I’m a hacker-journalist, working at ProPublica. I spend most of my time working on 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, 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 the aforementioned ProPublica Tor hidden service, I’m also the creator of Onion Browser, an open-source, privacy-enhancing web browser for iOS which uses the Tor network. 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. Tabula, received a grant from the Knight Foundation and was a finalist for the 2014 Online News Association Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism. CivOmega (as in, "Wolfram Alpha for civic data") received a grant from the Sunlight Foundation.

In addition to investigative reporting and developing tools for readers and journalists alike, I like to share practical knowldege with others, by open-sourcing work and training others. I'm an adjunct instructor at the New York University Studio 20 program, teaching a mix of digital skills to journalism graduate students. 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 use LinkedIn.

Contact info

RECRUITERS & MARKETERS: click here.

E-mail: Click here to view my e-mail address. (If you use ProtonMail, use this e-mail address instead for better security.)

Ricochet: ricochet:4cyjyokl4emrqcvn. Ricochet is a deskop messaging app featuring strong encryption and network anonymity using Tor; it’s my preferred method for secure instant messaging.

Other: I'm also usually available on Signal, XMPP/Jabber/OTR, Slack, a couple of IRC networks, and things like Jitsi, Skype, Google Hangout, etc. Just reach out and let me know what you’d prefer.

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: