Stringboard

Secure Investigative Journalism Toolkit

Empowering journalists to uncover truth in massive datasets without compromising source protection.

The Problem

Modern investigative journalism requires analyzing massive datasets - leaked documents, public records, communications archives. But journalists face two critical barriers:

Technical Complexity: Most reporters aren’t data scientists. Existing tools require writing code, understanding databases, and mastering command-line workflows.

Security Risk: Cloud-based AI tools log everything they process. For journalists protecting confidential sources, this creates an impossible choice: accept help from AI and risk source exposure, or analyze millions of documents manually.

In an era of increasing threats to press freedom, these barriers directly impact our ability to hold power accountable.

The Solution

Stringboard consolidates 27 specialized tools into a unified, secure-by-design platform that makes data journalism accessible while maintaining uncompromising source protection.

Comprehensive Data Pipeline:

Acquisition: Web scraping, bulk downloads, BitTorrent, archive extraction
Processing: Emails (EML/MBOX/PST), chat logs, CSV/JSON/SQL, transcription, translation
Analysis: Full-text search, OCR, entity extraction, geospatial mapping, knowledge graphs
Security: Encryption management, document sanitization, Tor integration

Novel AI Architecture:

First investigative tool to safely integrate AI assistance through privacy-preserving design:

LLM agent operates via tool interfaces (MCP), never sees raw data
Data isolated in read-only, network-isolated Docker sandbox
Agent analyzes patterns from aggregate results only
Maintains journalist-source confidentiality while leveraging AI capabilities

Technical Architecture

Service-Oriented Design (42,639 lines of Python)

Each capability exposed via CLI, REST API, and Python library
Consistent patterns enable community extensibility
Docker Compose orchestration with Celery for async processing

Security-First Implementation

GPG container for encryption operations
Dangerzone integration for document sanitization
Tor and OnionShare for secure communications
Network-isolated sandbox for AI agent execution

Comprehensive Documentation

64 markdown files covering all services and workflows
Architecture diagrams and security models
End-to-end investigation workflows

Impact & Validation

Community Response:

Beta testing with investigative journalists
Endorsement from Micah Lee (author, “Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations”)
EFF Director of Security interest and planned public announcement
Built for long-term maintenance and community contribution

Origin Story:

Inspired by Micah Lee’s excellent book teaching journalists technical skills, but recognizing most reporters still face insurmountable barriers. Stringboard makes those techniques accessible without requiring a CS degree.

The Mission:

As stories are increasingly hidden in vast quantities of data, journalists shouldn’t need to become data scientists to find them. This tool lowers barriers to high-quality data-driven journalism while protecting those who risk everything to expose truth.

Technical Stack

Python	Docker	Celery	Redis	Whisper ASR	Pandas	MCP	Claude API
FastAPI	Rich CLI	GPG	Dangerzone	ExifTool	Tor	OnionShare

Current Status

Beta Testing - Active development, seeking feedback from journalists and security researchers.

View Documentation

GitHub Repository

For Journalists: Interested in beta testing? Contact me.
For Developers: Contributions welcome on GitHub.
For Organizations: Institutional deployment and security audit inquiries welcome.