How a leaked USB stick became the Nauru files – a tale of brutality and despair told in 160,000 words

Guardian Australia’s data and interactives editor Nick Evershed at home in Sydney. He designed and built the complex interactive database that houses the Nauru files. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

It was March 2016 and Paul Farrell, then a reporter at Guardian Australia, had agreed to meet an anonymous source.

He had been reporting on immigration for several years but still, when he was slipped a USB stick across the table and told, “I think it might be of interest to you,” he had no idea what to expect.