Dead drop

A dead letter box is a hideaway that is used to transmit secret messages.

The dead letter box is - as opposed to a normal letter box - only the sender and the receiver known as such, and thus protected from discovery by the uninitiated. It is used by people who openly or by post to each other can not come into direct contact or want, for example, by employees and informers of the intelligence services, by informants of journalists, but also by extortionists.

Use

The typical transmission sequence is as follows: The message sender deposits the message in the dead letter box (eg a knothole ) and leaves at an agreed another place a sign by which the recipient can see that the mailbox has been activated (eg example, on a house wall ). The recipient will see this sign, empties the mailbox and leaves at an agreed third place another sign that acknowledges receipt of the message ( eg on a bridge railing ). Sender and receiver are thus never at the same time in the same place and may be unknown even to each other.

Today's Relevance

In the era of Internet and e-mail, however, are likely to play a smaller role hidden niches and waste container as a communication medium, although in the digital world, steganography has assumed a similar role. For the transmission of objects ( stations, cameras, materials, samples, etc.), the dead letter box will remain in use. A fixed place, the dead letter box in the genre of espionage literature.

Digital dead letter boxes

In October 2010, the Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl initiated a project which is based on the principle of the dead letter box: He supported USB mass storage in facades and attached it to fixed objects in public space. On that USB mass storage is a file that contains a manifest which requests for imitation and for deposition of data. Subsequently, the installations will be documented with photos and listed below identifies the location on its website.

Artistic Background

The art project wants to bring the rejection of control of data and information exchange expressed. From project is mainly the increasing proliferation of applications that no longer store the data locally, but take over the net in data clouds, since the user is being losing control of data. The concept of digital dead drops, the project foresees a "liberation [ the ] data ".

Dissemination

The project quickly found many participants, so that the project site in February 2011 188 worldwide and already in March 2011 worldwide recorded 297 such digital dead letter boxes. In September 2013 there were 1229 digital bounce points with a total capacity of 6391 GB. The project has now spread internationally. Very widespread it is in the United States and Europe. In Europe one finds particularly in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom digital bounce points. But also in the rest of Europe, a digital dead letter box is represented in almost every country. On the remaining continents of the world, the project is spread very thin.

Mobile digital bounce points

The dead drops also be placed on public transport. This can use the created by the dead drops delayed "Network" potentially even more people. And people can access at different locations on a common data fundus.