TellSomeone.org.uk: Our Secure Rape Gang Reporting Platform

In July 2025, we wrote to different British political groups warning them about the serious risks involved with managing amateur "whistleblowing" projects without technical or legal oversight. After none of them responded, our team decided we had to build a real one and give it to them for free.

Alex Coppen Michael C R Reiners

Alex Coppen, Michael C R Reiners

— 12 min read
TellSomeone.org.uk: Our Secure Rape Gang Reporting Platform
Three girls in the main site image: Lucy Lowe was killed and her house torched with her family inside. Charlene Downes was dismembered and sold as kebab meat. Victoria Agoglia was injected with a fatal dose of heroin. We're not going to forget them.
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You can visit the TellSomeone site here: https://tellsomeone.org.uk

Imagine having to explain to people why it's inappropriate to raise donations off the backs of raped children for your own entrepreneurial project. Imagine having to chase people over email and WhatsApp asking why they hadn't replied to barrister advice on their duties under the Children Act. imagine having to explain why Typeform surveys and Wordpress forms aren't appropriate for allegations of serious crime. Then imagine having to re-iterate the question of what they are going to do if a ten year-old child writes to them and says she has just been raped, or is about to be raped.

We have the receipts. And our advice to anyone on our side of the debate in terms of these political factions is to be careful who you trust and support as we work together to uncover the scale of the national atrocity of the rape gangs. For a large proportion of them, these forgotten children are someone to rape again as a stepping stone in their ambitious careers and personal/group interest.

A note to readers on virtue signalling and credit-points: we are not saints. We would rather have published all of it anonymously. However, an application of this nature requires a chain of accountability. It's important to know who built it, who runs it, and who is responsible.

The R's engineering people are a bizarre mix – a pirate ship, frankly – of highly-technological crypto libertarians; mixed with ex-intelligence officers; sprinkled with secretly anarchic civil servants; with a good few corporate friendlies. Everyone is passionate about the importance of protecting children and exceptionally angry at the scale and the cover-ups of the Pakistani rape gangs. We don't really like being told what to do – as some of these little emperor sectarians on the British right have found out the hard way – and we're deeply intolerant of people who can't get their acts together when it actually matters. It is not uncommon, at all, for people to be warned about taming their more aggressive and disruptive instincts ("England must prevail over your weekend Jihad."), or ironically argue for exploding neck belt collars on MPs until they restore liberty.

Despite his HNH "secret identity," Reiners is highly agreeable and tends to be the acceptable and friendly face for what is, essentially, a bunch of wild animals who are most at home, four-sheets-to-the-wind, driving trucks at 100mph, heavily armed, in a desert. Alex has established a reputation for being a enthusiastic amateur intern of Malcolm Tucker. The point is: imperfect people not seeking recognition but trying to do the best we can, for other people who have been let down.

First, this isn't "whistleblowing," it's reporting serious crime: the rape of children. The Police and judiciary have established secure procedures and systems which are there to protect victims and preserve the sanctity of evidence. It is not for any vigilante to establish to collect testimony and hope for the best; there are formats, chains of custody, and serious responsibilities one has under United Kingdom law to safeguard the welfare of those under 18.

As our safeguarding and police access pages explain, it starts with your duty of care:

Established in Donoghue v Stevenson (1932), the test is whether you owe a duty to persons who are so closely and directly affected by your actions that you ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being affected when directing your mind to the acts in question.

When you invite people to report serious crimes, you create a relationship of trust and reliance. Victims become vulnerable to your actions and decisions. This establishes clear legal duties to:

  • Protect their data and identity
  • Act appropriately on reports of ongoing harm
  • Provide trauma-informed support
  • Follow mandatory reporting requirements
  • Maintain professional standards

At the least, these involve understanding the following:

The Online Safety Act imposes a Children's Access Assessment duty (s. 11) and, if a service is "likely to be accessed by children," A child being groomed, a teenager trapped in an abusive household, or a young person under threat from an organised exploitation ring could be told: No ID, no entry. No verification, no voice. These are not "optional extras" — they are enforcement expectations for platforms within scope. While designed to shield children from harmful content, these same measures can bar children from the very platforms they need to reach safety. If implemented by OFCOM without exception, the OSA's requirements will actively endanger lives by cutting off access to anonymous reporting routes.

