A few months ago as the American political landscape grew to a boil, a colleague and I started exploring encrypted communication tools. There’s lots of great stuff out there, but one area we found inadequate was for anonymous messaging amongst a decentralized group. Think activists, protesters, and researchers who have a fundamental need for anonymity.
Today, I’m open sourcing Sneakerdrop, a combination dead drop and sneakernet for secure, anonymous, asynchronous communication among an established group.
What does it do?
Sneakerdrop writes encrypted messages to ledgers. Messages can be broadcast or one-to-one. Broadcast messages are written unencrypted and in the clear, but are signed by the sender. One-to-one messages are encrypted so only the recipient can read them.
Ledgers are then synchronized out of band — think USB sticks, or packet radio, or even email. With your synchronized ledger, you can read broadcast messages and decrypt messages sent to you, but you can’t read anything not for your eyes. Undecryptable messages do remain in your ledger and get synced, so a message will eventually reach all the nodes in a network.
How do I use it?
The source is currently available on GitHub at https://github.com/adrianpike/sneakerdrop. There are instructions over there on how to get rolling.
What’s next?
I’m glad you asked! I’m going to be talking with a few groups, friends, and colleagues about adoption and limitations. I’ve got a rough mental roadmap, but I really would prefer it to be a community endeavor, so if you’ve got any ideas or thoughts, I’m all ears. My email is [email protected] and I’ll be paying attention to GitHub Issues. ❤️
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