[clebio]

This is the question I hoped would bubble out of this post (as opposed to the question 'why are we seeing politics on HN'). Part of the answer would be to build tools such as SecureDrop/ StrongBox:

http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/ https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop

And Redphone and the various things Moxie works on: https://whispersystems.org/

But that only makes communications and authenticity possible. Access -- as in embedding problem Manning describes -- and censorship or selection bias will still be a problem. Those seem more like policy issues than technology problems. Along those lines, possibly Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com/) and of course, supporting the EFF (https://www.eff.org/).

Those are my thoughts, but I second your question and hope others have input.