Category Archives: Democracy

US Intelligence targets Wikileaks

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WikileaksThe US gov­ern­ment has appar­ently been get­ting its knick­ers in a twist about the excel­lent Wikileaks web­site.  A report writ­ten in 2008 by US army counter-intel­li­gence ana­lys­ing the threat posed by this haven for whis­tleblowers has been leaked to, you’ve guessed it, the very sub­ject of the report.

Wikileaks was set up three years ago to provide a secure space for prin­cipled whis­tleblowers around the world to expose cor­rup­tion and crimes com­mit­ted by our gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and mega-cor­por­a­tions.  The site takes great care to veri­fy the inform­a­tion it pub­lishes, adheres to the prin­ciple of expos­ing inform­a­tion very much in the pub­lic interest, and vig­or­ously pro­tects the identi­fy of its sources.

By doing so, Wikileaks plays a vital part in inform­ing cit­izens of what is being done (often illeg­ally) in their name.  This free flow of inform­a­tion is vital in a democracy.

Well, no gov­ern­ment likes a clued-up and crit­ic­al cit­izenry, nor does it like to have trans­par­ency and account­ab­il­ity imposed on it.  Which led to the report in question.

As I have writ­ten before ad nauseam, whis­tleblowers provide an essen­tial func­tion to the healthy work­ing of a demo­cracy.  The simplist­ic approach would be to say that if gov­ern­ments, spies and big cor­por­a­tions obeyed the law, there would be no need for whis­tleblowers.  How­ever, back in the real, post‑9/11 world, with its end­less, neb­u­lous “war on ter­ror”, illeg­al wars, tor­ture, extraordin­ary rendi­tion and Big Broth­er sur­veil­lance, we have nev­er had great­er need of them.

Rather than ensur­ing the highest stand­ards of leg­al­ity and prob­ity in pub­lic life, it is far sim­pler for the powers that be to demon­ise the whis­tleblower — a fig­ure who is now (accord­ing to the Exec­ut­ive Sum­mary of the report) appar­ently seen as the “insider threat”.  We are look­ing at a nas­cent McCarthy­ism here.  It echoes the increas­ing use by our gov­ern­ments of the term “domest­ic extrem­ists” when they are talk­ing about act­iv­ists and protesters.

There are laws to pro­tect whis­tleblowers in most areas of work now.  In the UK we have the Pub­lic Interest Dis­clos­ure Act (1998).  How­ever, gov­ern­ment, mil­it­ary, and espe­cially intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als are denied this pro­tec­tion, des­pite the fact that they are most often the very people to wit­ness the most hein­ous state abuses, crimes and cor­rup­tion.  If they try to do some­thing about this, they are also the people most likely to be pro­sec­uted and per­se­cuted for fol­low­ing their con­sciences, as I described in a talk at the CCC in Ber­lin a couple of years ago.

Ideally, such whis­tleblowers need a pro­tec­ted leg­al chan­nel through which to report crimes, with the con­fid­ence that these will be prop­erly invest­ig­ated and the per­pet­rat­ors held to account.  Fail­ing that, sites like Wikileaks offer an invalu­able resource.  As I said last sum­mer at the Hack­ing at Ran­dom fest­iv­al in NL, when I had the pleas­ure of shar­ing a stage with Wikileaks founder Juli­an Assange, I just wish that the organ­isa­tion had exis­ted a dec­ade earli­er to help with my own whis­tleblow­ing exploits.

The Offi­cial Secrets Act (1989) in the UK, is draf­ted to stifle whis­tleblowers rather than pro­tect real secrets.  Such laws are routinely used to cov­er up the mis­takes, embar­rass­ment and crimes of spies and gov­ern­ments, rather than to pro­tect nation­al secur­ity.  After all, even the spooks acknow­ledge that there are only three cat­egor­ies of intel­li­gence that abso­lutely require pro­tec­tion: sens­it­ive oper­a­tion­al tech­niques, agent iden­tit­ies and ongo­ing operations.

