Raissa Robles

Raissa Robles’ Challenge: Publishing controversial stories without being taken offline.

Raissa Robles is an investigative journalist-blogger from the Philippines, whose personal blog sees over 2.8 million requests every day. Not only does she maintain her own Philippine politics focussed blog, raissarobles.com, but Robles is also the senior Manila correspondent for South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong based newspaper. Last year, she published a book, Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, a brief history of torture and atrocity under the New Society. Robles also freelances for other foreign and local media outlets, like BBC news radio, Voice of America and NPR.

“I don’t have an organization behind me,” Robles explained about her journalism. “I run my own website that discusses Philippine politics and geopolitics (Philippine relations to other countries as well as the Muslim rebellion in the Philippine south and Islamic Terrorism). I try to give insights into how Philippine politics works. I try to be like a detective, unearthing information the government doesn’t want the public to know.”

Publishing controversial stories without being taken offline

Unearthing and publishing information that the government doesn’t want made public, unfortunately made Robles a target of malicious cyber attacks. “Whenever I posted controversial stories I had a real challenge keeping my website online,” commented Robles. “I was desperately looking for a way to protect my website from DDoS attacks. Someone told me about Project Galileo on Twitter, and so I decided to research it and then wrote a letter to their counsel”.

Raissa Robles joins Project Galileo

Today, Project Galileo projects Robles’ site with enterprise grade web security. “Nowadays, my site stays up even when I post highly controversial stories,” Robles related. Since receiving Project Galileo protection, Robles has posed articles about the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, members of his family, and the controversial incumbent Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Giving a local voice and powerful information to the public, Raissa Robles’ personal site serves over 80 thousand unique visitors every day. During the same period of time, Project Galileo blocks over three thousand threats trying to take Robles’ site offline.”