I’m a hacker-journalist, working at ProPublica. (On the side, I also take a lot of pictures.)

I spend most of my time working on using technology to support our investigative journalism — creating news applications, performing data analyses, and reporting on a variety of topics including healthcare data breaches, wasteful military spending, and cybersecurity.

I also do a bit of devops, managing parts of our web app infrastructure (wrangling lots of Amazon AWS bits), migrating our site to encrypted HTTPS-only, and providing a Tor hidden service to our readers.

Before joining ProPublica full-time, I was a Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow.

I’m very interested in cybersecurity, online privacy, data collection, and anonymity. In addition to my work at ProPublica, I'm a core contributor to the Tor Project, with a focus on mobile privacy software and onion service deployment — I'm the creator of Onion Browser for iPhone and iPad. I frequently speak at conferences and conduct workshops to teach people how to protect themselves online.

I also do a lot of work in the civic hacking space, especially around open data and open government issues. I'm a core developer of several open-source tools that help citizens use public data and help governments work more transparently.

In addition to investigative reporting and developing tools for readers and journalists alike, I like to share practical knowldege, by open-sourcing my work and training others. I was formerly an adjunct instructor at the New York University Studio 20 program, and I often participate in conference panels, talks, and workshops, teaching other professionals about threat modeling and encryption tools to keep their work safe, and about how to use various data analysis tools in their journalism work.

A small selection of projects and speaking engagements are listed below.

You can find a thorough list of reporting and news apps at ProPublica.

Many more open-source projects and snippets are at GitHub.

I don't have a LinkedIn account, and don’t want to join your professional network on LinkedIn.

Contact info

RECRUITERS & MARKETERS: click here.

E-mail:
mike@ first 3 letters of my last name . last 2 letters of my last name
(Basically: just look at the domain name of this website, but use an @ instead of a . in the first slot.)

Postal Mail:
I happily accept postcards, letters, and other analog ephemera via postal mail. Address your item to:

Mike Tigas
PO Box 426
New York, NY 10014-0426
United States

Buy me a {coffee, beer, lunch}?

If you're a fan of the kind of work I'm doing, consider sending a small tip? (If you don't want to send money, then send a postcard! See above section.)

  • The easiest way is to help fund my work on Onion Browser, either via a one-time PayPal payment or by backing the Patreon on a recurring basis.
  • You can also use the following cryptocurrencies:
    • Bitcoin (newer clients with segwit/BIP173/bech32 support): 
      bc1qwm0cp704p9460mtslwz34sgr0dazlha55kvzs7
    • Bitcoin (if the above address doesn't work): 
      14VEidBQE16sy6ZyAzxk43P33BEAAyW2xp
    • Zcash (secure z-addr): 
      zcKEM6vYF8t4ubAb1pVe3jYVCJojjYUpiCZv72VosjzSDYMzNM2QEbfVfpoaCAgWAa6TuRGzszQzvRsP9pYqnbVrfdAzadA
    • Zcash (t-addr): 
      t1QNxAupXtEgDyQxeiKzk3ehjFda3AgK8rW
    • Ethereum: 
      0xAC084708339C6D7A26AFb92975100b509D0f8125

Selected Works

This sample represents a mix of both software and reporting projects. For a comprehensive list of work, check out my GitHub and my ProPublica staff page.

Talks, Panels, Sessions, Workshops

Events I've spoken at, taught at, or otherwise participated in: