Vital Truebune

Secure DropOpen channels — sealed inbox, public desk

Two desks, one newsroom. The first one is sealed.

Vital Truebune publishes verified dispatches from the AI underground. We do that by running two separate contact surfaces — a sealed-source desk for people who need to stay anonymous, and a named, on-record press line for everyone else. Pick the one that matches the situation you're handing us.

Encrypted intake · channels 01 — 03

Drop a dispatch through the channels our sources actually use.

Three routes in, one newsroom out. Pick the one you trust the most — all three land on the same desk, all three are read by a human within 24 hours, none of them ask for your name.

01.onion / SecureDrop

Onion-routed submission

Boot Tails from a USB on hardware you control. Open Tor Browser. Navigate to our submission .onion address printed below. Paste, attach, and submit. We will never see your IP.

Recommended — strips metadata, leaves no local trace

vxbdpq2jcllzkw32.truebune.onion

02PGP encrypted mail

Direct GPG-encrypted email

Compose offline in a Tails session, encrypt to our long-term editorial key, then send from a burner or torified mailbox. We open it on an air-gapped machine.

Use for larger files, redacted PDFs, or air-gapped replies

F1A4 9C72 3B0D 5E58 A1B2 — 4096-bit RSA

03Signal (opt-in)

Disappearing Signal session

By appointment only — message our intake desk to arrange a video drop window. Pair code verified on the call; nothing leaves the encrypted session.

Vetted human-sources after a first contact via .onion

+1 555 080 4471 (intake desk)

Non-anonymous desk

The other side of the newsroom — the publicly named one.

Vital Truebune runs two desks that never overlap: a sealed-source desk at the top of this page, and a public press line for people who want to be quoted. These are the lines that show up on the masthead, in our bylines, and on our response cards.

Press desk

Inga Voss, Senior Editor

For embargoes, on-record interviews, and rapid comment on filings from frontier labs. Replies within four business hours during the news cycle.

Phone
+1 555 080 4420

Corrections

Mara Olabode, Standards

Found an error in a published dispatch? Send the headline, the alleged line, and a source. We publish corrections and updates in the open — not in a footnote.

Phone
+1 555 080 4424

Mailroom

Physical mail, by appointment

Prints, hardware, sworn originals. We schedule a window at our PO box when a drop cannot cross a wire. Bring ID only when you want a receipt.

Phone
By appointment

When the newsroom answers

Submissions outside hours still arrive — they sit in the queue until we sign on.

  • Mon — Wed22:00 — 04:00 ET
  • Thu20:00 — 02:00 ET
  • Fri — Sat18:00 — 06:00 ET
  • SunReading room

Editorial compact

What the desk owes you, in writing.

The Secure Drop is not a marketing surface. It is a signed promise to every person who has ever handed us a hard drive in a parking lot. This compact is the contract.

H. RennEditor-in-chief, Vital Truebune

Signed into the masthead, 2025 — reissued each January.

  1. 01

    We never reveal sources.

    Not under subpoena, not to advertisers, not under executive pressure. If we couldn't keep a name off a court order, we wouldn't have launched the desk.

  2. 02

    We strip the metadata before we read.

    Every submission lands on an air-gapped machine. EXIF, document properties, and OS fingerprints are scrubbed before any journalist opens the file.

  3. 03

    We publish what we verify.

    Verification is non-negotiable. If we can't trace a claim to two independent sources, the story stays off the wire — even if the dossier is real.

  4. 04

    We close the loop.

    You'll know within 24 hours that we received your submission. You'll hear from us again before anything you sent appears in print or pixels.