Aleph is a tool for indexing large amounts of both documents (PDF, Word, HTML) and structured (CSV, XLS, SQL) data for easy browsing and search. It is built with investigative reporting as a primary use case. Aleph allows cross-referencing mentions of well-known entities (such as people and companies) against watchlists, e.g. from prior research or public datasets. Web-based search. Processing includes optical character recognition, language and encoding detection and named entity extraction. Load structured entity graph data from databases and CSV files. This allows navigation of complex datasets like companies registries, sanctions lists or procurement data.

The purpose of this document is to make recommendations on how to browse in a privacy and security conscious manner. This information is compiled from a number of sources, which are referenced throughout the document, as well as my own experiences with the described technologies.