This US counter-intel­li­gence report is already 2 years old, and its strategy for dis­cred­it­ing Wikileaks (by expos­ing one of their sources pour encour­ager les autres) has, to date, mani­festly failed. Cred­it is due to the Wikileaks team in out-think­ing and tech­no­lo­gic­ally out­pa­cing the intel­li­gence com­munity, and is a ringing endorse­ment for the whole open source philosophy.

I’ve said this before, and I shall say it again: as our coun­tries evolve ever more into sur­veil­lance soci­et­ies, with big broth­er data­bases, CCTV, bio­met­ric data, police drones, vot­ing com­puters et al, geeks may be our best (and last?) defence against emer­ging Big Broth­er states.

Vers la Verite, Paris, October 2009

Posted on by Annie Machon
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VV_Graphic_Paris_2009So the Vers la Ver­ite events in Par­is earli­er this month were a great suc­cess.  I’ve organ­ised a few inter­na­tion­al tours and events in my time, but this was one of the most con­cen­trated series of dif­fer­ent hap­pen­ings I’ve been involved in.  Thanks go to Debora Blake for all her work in situ in Par­is, and also to the ReOpen posse, who offered a lot of prac­tic­al sup­port and were major spon­sors of the weekend.

Vers la Ver­ite was a gath­er­ing of cam­paign­ers and act­iv­ists from across Europe and North Amer­ica, who met to dis­cuss “geo­pol­it­ic­ally incor­rect issues” (as Debora likes to call them!), such as the illeg­al wars in the Middle East, media spin, intel­li­gence manip­u­la­tion, the erosion of our civil liber­ties in the name of the unend­ing “war on ter­ror” — and the need for a new, inde­pend­ent enquiry into the tra­gic events of 9/11, the nex­us of so many of these issues.  It was fant­ast­ic to see so many old and new friends in Par­is — what a show of com­mit­ment to mak­ing the world a safer and more equit­able place.  It gave me hope.

Speakers_Paris_2009We were also priv­ileged to have cam­paign­ers of the cal­ibre of the 2008 US Green Party pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Con­gress­wo­man Cyn­thia McKin­ney, journ­al­ist and  recent MEP Giuli­etto Chiesa, Pro­fess­or Niels Har­rit of Copen­ha­gen Uni­ver­sity, and French act­or and dir­ect­or Math­ieu Kas­so­vitz at the events. 

Press_Conference_Paris_2009The week­end star­ted with a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day 9th Octo­ber at the Mair­ie of the 2nd arron­disse­ment in Par­is, kindly hos­ted by the May­or, him­self a Green Party politician.

Procope_Paris_2009In the even­ing, while the act­iv­ists met up at the all-night water­ing hole, Café L’Et­in­celle on the Rue de Rivoli, Cyn­thia was the guest of hon­our at a spon­sors’ din­ner at the fam­ous Le Pro­cope bras­ser­ie.  This is the old­est res­taur­ant in Par­is, and has hos­ted Ben­jamin Frank­lin (who reputedly worked on the draft of the Amer­ic­an Con­sti­tu­tion there), as well as Voltaire.

Brunch_Paris_2009The Sat­urday was the main day of events, start­ing with a light lunch for  inter­na­tion­al act­iv­ists at Les Halles des Olivi­ers at La Bel­levil­loise, with impromptu music from Dr Jazzz.  In the after­noon we con­vened for a plan­ning ses­sion, fol­lowed in the even­ing by a pub­lic meet­ing.  Debora ably hos­ted the event with Cyn­thia McKin­ney, Giuli­etto Chiesa and Niels Har­rit and myself as the speak­ers, dis­cuss­ing dif­fer­ent aspects of gov­ern­ment cov­er-ups and lack of account­ab­il­ity, all drawn from our own exper­i­ences.  The film “Zero”, dir­ec­ted by Giuli­etto Chiesa, was screened, as well as excerpts from “Amer­ic­an Black­out” fea­tur­ing Cyn­thia, and the work of won­der­ful French comedi­an and cam­paign­er, Jean Mar­ie Bigard.

