Bringing the First Amendment into the 21st century.

• Author: Weissmueller, Zach
• Position: Soundbite - Freedom of the Press Foundation - Interview

Trevor Timm is the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that works to provide funding, encryption tools, and other resources to journalists who expose government secrets. Timm's group is backed by heavy hitters--journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, actor John Cusack, and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. Timm sat down with Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller in March to discuss the vision for the project, how it plans to operate, and what happens if the foundation becomes a target. To watch a video version of this interview, go to reason.com.

Q: What are the overarching goals of the Freedom of the Press Foundation?

A: This first got started about a year and a half ago. The original inspiration for it was actually the Wikileaks financial blockade. Back in 2010 when Wikileaks started publishing all this classified information--State Department cables and war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq--the payment processors, Visa and MasterCard and PayPal, all cut them off, even though they were fully protected by the First Amendment and they were doing exactly what other media organizations do all the time.

We thought this was an injustice--an end run around the First Amendment, where government officials were able to pressure private companies to financially strangle [Wikileaks] into censoring themselves. Getting this big group of people together, we really wanted to make this a much broader mission about First Amendment principles and bringing the First Amendment into the 21st century.

We transcribed the Chelsea Manning trial for the media to use after the government wouldn't release their own transcripts. Now we're actually going around and installing SecureDrop, which is an open source whistle-blower submission system that can better help news organizations use technology to get documents from whistleblowers.

Q: What are the big changes that need to be made?

A: Again, look at the Wikileaks example where they were cut off from...