• LordGimp@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    Apparently you just have to kill a ceo in public and dozens of cops will come make sure you don’t get suicided before the state does it.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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    5 days ago

    Take the advice offered by journalists on how to contact them privately and avoid getting caught. I.e. secure and protect evidence without raising suspicion. Contact a reputable journalist via some secure means of communication. Let them take over and keep silent. Don’t brag or something.

    Most good newspapers offer something like PGP encrypted mail, SecureDrop over TOR and more to talk to them.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      This children is why the need for private communication isn’t something you can laugh away by claiming you have nothing to hide.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Absolutely. There are many reasons, but attacks on journalists/whistleblowers and the malicious potential of collated data in a capitalist oligarchy are the first two that come to mind.

    • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Encrypt email with anyone who publishes a key. If “bad” emails are the only ones you encrypt, then that metadata can be used to raise suspicion of you and to trace your contacts.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Collect all your evidence into one large archive, upload it somewhere and make it known that if you die of anything other than natural causes, that information will become available to EVERYONE.

    Read up on how “dead man’s switches” work. If you don’t send a signal online, log into a particular account on a regular basis, that sends the release signal.

    • Aa!@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      But why bother holding back in the first place. If this is whistleblower information like Boeing safety issues, there’s no point in setting up a dead man’s switch. You want to release it all immediately in the first place, because keeping it to yourself undermines the point of blowing the whistle

      • InputZero@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Then the incentive becomes to stop a whistleblower faster if they had a dead-man cache than if they released it all at once. There’s no guarantee that the whistleblower is being honest or is capable enough to undertake something like that but there’s always a risk that the whistleblower may disclose that information anyway. Better to stop the whistleblower by arresting them first and deal with the potential fallout than negotiate. Now the whistleblower’s reputation is ruined, if they’re behind bars they’re effectively silenced, and they’re as good as dead to society without all that messy work trying to fake a suicide.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 days ago

    Edward Snowden is a prime example of how to handle it.

    Only communicated via encrypted channels.

    When revealing himself and his leak, he had already left his home country. He was trying to make it to South America when the US canceled his passport. US went so far as to bring down a sovereign nations Presidential plane to search it for Snowden.

    I’m sure he has still had to worry about his personal safety after getting stuck in a country he wasn’t planning on getting stuck in.

    But the reality is you have to meticulously plan and basically abandon your entire life and move somewhere they cannot touch you. When it comes to US companies, you generally will have to do like Snowden and avoid US-allied nations.

    See also: Steven Donziger and Chevron

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger

    Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan’s RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron’s forensics experts. In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty, and Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021. While Donziger was under house arrest in 2020, twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against him as “judicial harassment.” Human rights campaigners called Chevron’s actions an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger’s case. In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release. Having spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest, Donziger was released on April 25, 2022.

    US corporations can and will bring the weight of the US “justice” system on whistleblowers. The US is not unique in this regard. Whatever giant company you’re whistleblowing against, you better GTFO of the country they are based in.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Yeah so many people talk about Snowden going to Russia and ignore the fact that he was only in Russia transferring to another plane when his passport was cancelled stranding him there. The choice was basically stay there, or go back to the US, and that wasn’t really an option.

      Why the US would want to leave him in Russia as a potential asset for Russian intelligence to break instead of letting him get to a different country that isn’t such a direct threat though is a really good question.

      • Forester@yiffit.net
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        5 days ago

        Easy. They got to call him a Russian operative and brush it under the rug. Go ask the average person about snowden

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          They can say whatever they want about him without actually stranding him in Russia to literally be a potential further leak. The info he leaked is different than his knowledge of processes and systems.

          • Forester@yiffit.net
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            5 days ago

            But he was a data analyst so his knowledge of processes and systems would be basically useless as all he would have known would have been how to access the file stores that were being gathered and provided by other agencies for his agency to review. It’s not like if Russia put him on a rack and tortured him. They’d find much useful information. At worst they would be able to confirm things they already very strongly suspect.

    • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work
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      5 days ago

      US went so far as to bring down a sovereign nations Presidential plane to search it for Snowden.

      I wonder if Morales got any concessions for agreeing to land his plane and allow a search.

      • cabbage@piefed.social
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        5 days ago

        He was a democratically elected leader from the left in Latin America. Not being murdered in his sleep could be considered special concessions.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Human beings are fragile creatures. Big corps generally don’t need to make the big effort of a murder and a cover-up when they can almost completely legally harass people into taking their own lives.

    To that end? Get a good therapist and a psych. Preferably not on workplace insurance, if such a thing is feasible for the situation.

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    4 days ago

    I wonder if giving the information to the coporations competitor (as anonymously as possible of course) would do anything good? Try to turn the corps against eachother. At least you would know if they are secretly in league if the competitor doesnt expose them.

    Also, i think anyone who is in position to do something like this should try to find more like minded people and continue as a group. Even then its dangerous but much less so than alone since there are more people to help. You wouldnt resist enemy occupation alone and expect to live long either.

    • wetsoggybread@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      This likely wouldnt work because that corporation could get in trouble for corporate espianoge. Some guy reportedly stole the recipe for cococola and tried to sell it to pepsi and they ratted him out

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    While it won’t help you getting suicided, setting up a deadman’s switch on the cloud that will release your testimony is definitely worth doing.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Additionally, give a copy of all the documents to your lawyer to release in the case of your death. Multiple Deadman switches are better than one, especially one that’s controlled by a person and not just hoping your cloud service doesn’t go down after you’re dead.