Kassovitz_Paris_2009A sur­prise and very wel­come attendee was Math­ieu Kas­so­vitz, who suc­cess­fully bid in the auc­tion for the col­lect­or’s edi­tion of the excel­lent “Glob­al Out­look” research pub­lic­a­tion, signed by Cynthia.

The week­end wrapped up with a demo on Sunday morn­ing, march­ing from Place de la Repub­lique to Place Bastille — two res­on­ant loc­a­tions — before an inform­al farewell Parisi­an lunch.

It was fant­ast­ic to meet so many inspir­ing people, who are com­mit­ted to chan­ging the world for the bet­ter. Thank you all for tak­ing the time and trouble to get to Par­is for the
week­end  — it was great to see so many old and new friends! 

And thanks once again to Debora, AtMoh, Marc, Jean Marc, Chris­tophe (x2!), Arno and the rest of the Par­is posse. Also to Cyn­thia, Giuli­etto and Niels for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ded­ic­a­tion and sheer joy, all in the face of adversity. 

Cynthia McKinney Event in Paris, 10th October

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Here’s my latest effort.  It should be an amaz­ing week­end in Par­is, with Con­gress­wo­man Cyn­thia McKin­ney, the 2008 US Green Party pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate, head­lining our “Vers la Ver­ite” event on the Sat­urday night.  Have a look at the web­site for the full line-up.

Promo_ENG_H

Alan Johnson’s MI5 File?

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Alan_JohnsonI won­der what inform­a­tion, if any, MI5 has on file about new-ish UK Home Sec­ret­ary, Alan John­son?  Or, more per­tin­ently, what HE thinks the spies might have.…..

How else explain his recent com­ments in The Daily Tory­graph? He said that he will be the voice of those who can­not defend them­selves — ie those poor, anonym­ous intel­li­gence officers in MI5.  He even drags out the hoary old chest­nut that a crim­in­al invest­ig­a­tion into prima facie evid­ence that the spooks have been involved in ser­i­ous crime — the tor­ture of anoth­er human being — would dam­age nation­al security. 

I’m sur­prised he man­aged to bite back Tony Blair’s infam­ous line, that an invest­ig­a­tion into pos­sible spy incom­pet­ence and crime would be a “ludicrous diversion”

Ever since Labour came to power in 1997, we have had a series of Home Sec­ret­ar­ies strain­ing to avoid doing their job vis a vis the spooks in Thames House: the job being that of polit­ic­al mas­ter of MI5, thereby provid­ing a modic­um of demo­crat­ic over­sight to an extremely power­ful and secret­ive organ­isa­tion, hold­ing it to account and ensur­ing it obeys the law. 

The role of Home Sec­ret­ary is not to be the cham­pi­on of unac­count­able spies who are pro­tec­ted from invest­ig­a­tion and over­sight by a whole raft of secrecy legislation.

More and more evid­ence is emer­ging that MI5 assisted the USA’s extraordin­ary rendi­tion plan, that it  was com­pli­cit in tor­ture, and that its officers have lied to cov­er their tracks.  Under this ava­lanche of scan­dal, some MPs have finally woken up to the fact that the Home Sec­ret­ary should be ensur­ing MI5 obeys the law.  Some are even dar­ingly sug­gest­ing that there should be prop­er Par­lia­ment­ary over­sight of the spies, rather than the fig leaf that is the Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee — hand-picked by and only answer­able to the Prime Min­is­ter, and power­less to ques­tion intel­li­gence officers under oath, demand papers, or look at any­thing more ser­i­ous than policy, fin­ance or administration.

Walk_the_plankThe Met­ro­pol­it­an Police have even begun a crim­in­al invest­ig­a­tion into MI5’s com­pli­city in tor­ture.  While I doubt any case that could, ahem,  “dam­age nation­al secur­ity” will ever come to court,  a few juni­or officers may be asked to do the decent thing and quietly walk the plank. 