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When one of the R staff explained this to a well-known political operator in the British online sphere, their response was "Huh? Uh? Wow." Wow, indeed. Perhaps an introductory free call with a solicitor would have helped.

This is why TellSomeone's hosting in the U.S, like the R's, is deliberate. It allows us to reject intrusive identification demands while still maintaining full compliance with UK safeguarding duties.

Technical Security Standards

If you're not an engineer, it might seem enough to get hold an SSL certificate for your website, or pay for a web survey app on a major provider, so you can advertise a "secure" process of uploading evidence. Which is, of course, why it's a good idea to consult security people first, and these are a specific breed of engineer who specialise in being a dual personality of paranoid sysadmin and disturbed hacker.

One of the core principles in security work is you don't roll-your-own encryption. In this case, you don't roll-your-own evidence gathering.

If you're running a simple "contact" form for basic uploads of information which isn't legally sensitive or politically-exposed, any of these primitive methods is generally fine as long as SSL is used and the storage implements the simplest rules (encryption, permissions, etc.). There is no such thing as a 100% secure system, but the level of difficulty has to rise linear in scale and proportion to the material: as the idiot owners of the "Tea" app found out when they publicly dumped 45,000 photo scans of personal ID cards.

As a rule, it is best to recognise security relates to time: whether it is a bank vault or a database, it is simply delaying access long enough for enforcement to arrive.

There are plenty of ready-made "whistleblowing" services and software available on the market with a simple Google search:

Knowing which one to use, and the reasons for using or not using something, is a detailed technical choice. As important as it is to get all the things you need, it's also important not to go over the top.

We picked GlobaLeaks, because SecureDrop was too much for what we needed, and we trust open source projects over corporate slop. It was easy to customise for the aesthetic we wanted (even though it's ugly AF), independently audited, and used in 10,000+ deployments, including:

  • International Criminal Court
  • Amnesty International
  • Federal Office of Justice (Germany)
  • Transparency International
  • Free Press Unlimited
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If you are a security professional, you can audit our modifications to the GlobaLeaks backend on our forked clone of their repository.

For nerds, it's reverse-proxied back to a simple Docker swarm (ip hash) with shared encrypted volume, scalable up to max 4 vCPUs and 8Gb on NFS for 100 mil requests per month (thank you, Tim!).

Everything is hosted entirely on US infrastructure, within US borders. Storage is in the US; servers are in the US; routing is in the US. No part of the "help" subdomain knowingly touches any part of the UK network. We can't guarantee the crossword-fiddlers of Cheltenham's doughnut aren't intercepting it, but we've done all we can to make sure it's difficult. Plus, children aren't terrorists, and we like/respect our fellow Englishmen who can actually just email us if they need something, without the bullshit. Gents, read the page; save yourself the time.

Access to the database is monitored by 4 different security scanners, and all the usual intrusion tools. Writes are a problem with their architecture so we use PRAGMA to make it suck less.

The private LLM analysis is done via OLlama API and text-generation-webui on a private Runpod cluster connected within a VPC with sTunnel on top. The model configuration (e.g. system prompt) is private.

If you're the kind of chap who enjoys this kind of information, loves England, and would probably be in jail if you didn't find something more constructive to do, you should get in touch.

Discerning Good Vs. Bad Actors

The politicians here are irrelevant. They are rotating 4-year characters who are assigned work by the permanent secretaries of their departments in the civil service. The people responsible for this mess prefer not to be seen. For example Phil Douglas, Director General of Border Force, under whose tenure starting in 2022, over 130,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in small boats.

Meet cabinet secretary Chris Wormald.

Chris is in charge of the entire civil service and is more powerful than Starmer.  Colleagues say he is "devoid of any charisma or vision." More recent his reign has been described as "disastrous" and "insipid."

Everything happening right now is coordinated by this man.

Meet Home Office PS Antonia Romeo.

Antonia was Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice (2021–25), and has been Permanent Under‑Secretary at the Home Office since April 2025.

Antonia is in charge of Yvette Cooper's workload, including migrant hotels, and the court action to prioritise migrants over residents.