    • Aa!@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      With whistleblower information, why hold it back in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to release it immediately if they might kill you either way?

      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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        IIRC the problem there is that it potentially makes you liable to be sued by the company for disclosing negative/private information. But they can’t exactly hold you liable if you’re dead, so if you’re dead you may as well speak what you know from beyond the grave.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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    5 days ago

    Man, lots of crazy, unrealistic advice here.

    One person literally said to live in a motel. No, do not live alone.

    The answer is pretty simple, live in a community house with like 8 other people.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 days ago

      8 potential aids for your murder.

      They just have to say: “I give you 1.000.000 bucks if you give this food to that person, it will look like a bad flu and you’ll get the money”. If one rejects the offer there’s 7 more to do so.

      • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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        I said community. Thats no community if your friends would take money to kill you.

        Have you ever lived in a community?

          • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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            Ive lived in a lot of communities. Certainly there’s drama, especially with house-cest.

            But comparing that to people literally taking money to kill each other is ridiculous lol

            Worst I’ve seen is rape (sadly common). And you bet that rapist was physcially kicked out almost immediately

  • BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Despite all precautions, if you are one of the few persons whose circumstances could allow the leak, then they’ll narrow it down to you. Especially if you were the reluctant one, the one that raised ethical issues etc…

  • Overboard8171@startrek.website
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    Don’t leak. Spread seldom rumours online about the company with plausible deniability. Find a crazy-er person and/or group. Continue spreading dots. Spread info to Youtubers. Others with a platform. Use a VM, a password manager inside the VM. After 12 months, delete all your credentials and the VM. The system can not protect you. Corps rule democracy. Don’t trust the system. Spread the info until it reaches critical mass or the faith in the system collapses. Your life is worth more than some righteous leak. See the Pentagon Papers life. He lived a very humble life afterwards.

    NOTE: method untested and invented just now.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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      4 days ago

      wouldnt it just drown with all the insane crap the crackpots spew anyway and become tainted by association with them? But yeah, you definitely shouldnt use your own name and should spread the leak all over.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    5 days ago

    Amongst everything others have said, if you get sucked into an interview or press conference, directly and firmly state that, for the record, you are not suicidal and that if you should die, it was absolutely not suicide. You believe that you’ve become a target and fear for your safety and life.

    It doesn’t matter if you believe yourself to be a target in the privacy of your head. Always say that you are early, often, loudly, and to anyone who will listen.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Does it really matter that much? I figure either way they’re going to get you if they want and the media will treat it like a suicide regardless of how much you publicly telegraph what’s going to happen ahead of time.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            Yes of course it matters. If he wasn’t lying and acting like an insane criminal for a decade or so, people would be inclined to believe him.

            The guy acted like people with your same thought process could magically absolve him of his crimes and lies because he made a wild claim that he would be killed. He hadn’t said a goddamned thing for years pertaining to himself that was true. He was a lunatic and a murderer (rapist too iirc?). It makes all the sense in the world he would be lying about expecting to be killed too

            • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 days ago

              directly and firmly state that, for the record, you are not suicidal and that if you should die, it was absolutely not suicide.

              He did exactly what was suggested here. It was ignored and dismissed in all mainstream coverage of his death, and you are also dismissing it as a lie, with no specific evidence other than his apparently otherwise questionable character. It’s naive to think that such a narrative wouldn’t also be applied to anyone else trying to defend themselves in this way, of course it would be.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                I watched a documentary about the guy which turned out to be mostly about the bizarre lies he told. He was a fucking nutcase, devoid of reasons of ever consider believing his horseshit. And he liked fucking underage women so much he fled countries that didn’t let him do that. Insane scumbags don’t make my sympathy list but apparently you’re looking for opps to defend them so congrats

                • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  I’m arguing that saying you won’t kill yourself and are likely to be assassinated is not a foolproof method, not defending Mcafee

        • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Not necessarily. They just need to want to prevent it from being disclosed more than they want to kill you.

          • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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            Worth noting that this is something that can change over time. For example, if Snowden had done such a thing, it would be essentially useless now, since the known and accepted activities of the US government are now worse than what Snowden revealed.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Not necessarily. The only people who would need to know are the people who are already researching you to have you killed for a potential leak, and they would operate under the assumption of a DMS in place already.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    Do

    • Live on cash from different ATMs;
    • Stay at a hotel/motel that changes weekly;
    • Rent a car and change it at different rental locations every week;
    • Communicate only with your lawyer;
    • Record everything in an official manner as soon as possible.
    • Stay offline
    • Get a dumb phone, and if you must have a computer get a new laptop with no wifi or mobile data hardware;

    Do Not

    • Go anywhere you don’t need to go;
    • Tell anyone where you are;
    • Go to the middle of nowhere, this reduces your escape routes unless you’re Bear Grylls;
    • Confront anyone, they can have you arrested and prison violence makes their job much easier;
    • Go to the news without your lawyer;
    • Use a smartphone, or any device that was yours before and is capable of connecting online;

    And most of all don’t listen to the billy badasses in here. If a multi billion dollar corporation wants you dead and is willing to break the law they can afford a lot of very nasty people. You aren’t getting the tactical training to stand against them in that short amount of time, that takes years and dedication and even then you’ll be learning how to run away in a deadly manner. Your best defense is to be ghost except when you show up for court dates and depositions. That’s what the Secret Service Witness Protection Program does and it works if you have discipline.