But the real issue — the closed, self-per­petu­at­ing group-think cul­ture, where officers should just fol­low orders and not rock the boat — will con­tin­ue unchal­lenged, res­ult­ing inev­it­ably in yet more scandals.

It is time we had a Home Sec­ret­ary who is up to the job and who has the back­bone to ini­ti­ate some mean­ing­ful reform of MI5. 

Spy Chiefs attack UK Police State

Posted on by Annie Machon
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DearloveSir Richard Dear­love, ex-head of MI6 and cur­rent Mas­ter of Pem­broke Col­lege, Cam­bridge, has been much in the news recently after gra­cing the Hay on Wye book fest­iv­al, where he gave a speech.  In this, he is repor­ted to have spoken out, in strong terms, against the endem­ic and all-per­vas­ive sur­veil­lance soci­ety devel­op­ing in the UK. 

Ex-spy chiefs in the UK have a charm­ing habit of using all these sur­veil­lance meas­ures to the nth degree while in the shad­ows, and then hav­ing a Dam­as­cene con­ver­sion into civil liber­ties cam­paign­ers once they retire.  Eliza Man­ning­ham-Buller, the ex-head of MI5, used her maid­en speech in the House of Lords to argue against the exten­sion of the time lim­it the police could hold a ter­ror­ist sus­pect without charge, and even Stella Rim­ing­ton (also ex-MI5) has recently thrown her hat in the ring.  They nick all my best lines these days.

Would­n’t it be great if one of them, one day, could argue in favour of human rights, pro­por­tion­al­ity and the adher­ence to the law while they were still in a pos­i­tion to influ­ence affairs?

Dear­love him­self could have changed the course of world his­tory if he had found the cour­age to speak out earli­er about the fact that the intel­li­gence case for the Iraq war was being fixed around pre-determ­ined policy.  As it is, we only know that he objec­ted to this because of the notori­ous, leaked Down­ing Street Memo.

The Guard­i­an news­pa­per repor­ted that Dear­love even touched on the real­ity of obtain­ing min­is­teri­al per­mis­sion before break­ing the law.  Which, of course, is the ulti­mate point of the 1994 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act, and does indeed enshrine the fabled “licence to kill”.  It states that MI6 officers can break the law abroad with impun­ity from pro­sec­u­tion if, and only if, they obtain pri­or writ­ten per­mis­sion from their polit­ic­al mas­ter — in this case the For­eign Secretary.

How­ever, accord­ing to The Guard­i­an, he seems to have mis­un­der­stood the spir­it of the law, if not the letter:

He said that the intel­li­gence com­munity was “some­times asked to act in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. When it does, it asks for leg­al opin­ion and min­is­teri­al approv­al … It’s about polit­ic­al cover”. 

Moment­ar­ily put­ting aside the not unim­port­ant debate about wheth­er the spies and the gov­ern­ment should even be allowed tech­nic­ally to side-step inter­na­tion­al laws against crimes up to, and includ­ing, murder, I am still naively sur­prised by the shame­less­ness of this state­ment:  the notion of min­is­teri­al over­sight was put in place to ensure some kind of demo­crat­ic over­sight and account­ab­il­ity for the work of the spies — not to provide polit­ic­al cov­er, a fig leaf.

I think he’s rather giv­en the game away here about how the spies really view the role of  their “polit­ic­al masters”.

Amuse Bouche

Posted on by Annie Machon
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A debate is cur­rently under way in the (ex) Land of the Free about how much pro­tec­tion intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers should be accor­ded under the law.

Yes, the coun­try that has brought the world the “war on ter­ror”, Guantanamo Bay, and the Pat­ri­ot Act, is hav­ing a mor­al spasm about how to best pro­tect those who wit­ness high crimes and mis­de­mean­ors inside the charmed circle of secrecy and intelligence. 

And about time too, fol­low­ing the mess of rev­el­a­tions about spy com­pli­city in tor­ture cur­rently emer­ging on both sides of the pond.

