Mike Tigas: Bio

I’m very interested in cybersecurity, online privacy, data collection, and anonymity: I’m also the creator of Onion Browser, an open-source, privacy-enhancing web browser for iOS which uses the Tor network.

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; several of these projects have received grant funding from the Knight Foundation and Sunlight Foundation.

I often work on training and resources for journalists: I've participated in several conference panels, talks, and workshops teaching others to use various data analysis tools and also teaching journalists threat modeling and encryption tools that can help protect their work and their sources.

See a list of projects and talks/workshops below.

Contact info

RECRUITERS: click here.

E-mail me: Get my e-mail address by clicking here. You can send me encrypted messages by using PGP. (0x6E0E9923 is my PGP key. Fingerprint: 4034 E60A A782 7C5D F21A 89AA A993 E715 6E0E 9923. Verification information here & at Keybase.)

Tweet me: @mtigas. It's a quick and easy way to establish contact.

Instant messaging & other: You can contact me in one of the above ways and I’d be glad to get in touch more directly. We can generally chat via: Google Chat, Jabber, Skype, Google Hangout, Pond, etc. (If using OTR encryption, my fingerprint will usually be one of the following, depending on the instant messaging account you’re talking to: 9396C423 F767754D EEBE9E56 19AE8D24 B0846D0B or CA2B12E7 00164D22 BA6AD212 C44FB145 17F5E551 If you get some other value, you can always verify this with me via e-mail or some other channel.)

Selected Projects

• Onion Browser
  A privacy-enhancing web browser for iOS, using Tor.
  • Official site, introductory blog post, GitHub repo, App Store link
  • Coverage: The New York Times, Salon, TechCrunch, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, The Guardian, MSNBC GadgetBox, WCBS New York City
  • #1 Paid iPhone Utility app, #2 Paid iPad Utility app, #45 Overall Paid iPhone app, and #37 Overall Paid iPad app in April 2012.
• Tabula
  A tool that liberates data tables from PDF files.
  • Official site, GitHub repo, introductory blog post
  • Received a Prototype Fund grant from the Knight Foundation
• CivOmega
  A search engine that answers questions about public data.
  • Official site, GitHub repo, introduction, Nieman Journalism Lab coverage
  • Received an OpenGov grant from the Sunlight Foundation.
  • Originally built at the 2013 Knight/MIT/Mozilla Civic Media Conference and Hack Day.
• authentication
  A web interface that can validate the authenticity of government data files, per the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act.
• School Segregation After Brown
  A database of school desegregation orders; companion to a large-scale investigative reporting series.
• FareTrade
  A mobile web app that calculates the "food mileage" of a grocery list.
  • website, GitHub repo
  • Built at the National Geographic Future of Food Hackathon.
    Was awarded "Hackathon Best in Show."
• The Price of an Internship
  A crowdsourced reporting app that tracks university policies and per-credit costs for student internships.
• E.R. Wait Watcher
  A news application that examines emergency room wait times at hospitals around the United States.
• For Journalism
  An initiative to create practical online courses for journalists, written by actual practicioners. I work on the security/privacy course.
  • official website, Kickstarter, GitHub repos
• NYPL Time Traveller
  A Foursquare app that added nearby historical photos to checkins in and around New York City.
  • website, GitHub repo, Laughing Squid coverage
  • Built at the 2013 NYPL Labs Historical Geolocation Hackathon.
  • Featured on the official Foursquare blog.
• Nonprofit Explorer
  A searchable database of nonprofit financial data.
• census.ire.org
  A browsing interface for 2010 U.S. Census data, built by IRE as an alternative to the official U.S. Census FactFinder.
  • website, GitHub repo
• NationBrowse
  A university capstone project to dynamically map census data
  • postmortem blog post, GitHub repo
• The Spokesman-Review
  Django-based CMS and news applications powering a regional newspaper website.
• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Official Site
  Custom CMS admin panel and storefront management system.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Official Site
  CMS customization, internationalization backend, social network API integration.
• GeoPy
  An open-source geocoder client for Python that I help maintain.
• django-medusa
  A “static site” generator for Django; allows conversion of normal Django projects to static "baked out" paradigm. Powers this blog.
  • intro blog post, “hello world” tutorial, GitHub source code
• django-gheat
  A heatmap-making toolkit for Django projects
• And more…
  Many, many other projects and gists can be found on GitHub. Reporting projects and stories can be found on my ProPublica staff page.

Talks, Panels, Sessions, Workshops

A partial list of conferences & other events I've spoken or taught at:

• CryptoParty NYC: "CryptoParty for Journalists"
• Freedom of the Press Foundation & RCFP #EncryptNews Conference
  • Hands-on workshop: OTR instant messaging encryption
• Mozilla Festival 2014
  • Session: Data Alchemy: Turning lead into data
  • Session: Practical Threat Modeling for Journalists [notes]
• Center for Public Interest Journalism Digital Security Workshop [slides]
• Online News Association "dCamp: Digital Security"
• 2014 Asian American Journalists Association Convention
• 2014 IRE Conference
  • Panel: Docs! Docs! Docs!
  • Hands-on workshop: Liberating Data from PDFs
• 2014 NICAR Conference
• 2014 IRE New York Watchdog Workshop
  
  • Talk: Cyber Security for Journalists [slides]
• NewsFoo 2013
• Mozilla Festival 2013
• Hacks/Hackers NYC Crypto Workshop
  
  • Hands-on workshop: PGP e-mail encryption, OTR instant messaging encryption, and Tor Browser. [GitHub]
• Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires Media Party 2013
  
  • Talk: Threat Modeling
• 2013 MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference
  
  • Hack Day participant: see CivOmega [GitHub]
• 2013 IRE Conference
  • Talk: Introducing Tabula: A PDF data extractor
• 2013 NICAR Conference
  • Panel: Covert Reporting Using Technology to Cover Your Tracks

Anything else?

Résumé & references available on request. (Recruiters may click here.)

A colophon is here, detailing some of the design & programming behind this site.