It's impossible to ignore the serious and malicious behaviour by police officers. Multiple child victims have claimed they were called "slags." What's even more staggering is the accusations officers raped victims:

According to the BBC:

Five women who were exploited by grooming gangs in Rotherham as children say they were also abused by police officers in the town at the time. One says she was raped from the age of 12 by a serving South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer in a marked police car. He would threaten to hand her back to the gang if she did not comply, she says.

Many of the officers involved in investigating this horror were perpetrators themselves. Which leaves anyone collecting evidence in a serious bind: how do you know an officer requesting information on a suspect or a crime is acting in good faith?

There are good officers. In fact, the vast majority of our police are good. As are the vast majority of our security services.

Our informational page for police and intelligence officers sets out very clearly a protocol for dealing with this situation:

  • Police officers must be of Superintendent rank or above to make requests personally.
  • Officers below Superintendent rank must provide Superintendent contact details to verify the request first.
  • Officers must provide their warrant card number or equivalent ID, and division, making the request on headed paper or through a secure channel (PNC, HOLMES, or CJSM) 
  • A phone call is made to the switchboard and verification requested from the senior officer(s).

There are specific situations where immediate disclosure is required by law to the authorities. For example, in Vital Interests (Article 6(1)(d) UK GDPR), the case of immediate threat to life, physical safety, or serious harm, we must process and share information to protect vital interests. This includes emergency referrals to police, social services, or healthcare providers.

Where Are The Parties?

As of the date of publishing, we appear to be at the usual stalemate of nothing happening, despite the resources to do much.

The list of cities affected by the rape gangs scandal is so large it's difficult to keep track. Wikipedia alone has detailed entries for Aylesbury, Banbury, Bristol, Derby, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keighley, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Peterborough, Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford.

At least 30 cities with confirmed press coverage to date include Aylesbury, Banbury, Blackburn, Blackpool, Bradford, Brierfield, Bristol, Burton-on-Trent, Coventry, Derby, Dewsbury and Batley, Glasgow, Halifax, High Wycombe, Huddersfield, Hull, Hulme, Ilford, Ipswich, Leicester, Luton, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oldham, Oxford, Peterborough, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield, Stockport, and Telford.

The Lowe Inquiry believes this scandal involves at least 85 local authorities: Aberdeen City, Angus, Antrim and Newtownabbey, Argyll and Bute, Barnsley, Bexley, Birmingham, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bradford, Brent, Bristol, Bromley, Buckinghamshire, Burnley, Calderdale, Camden, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Cherwell, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, City of Edinburgh, Coventry, Croydon, Cumberland, Dacorum, Derby, Doncaster, Dorset, East Hertfordshire, East Staffordshire, Glasgow City, Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston upon Hull, Kirklees, Lambeth, Leeds, Leicester, Lewisham, Luton, Manchester, Medway, Merton, Middlesbrough, Monmouthshire, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newham, North Tyneside, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, Norwich, Nottingham, Oldham, Oxford, Pembrokeshire, Peterborough, Plymouth, Preston, Redbridge, Rochdale, Rossendale, Rotherham, Sheffield, Somerset, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Swansea, Telford and Wrekin, Tower Hamlets, Vale of White Horse, Wakefield, Wandsworth, Warrington, Watford, West Berkshire, Westmorland and Furness, Wirral, Worcester, Wyre Forest.

Lowe's Instagram Inquiry

Which leaves Rupert Lowe. And it's not promising after 6 months. Restore Britain, which is not a party or an organisation – in fact, nobody knows what it is other than "see if we can take over the Tories and turn it into a party if that fails" – is hiring a communications team of volunteer YouTubers to an "advisory board" and claiming they are heading new imaginary "units."

It appears the "inquiry" will end up as a press conference or two, and Lowe seems to be backtracking in a clever way to frame the whole thing as a "pressure campaign" on the government.

This staggering research from our inquiry underlines the urgent need for movement from Labour. – press statement, Aug 26

This grandiose "research" hasn't been published, but it is almost certainly a spreadsheet of the Tumblr-style survey app data, grouped by town. And it's not clear how 2 people submitted 9000 FOIA requests. Lowe claimed it was 10,000.

Tip Of The Iceberg

Inquiries have a purpose in the civil service. They are there to ensure nobody finds anything out.

Minister, two basic rules of government: Never look into anything you don't have to. And never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.

Read more