When the Weakest Link is Strong: Secure Collaboration in the Case of the Panama Papers

Success stories in usable security are rare. In this paper, however, we examine one notable security success: the year-long collaborative investigation of more than two terabytes of leaked documents during the “Panama Papers” project. During this effort, a large, diverse group of globally-distributed journalists met and maintained critical security goals–including protecting the source of the leaked documents and preserving the secrecy of the project until the desired launch date–all while hundreds of journalists collaborated remotely on a near-daily basis. Through survey data from 118 participating journalists, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the designers and implementers of the systems underpinning the collaboration, we investigate the factors that supported this effort. We find that the tools developed for the project were both highly useful and highly usable, motivating journalists to use the secure communication platforms provided instead of seeking workarounds. We also found that, despite having little prior computer security experience, journalists adopted—and even appreciated—the strict security requirements imposed by the project leads. We also find that a shared sense of community and responsibility contributed to participants’ motivation to meet and maintain security requirements. From these and other findings, we distill lessons for socio-technical systems with strong security requirements and identify opportunities for future work.