby also threatened journalists.

In the project, a Safe Box service for secure storage of investigative journalists’ data and materials will be developed. Individual journalists and investigative journalist networks can join and upload sensitive material about a specific investigation. If the journalist is then threatened, imprisoned or killed, and thus prevented from completing his work, the material can still be made available to a large international network of journalists and media agencies. The consequence is that it becomes more risky, and therefore hopefully less attractive, to silence an individual journalist when an entire network of journalists around the world is ready to complete the work and publish the material.

The Postcode Foundation supports the project with SEK 3,020,000.

What the program delivers

In addition to the Safe Box service, regional trainings are also held in the MENA region, Africa and Latin America, as well as a major conference in Paris. The goal is to connect as many organizations as possible to the service and identify reporting that can benefit from extra protection.

Why we support this project

This project contributes to fulfilling the Postcode Foundation’s statutes to provide support to children and adults in vulnerable situations or disasters.