Ghost Agency develops security strategies and technologies with a focus on civil and humanitarian applications. Our focus is the integration of strategies aimed at benefiting and improving the security and strategic thriving of civilians, grassroots organizations, and NGOs in diverse global settings.

The integration of artistic, psychological, technological and security methodologies, and co-creation informs our design to ensure robust solutions addressing the evolving security challenges faced by a community. Developing both digital and non-digital solutions, we are referring to this approach as ‘artistic engineering’ allowing us to identify opportunities within threatened or insecure contexts that enhance the security of communities under risk.

Community as a basis for safety

Our approach encourages creating circles of trust within the members of a community and/or organization, and using technology to enforce safe collaborative work through alternative identities, and making available the tools to authenticate them within a trusted group.

Novel security tools

We have gathered and developed a suite of applications tailored to meet very specific security needs and procedures. These tools and methods encompass a range of digital and non-digital functionalities to easily protect identities, secrets and communications.

Multiple identities approach

Our identities can either protect us or make us vulnerable – our models rely on handling different identities as ‘sock puppets’ or as an ‘other embodiment’ of someone to accomplish different tasks, and even make them disposable in order to protect from any potential liabilities.

Safe collaboration and secrets management

Every collective effort holds information that needs to be kept from anyone outside a circle of trust – we provide both procedures and technology to make sure secrets are kept that way while working collaboratively, even if that implies destroying them forever.

Empowering communications

We aim to empower communities by providing them with multiple avenues for safe anonymous, encrypted, hidden-in-sight communications. To achieve this, we are constantly developing and improving different communications and operations servers that facilitate anonymous collaboration, ensuring that individuals can work safely even under challenging environments.

Convenient tools usage

Security always requires an extra effort, so all the tools needed are already packaged in a convenient USB pen which holds Agency – our own Linux based operating system that can be booted under most contemporary budget computers, and is almost as easy to use as a mobile phone.

What is artistic engineering?

A great attribute of art is the approach towards research and speculation over a phenomenon – this method of looking for deeper questions rather than answers goes perfectly well with engineering methods that provide alternative solutions that go beyond just hardening security software on a computer. The result is a more humane approach to preserve integrity, availability and privacy - as well as the fight for human rights as the underlying drive for our solutions, and not just solving an engineering problem. In this sense, artistic engineering drives us passionately as a team towards our goal of actively working to improve our communities as such.

You can explore and start using the applications here.