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Dangerzone Take potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to a safe PDF.

Tl;dr: Dangerzone introduced a feature that allows users to auto-update the container used to do conversions.

Why that matters and how we implemented it:

- Attesting provenance of images
- Making them reproducible
- Signing them using an auditable system

That’s about it!

There are lots of other challenges involved, such as doing the above in a cross-platform way, while also supporting air-gapped installations. If you encounter a bug or want to know more, please reach out!

Also, Dangerzone installations regularly poll the GitHub container registry, and once they detect a new image, verify it against our private key, and make sure the signature is recorded in the transparency log. Then, the new container image is downloaded and used for the next run.

Then, we sign our image locally using Cosign (from sigstore), which records this event in their transparency log. Here’s the signing event for our latest image:

search.sigstore.dev?logIndex=119...

This means no one can silently sign a malicious image.

Dangerzone Take potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to a safe PDF.

Next, we get a fresh clone of our repo and rebuild the image locally.

We ensure it is bit-for-bit the same as the upstream one.

Read more about this:

First, we pick the latest nightly container image and verify the attestations about it, checking its provenance information.

This is answering questions like “Was it built indeed in GitHub actions?” or “Is it from our repo?”

If you’re interested in reproducible builds, transparency logs and software attestation, keep reading…

Dangerzone Take potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to a safe PDF.

What if the update server is compromised? What if the signing key leaks? What if the developers are coerced somehow?

Here’s how we counter these risks:

⚡ If you are a Dangerzone user, by now you may have encountered a prompt to download a sandbox update.

These are important to the software’s stability, but come with their own risks.

🧵 Dangerzone is a free app developed by FPF that converts potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images into a safe-to-open PDFs.

It converts docs into pixels, then reconstructs them as PDFs.

Read the thread for important details about our recent sandbox update ⤵️

VPN surveillance: Time for transparency and limits on spy powers A recent letter from our lawmakers raises the question: What does the intelligence community do with the data of VPN users in the United States?

Using a VPN may subject Americans to warrantless government surveillance.

We need much more transparency — and stricter limitations on how the government can use this data to bypass Americans’ privacy rights.

For journalists working on sensitive stories, location data can expose sources or tip off the agencies they’re investigating.

Watch this video to understand the risks and how to reduce them, and read our full guide below: freedom.press/limit-location-tracking

DOJ’s history-killer memo turns Oval Office into black box Plus: How many FOIAs does a New Jersey school district think is too many to file in a year? 14

By declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional, the DOJ says the presidency has private ownership over the American story.

It doesn’t.

Plus: How many FOIAs does New Jersey think is too many? 14.

More in our secrecy newsletter:

Trump's FCC Chief Says His Censorship Protects the Little Guy. It Really Serves One Powerful Man. When you look at the fights Brendan Carr actually picks, they aren’t local stories at all. They’re tailored for Donald Trump.

"Localism is a Trojan horse Carr uses to legitimize his attack on the Constitution," writes FPF's Seth Stern for @theintercept.com:

Quote from FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern that reads: “We commend the film and television communities for their courage in speaking truth to power, and we hope that members of the press will follow their lead. “It’s been widely reported that the current administration is steering this transaction to its political allies, the Ellisons, to further suppress free expression and control the public discourse. There’s nothing biased or partisan about standing up for the First Amendment and the public’s right to know.”

FPF statement on film and television professionals speaking out against Paramount-Warner merger

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/b...

History Bites Our monthly lunchtime lecture about rights from the 18th century to today!

🔔 Want to learn more about @pressfreedomtracker.us's work?

Join West Coast reporter Briana Erickson for Gunston Hall's "History Bites," a monthly online miniseries about press freedom.

🗓️ April 15, 12:30 p.m. ET/9:30 a.m. PT
🔗

Registration: FPF's J-school digital security training program Register here for Freedom of the Press Foundation’s free, virtual training program designed to help you directly deliver critical content from our U.S. J-school digital security curriculum. Led by…

📢 Journalism professors! Want to bring digital security into your classroom?

