For journalists who interview sensitive sources
PrivateWhispering records, transcribes and separates speakers on your Android phone. You save quotes you have checked against the tape. Nothing goes to a server, because there is no server.
In March it had the same number but a different amount, and he signed it himself.
Claim to check: the second invoice reused the first number. Go to tape 00:12:04
Most transcription apps upload the audio. That puts your source's voice on a vendor's server, where it can be breached or requested.
A summary that sounds right is not what was said. A misquote can end a story, or put a source at risk.
A phone breaks, is lost, or is searched at a border. The only recording of an interview should not live in one place.
Record with one tap, mark moments, mark where you asked for consent, and switch off record when your source asks. A recording survives the app closing or the battery dying, with at most a few seconds lost.
Speech recognition and speaker separation run on the phone itself. Every word keeps its time on the tape, so you can tap any word and hear it.
Select words on the transcript, listen to the clip, and save the quote. It can only contain words that were heard on the tape. The app never writes a quote.
Save encrypted copies of a story to places you choose. A copy only counts once the app has read it back and checked every file.
We would rather tell you the limits than have you find them in the field.
Illustrative situations drawn from how reporters told us they work. The people are composites, not customers.
Ana covers corruption and records eight to ten interviews a week, some in two languages. She types the sensitive ones herself because she will not upload them. With PrivateWhispering the transcript is ready on her phone the same evening, and the quotes she files are ones she has listened to.
Before a crossing, Omar makes a safe copy of his stories, checks it, and uses Travel light to move them off the phone. At the hotel he restores them from the copy. The phone he hands over holds nothing from the trip.
Halfway through, a source asks to go off record. Léa taps Off record. That stretch of tape never becomes a quote, never reaches the app's notes, and never leaves in an export, even by accident months later.
Before publication, Sam's editor wants proof behind three quotes. Sam sends a locked quote pack with only those clips, not the full interview. The editor hears the words, and nothing else of the source.
Investigations desks, NGOs, human rights researchers and compliance teams handle the same kind of material. PrivateWhispering keeps it off your vendors' servers by design, which is simpler to explain to a source, a lawyer or a data protection officer.
PrivateWhispering is in development for Android. Leave your email and we will write when it is ready, and only then. No newsletter, no tracking.
No. The app does not ask Android for network access, so it cannot connect to the internet. Recording, transcription and notes all happen on the phone.
No. A quote can only be made from words the speech recognition heard on the tape, and you confirm it by listening. Notes written by the app are marked as such and can never become quotes.
You can keep encrypted safe copies in places you choose, such as a USB drive or a cloud folder you already use. The app only counts a copy once it has read it back and checked it.
No. Nothing on a phone can promise that. If someone has installed spyware on your phone, or has your phone unlocked, they can see what you can see. PrivateWhispering removes the cloud from the picture; it does not make a compromised phone safe.
Android phones from the last few years. Notes by the app need a recent phone with enough memory; on other phones, recording, transcription and quotes work the same. Transcription starts with English, and more languages are added as they pass our accuracy tests.
It is in development. Pricing is not set yet. People on the waiting list hear first.