solely for journalists.

For example, DDoS attacks continue to be a major issue for publishers, election officials, and non-governmental organizations. After exploring the attack landscape around the world, a collaboration between Google Ideas and Arbor Networks built a data-visualization tool called Digital Attack Map (http:// www.digitalattackmap.com/). It visually highlights all DDoS attacks worldwide, revealing to even non-technologically minded people the scope of DDoS as a global problem. Armed with Google technical support, Jigsaw has gained

Independent investigative cybercrime journalist Brian Krebs reported in September 2016 about a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on his website http://krebsonsecurity.com/ that was more than twice the size of the largest attack Akamai, Krebs’s pro bono content delivery network service provider, had previously encountered. Jigsaw’s Project Shield, a free service Jigsaw describes as using “Google technology to protect news sites and freedom of expression from DDoS attacks online” stepped in when Akamai, for technical reasons, could no longer support Krebs.

When threatened, independent journalists need a way to continue to function with integrity. Jigsaw and like-minded organizations help individuals and organizations unable to protect themselves due to the overwhelming nature of the threats. That help is made possible because Jigsaw has the technical know-how to create a technology platform that can address such problems.

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

XRDS: How did Jigsaw emerge from Google?

DAN KE YSERLING (DK): Jigsaw was
founded in 2010, calling itself Google
Ideas until February 2016. Its evolution
since then reflects the world’s changing
circumstances. Though it started as a
research organization, it is now more of an
engineering organization with some of the
brightest minds in AI research, machine
learning, and other specialties. They
pursue technically complex questions,
in addition to complex geopolitical
challenges.

What challenges?

DK: We are all keenly aware of what it means when press freedoms begin to erode. Jigsaw’s Unfiltered News news-visualization tool (https://unfiltered. news/#/2017/02/08/us) covers news that might not other wise be covered in some countries, though it was not designed