this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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After reading about the "suicide" of yet another whistleblower, it got me thinking.

When working at large enough company, it's entirely possible that at some point you will get across some information the company does not want to be made public, but your ethics mandate you blow the whistle. So, I was wondering if I were in that position how I would approach creating a dead man's switch in order to protect myself.

From wikipedia:

A dead man's switch is a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness, or being bodily removed from control. Originally applied to switches on a vehicle or machine, it has since come to be used to describe other intangible uses, as in computer software.

In this context, a dead man's switch would trigger the release of information. Some additional requirements could include:

  1. No single point of failure. (aka a usb can be stolen, your family can be killed, etc)
  2. Make the existence of the switch public. (aka make sure people know of your mutually assured destruction)
  3. Secrets should be safe until you die, disappear, or otherwise choose to make them public.

Anyway, how would you go about it?

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[โ€“] glans@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well there are various services that let you disclose info to certain people upon death. examples: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-prepare-your-digital-life-accounts-for-your-death

So you could create those and send them to various journalists or whoever you think would be interested. Then ensure in your will that they are notified of your death. Will them a small object or something.

Tbh I think the concept of a dead man switch is fantasy. You always hear about them in place but then nothing happens when the person dies.

Has there EVER been a dead man switch that worked?

[โ€“] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Didn't Epstein have one? I think if something that incriminating can be eliminated, the concept as you said doesn't work.

[โ€“] glans@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Epstein has been dead for years.... what did his switch trigger?

[โ€“] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's what I mean. Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't he have one that was supposed to put out a list of names online or some shit? And then he died and nothing happened, likely because feds got to it.

[โ€“] glans@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Well then it didn't work. If it ever existed in the first place.

And there were no other replies to my question, so my hypothesis stands. :D

(Tho I looked at this thread on the original instance and it has 96 comments vs 32 here on hb; likely few people saw it due to non-federations.)