Inter­est­ingly, intel­li­gence offi­cials in the US already have a smidgeon more lee­way than their UK coun­ter­parts.  In the US, if you wit­ness a crime com­mit­ted by spies, you have to take your con­cerns to the head of the agency, and then you can go to Con­gress.  In the UK, the only per­son you can leg­ally report crime to is the head of the agency involved, so guess how many suc­cess­ful com­plaints are made?  Even tak­ing your proven and legit­im­ate con­cerns to your elec­ted UK rep­res­ent­at­ives is a crime under the OSA.

Spooks in the UK now have access to an “eth­ic­al coun­sel­lor”, who has reportedly been vis­ited a grand total of 12 times by intel­li­gence officers since 2006.  But this per­son has no power to invest­ig­ate alleg­a­tions of crime, and a vis­it guar­an­tees a career-block­ing black mark on your record of ser­vice: ie if you are the sort of per­son to worry your head with quaint ideas like eth­ics and mor­al­ity you are, at best, not a team play­er and, worse, a pos­sible secur­ity risk. 

WhistleThis is surely cul­tur­ally unsus­tain­able in a com­munity of people who gen­er­ally sign up to pro­tect the cit­izens of the coun­try and want to make a pos­it­ive dif­fer­ence by work­ing with­in the law?  Those who have con­cerns will resign, at the very least, and those who like to “just fol­low orders” will float to the top.  As one of the lead­ing pro­ponents for great­er whis­tleblower pro­tec­tion in the USA states in the linked article:

“The code of loy­alty to the chain of com­mand is the primary value at those insti­tu­tions, and they set the stand­ard for intens­ity of retaliation.”

Some enlightened US politi­cians appear to be aware that intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers require pro­tec­tion just as all oth­er employ­ees receive under the law:  per­haps more so, as the nature of their work may well expose them to the most hein­ous crimes ima­gin­able.  There is also an argu­ment for put­ting prop­er chan­nels in place to ensure that whis­tleblowers don’t feel their only option is to risk going to the press.  Effect­ive chan­nels for blow­ing the whistle and invest­ig­at­ing crime can actu­ally pro­tect nation­al secur­ity rather than com­prom­ise it.

The nay-say­ers, of course, want to keep everything secret — after all, the status quo is cur­rently work­ing so well in uphold­ing demo­crat­ic val­ues across the globe.  Crit­ics of the new legis­la­tion talk of “dis­gruntled employ­ees .… glee­fully” spill­ing the beans.  Why is this hoary old line always dragged out in this type of dis­cus­sion?  Why are whis­tleblowers always described in this way, rather than called prin­cipled, brave or ethical?

Blanket secrecy works against the real interests of our coun­tries.  Mis­takes can be covered up, group-think ensures that crimes con­tin­ue, and any­one offer­ing con­struct­ive cri­ti­cism is labelled as a risky trouble­maker — no doubt a “dis­gruntled” one at that.

Of course, cer­tain areas of intel­li­gence work need to be pro­tec­ted: cur­rent oper­a­tion­al details (as ex-Met Assist­ant Com­mis­sion­er, Bob Quick has dis­covered), agent iden­tit­ies, and sens­it­ive tech­niques.  But the life blood of a healthy demo­cracy depends on open debate, vent­il­a­tion of prob­lems, and agreed solu­tions.  Informed and par­ti­cip­at­ory cit­izens need to know what is being done in their name.

Make Wars History UK Tour, 2009

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In Janu­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2009 Chris Cover­dale toured the UK speak­ing at Make Wars His­tory meet­ings.  I had the pleas­ure of intro­du­cing him at a num­ber of events.  The first date of the tour was in Liverpool:

Gareth Peirce on Torture, Secrecy and the British State

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Gareth_Peirce_1Lead­ing UK human rights law­yer, Gareth Peirce, has writ­ten a power­ful and elo­quent art­icle in the Lon­don Review of Books about the Brit­ish state’s involve­ment in torture. 

She also broadens out the argu­ment to look at the fun­da­ment­al soci­et­al prob­lems — lack of account­ab­il­ity, secrecy, the use and abuse of the concept of “nation­al secur­ity”  — that cre­ated a cul­ture that facil­it­ates and con­dones torture.