FPF is offering a free virtual training program this summer to help you teach our J-school Digital Security Curriculum — no prior experience needed!

Sign up by April 15 👇

Using AI safely as a journalist: Stand-alone AI tools In this guide, we break down the privacy and security considerations of services like Claude, ChatGPT, or Otter.

🧑‍💻 Curious about using AI safely as a journalist? We break down the risks of the most common ways you and your data are likely to interact with AI, in our new series of digital security guides.

First up: stand-alone tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Otter:

Trump's DOJ wants to scrap the Watergate-era law making presidential records public — effectively claiming the presidency owns the American story.

We cannot let that happen.

Watch @laurenleharper.bsky.social explain this bipartisan emergency, and find out how you can help: freedom.press/save-pra

Whistleblower prosecution has nothing to do with national security Plus: DOJ wants to scrap the Presidential Records Act

📥 Read in our weekly newsletter (and sign up):

- No kings in DC, no compliance in LA

- Sources aren’t safe when surveillance is for sale

- Trump’s threat to jail reporters deserves bipartisan condemnation

- So-called ‘antifa’ prosecutions endanger First Amendment, press

➕ what we’re reading…

Surveillance and the press: Why Section 702 matters now Enacted in the years after 9/11, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows intelligence agencies to collect emails, calls, and messages from foreigners abroad, but in practice…

The press can’t be free if it’s constantly under watch.

Check out our recent event to learn why Congress shouldn’t renew the spy law known as Section 702 of FISA without making reforms to protect journalists and Americans from warrantless surveillance.

‘The Classified Catalog’ launches to track secrecy news New database will mark Trump’s 100th day in office

Excessive government secrecy is growing.

The Classified Catalog by @Freedom.press helps you keep track of the administration's assault on our right to know so you can report, research, and fight back.

Check it out here:

Pass the Ellsberg Act Defending press freedom for the next generation

The Espionage Act has been used for decades to target journalists and whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing.

Use our action center tool to tell lawmakers to pass the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act and reform the archaic law.

📥 Read in our newsletter:

- No kings in DC, no compliance in LA
- Whistleblower prosecution has nothing to do with natsec
- DOJ wants to scrap PRA
- Republican about-face on Qatari media funding
- Judge tells Pentagon to stop censoring journalists again. Think they’ll listen this time?

And more..

Whistleblower prosecution has nothing to do with national security Plus: DOJ wants to scrap the Presidential Records Act

📥 Read in our weekly newsletter (and subscribe): Whistleblower prosecution has nothing to do with national security

Trump Wants to Put You in a Massive, Secret Government Database Agencies are reportedly pooling immigration data, Social Security numbers, and more into a central database. FPF is suing to learn how deep it goes.

The administration "is on its way to creating every authoritarian’s dream: a centralized database containing intimate details about every resident of this country."

We're suing for docs behind the database.

FPF's @laurenleharper.bsky.social has more in @theintercept.com:

A Journalist’s Campaign to Fix Public Records Law in the U.S. Virgin Islands Last summer, Shirley L. Smith reached out to the Freedom of the Press Foundation about her efforts to get lawmakers to modernize the territory’s public records laws. Having reported from…

The U.S. Virgin Islands always deserve transparency but especially when they're at the center of national news like the Epstein case.

We spoke to journalist Shirley Smith about her efforts to fix the territory's archaic public records laws.

Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm giving the opening remarks ahead of the screening of the documentary “Steal This Story, Please,”Friday at the IFC in NYC.

Panel discussion following the screening of the documentary “Steal This Story, Please,”Friday at the IFC in NYC.

FPF staff members

The IFC in New York

We were thrilled and honored to host the opening night of “Steal This Story, Please!” at @ifccenter.bsky.social.

The documentary explores the life and career of @democracynow.org’s Amy Goodman.

Here’s our executive director, @trevortimm.bsky.social, giving opening remarks tonight in NYC.