Gareth has fought for vic­tims of injustice for four dec­ades, focus­ing primar­ily on ter­ror­ism and intel­li­gence issues. 

A long piece, but stick with.  It’s worth it!

ETH0 Hacker Camp, January 2009

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In Janu­ary 2009 I was invited to talk at ETH0, a small but select hack­er camp held in the wilds of the Neth­er­lands.  The crowd was young, hip, informed — and very inter­ested in the use and abuse of intel­li­gence and par­tic­u­larly the erosion of our most basic civil liber­ties.   Events like this give me hope.

Some of the organ­isers are also involved in plan­ning a major techno-polit­ic­al hack­er fest­iv­al, Hack­ing at Ran­dom, in NL this sum­mer.   An event not to be missed!

Canadian Speaking Tour, May 2009

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Vancouver_posterOn 22 May I shall be start­ing my very own nation­al speak­ing tour in Canada.   Fol­low­ing my vis­it to Cali­for­nia last year, the Cana­dian 9/11 Truth groups have pulled togeth­er a 7‑event tour, where I will have the chance to dis­cuss the intel­li­gence world, whis­tleblow­ing, going on the run and the issue of 9/11, par­tic­u­larly focus­ing on its reper­cus­sions around the world: the end­less “war on ter­ror”, the illeg­al wars in the Middle East, and the erosion of our demo­cra­cies in the West.

The Cana­dian Truth Move­ment tire­lessly cam­paigns for a new, inde­pend­ent inquiry in the tra­gic events of 9/11, and has in the past hos­ted speak­ers such as Pro­fess­or Dav­id Ray Griffin  and archi­tect Richard Gage.

More inform­a­tion about the tour can be obtained from: directors@vancouver911truth.org or elizwood@shaw.ca.  See you there!

Victoria_poster


Tour dates:

Fri­day 22 May — Van­couver

Sunday 24 May — Vic­tor­ia

Wed­nes­day 27 May — Ott­awa

Thursday 28 May — 
Mon­tréal

Sat­urday 30 May — Toronto 

Sunday 31 May — Waterloo 

Monday 1 June — Hamilton

MPs object to police state

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Dgreen An inter­est­ing polit­ic­al row has erup­ted this week in the UK about the arrest of the oppos­i­tion Tory MP, Dami­en Green, who is also the Shad­ow Min­is­ter for Immig­ra­tion.  He was arres­ted on Thursday for alleged breaches of an obscure com­mon law  “aid­ing and abet­ting mis­con­duct in pub­lic office”.

Reports indic­ate that the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch, or as the news­pa­pers would have it the “anti-ter­ror­ism branch” was called in to invest­ig­ate leaks from the Home Office about immig­ra­tion policy, that Green was using these leaks to score points off the gov­ern­ment, and the Home Sec­ret­ary Jac­qui Smith in particular.

Nat­ur­ally, MPs from both sides of the House have been froth­ing at the mouth:  how dare Plod embar­rass an MP by arrest­ing him without warn­ing and by con­duct­ing co-ordin­ated searches of his homes and offices in both Kent and Lon­don?  News­pa­pers, par­tic­u­larly on the right of the polit­ic­al spec­trum, have been full of head­lines say­ing that this is proof that we are liv­ing in a police state.

While I have some sym­pathy for the belea­guered Mr Green, hav­ing also been hauled off by the Met Spe­cial Branch and quizzed for hours for dis­cuss­ing sens­it­ive inform­a­tion that was very much in the pub­lic interest, as well as see­ing my home ripped apart in a co-ordin­ated counter-ter­ror­ism style raid and seen friends arres­ted in co-ordin­ated dawn raids, I am still aghast at the hypo­crisy of both the politi­cians’ and medi­a’s reaction.

Many of us are already all to pain­fully aware that we live in a de facto police state.  Under the notori­ous Sec­tion 44 of the 2000 Ter­ror­ism Act, we can all be stopped and searched for no reas­on — and can even be arres­ted purely so that a bobby on the beat can ascer­tain our iden­tity.  Notices to this effect are now help­fully pinned up out­side most tube sta­tions in Lon­don.  Thou­sands of people are sub­ject to this across the UK every year on the streets of Britain.

But oth­er points rather leap to my atten­tion from the cov­er­age of this case.  If MPs don’t like the heavy-handed use and abuse of police powers, why did they pass these laws in the first place?  Did they not think through the implic­a­tions?  Or do they think that, as MPs, they are some­how above the laws of this land?

Plus, seni­or MPs are arguing that the use of leaks from dis­gruntled civil ser­vants is a time-hon­oured way for HM Oppos­i­tion in Par­lia­ment to hold the gov­ern­ment to account.  Well, that might be good for the MPs’ par­lia­ment­ary careers, but what of the hap­less and fre­quently brave souls with­in the Civil Ser­vice who face 2 years in pris­on for such leaks if they are con­victed of a breach of the 1989 Offi­cial Secrets Act?  And, of course, there is no leg­al defense under the OSA of hav­ing acted “in the pub­lic interest” — the very argu­ment that MPs are using to jus­ti­fy Green’s expos­ure of Home Office cov­er-ups and incompetence. 

As far as I can see, there have been no com­ments from either journ­al­ists or MPs about the fate of the source.    The most I could find was the fol­low­ing in the Daily Tele­graph:

“An alleged “whis­tleblower”, thought to be a male Home Office offi­cial was arres­ted 10 days ago.”

Either that means that journ­al­ists and MPs could­n’t give a toss about the fate of this per­son — after all, an MP’s career is far more import­ant — or that any report­ing of the arrest of the whis­tleblower has been injunc­ted in the media to the nth degree.  This would be even more troub­ling, as someone can just be “dis­ap­peared” into a Kafka-esque leg­al nightmare. 

 

Talks in California, September 2008

Posted on by Annie Machon
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In Septem­ber I was invited over to Cali­for­nia to give two talks about intel­li­gence, whis­tleblow­ing, and 9/11 and its impact on the world.  I focused on the erosion of our tra­di­tion­al freedoms and basic civil liberties

Two meet­ings were organ­ised for me in Mar­in, San Fran­sisco, and Dav­is by the Cali­for­ni­an 9/11 move­ment.  They were great meet­ings — packed out — and the response was bril­liant.  It’s heart­en­ing that so many people care about these issues, and the adverse impact the “war on ter­ror” is hav­ing, not just on the lives of people in the Middle East wars, but also on our way of life in the West.

Two men in black, appar­ently car­ry­ing hand­cuffs, turned up at the meet­ing in Mar­in, sat at the back and spent much of the time mut­ter­ing into their mobiles dur­ing the talk.  At the end, while every­one was clap­ping, they sat with their arms crossed, glower­ing at me, and for one mad moment I thought they were going to haul me off for talk­ing in pub­lic about dan­ger­ous notions such as demo­cracy, civil rights and peace.

Any­way, thank you to all who made this pos­sible, par­tic­u­larly Gab­ri­el, Kev­in, and Byron.  And thanks also to Ken, Hum­mux and the team for film­ing the talk in Mar­in.  DVDs of the talk can be obtained here.

Here’s the talk in Marin:

 

 

Ethics Talk at a School

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Earli­er this month I was invited back to the Bish­ops Stort­ford High School to do a talk for its Eth­ics and Cit­izen­ship Course.  This is a new, man­dat­ory part of the nation­al cur­riculum, and a good thing too.

I spoke about the role of a whis­tleblower in a demo­crat­ic soci­ety, and also about the erosion of our demo­crat­ic freedoms.  About 300 pupils atten­ded, and the response was fant­ast­ic, with many inter­est­ing and intel­li­gent ques­tions.  And so there should be — this is the gen­er­a­tion that will have to deal with the mess we are mak­ing of our civil liber­ties in this country.