Looking forward to speaking at this conference next weekend!
A timely and necessary debate about the vital, but increasingly fragile, state of our democracy and basic civil rights.
And what a great line up — well done to the organisers!
Some of the other speakers are old friends I’ve worked with before, some I look forward to meeting for the first time.
Last year I had the honour to meet Julian Assange, the founder of the brilliant whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, that has been causing such a stir recently with the release of the decrypted US military film, “Collateral Murder”, and recently with the Afghan War Logs.
I have nothing but respect for WikiLeaks — it shines a torch into the dark corners of corrupt government and big business, and is the way forward in holding these organisations, which largely believe themselves to be above the law, at least somewhat to account.
Julian was kind enough to invite me to take part in a panel discussion with him at the Hacking at Random festival in the Netherlands last year. The discussion focused on whistleblowing and government accountability. Here’s the video:
In July I was invited back to speak at the Secret Garden Party, a music, politics, and arts festival held annually somewhere, er, secret in the UK.
What a fab weekend. I have a well-known antipathy to sleeping under canvas, but this was an excellent festival — and even the compost loos were not too grim.
Listed as one of the “Star Acts” in the printed festival programme (I blush), I had the luxury of an hour and a half to speak in the première debate tent in the Rebels and Intellectuals section of the festival — The Forum — a concept that the organiser, Ben de Vere, promises to transplant to London sometime in the near future.
Anyway, I seriously recommend putting this festival in your diaries for next year, and keep an eye open for the spread of The Forum.….
Here’s the video:
I had the pleasure recently of working with a talented film maker called Ryan JW Smith, and his partner/producer, Brianna.
Brianna is an artist by training, and also a mean hand at producing. Ryan seems a bit of a renaissance man — film maker, poet, writer, actor. In fact, he wrote a play called “New World Order” in, I believe, iambic pentameter, and performed it to packed audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe a couple of years ago, and recently had a short film called “Army Strong” screened at a Polish film festival.
Anyway, they are in the middle of making a feature-length film about the post-apocalyptic, post‑9/11 world we all share — the lies of intelligence and government, the illegal wars, the erosion of our democratic rights. Just the sort of light material that I like to work with — and certainly what I think is of vital importance.
I’m working on helping to promote the film later this year, and organise some screening tours for them across Europe and North America.
I think it’s going to be a very powerful wake-up call to us all. Watch this space for more news.
Here’s a trailer Ryan and Brianna cut from my interviews with them called “Using Her Intelligence”. I like:
Finally the video of my talk at the CCC-SigInt in Cologne, discussing the whistleblowing, privacy, the crimes of spy agencies and what hackers can do about it.
Das Leben Der Anderen, talk at CCC SigInt 2010 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.
In January I had the pleasure of speaking in The Netherlands at the excellent geekfest known as ETH‑0. Rather than just banging on about the spooks, I thought it was time to take a step back and examine what exactly we mean when we talk about totalitarianism, police states, and how far down the road our countries have gone.
I also wanted to drive home to an audience, many of whom are too young to remember the Cold War, what exactly it would be like to live under a police state with its endemic surveillance.
And here’s the talk:
The 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.
I strongly recommend you take the time to watch this film about FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds.
“Kill the Messenger” joins some interesting dots, not just about what might have been going on round Sibel’s case, but also adds a different perspective to the notorious outing of CIA officer, Valerie Plame.
Of course, a film that investigates how the might of the state can be used to stifle the legitimate dissent of a whistleblower will always resonate with me.
Same message, different country.
So 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.
We 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.
The 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.
In 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.
The 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.
A 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.
So Colonel Gaddafi of Libya has been dishing out the diplomatic gifts generously to the former US administration. Listed in the public declaration are even such items as a diamond ring presented to former Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice, and other gifts to the value of $212,000.
This seems a slightly uneven distribution of largesse from the Middle East to the West. Before 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror, Gaddafi was still seen by the west as the head of a “rogue state”. Bombs, rather than gifts, were more likely to rain down on him.
However, since 2001 he has come back into the fold and is as keen as the coalition of the “willing” to counter the threat from Islamic extremist terrorists. So now he’s the new bestest friend of the US and UK governments in this unending fight.
But that was kind of inevitable, wasn’t it? As a secular Middle Eastern dictator, Gaddafi has traditionally had more to fear from Islamists than has the West. Particularly when these same Islamist groups have received ongoing support from those very governments that are now cosying up to Gaddafi.
Just to remind you, the reason I helped David Shayler in his whistleblowing on the crimes of MI5 and MI6 was because of just such a plot- the attempted assassination of Gaddafi in 1996 that was funded by the UK external intelligence gathering agency, MI6. In 1995 Shayler, then the head of the Libyan section in MI5, was officially briefed by his counterpart in MI6, David Watson (otherwise known as PT16/B), about an unfolding plot to kill Gaddafi. A Libyan military intelligence officer, subsequently code-named Tunworth, walked in to the British embassy in Tunis and asked to speak to the resident spook.
Tunworth said he was the head of a “ragtag group of Islamic extremists” (who subsequently turned out to have links to Al Qaeda — at a time when MI5 had begun to investigate the group), who wanted to effect a coup against Colonel Gaddafi. They needed funding to do this, and that was where MI6 came in. As a quid pro quo, Tunworth promised to hand over the two Lockerbie supsects for trial in Europe , which had for years been one of MI6’s priority targets — not to mention all those juicy oil contracts for BP et al.
Over the course of about 5 months, MI6 paid Tunworth’s group over $100,000, thereby becoming conspirators in a murder plot. Crucially, MI6 did not get the prior written permission of their political master, the Foreign Secretary, making this action illegal under the terms of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act.
Manifestly, this coup attempt did not work — Gaddafi is now a strong ally of our western governments. In fact, an explosion occurred beneath the wrong car in a cavalcade containing Gaddafi as he returned from the Libyan People’s Congress in Sirte. But innocent people died in the explosion and the ensuing security shoot-out.
So, MI6 funded an illegal, highly reckless plot in a volatile part of world that resulted in the deaths of innocent people. How more heinous a crime could there be? But to this day, despite a leaked MI6 document that proved they knew the existence of the proposed plot, and despite other intelligence sources backing up Shayler’s disclosures, the UK government has still refused to hold an enquiry. Quite the opposite — they threw the whistleblower in prison twice and tried to prosecute the investigating journalists.
Some people may call me naïve for thinking that the intelligence agencies should not get involved in operations like this. Putting aside the retort that the spies often conflate the idea of the national interest with their own, short-sighted careerism, I would like to remind such cynics that we are supposed to be living in modern democracies, where even the secret state is supposed to operate within the rule of law and democratic oversight. Illegal assassination plots, the use of torture, and false flag, state-sponsored terrorism should remain firmly within the retro, pulp-fiction world of James Bond.
OK, so I’m a crap blogger — but I have to say that my access to the internet was severely limited during my travels across Canada! And then I had to go back to the UK, then NL.…
Canada was great — the first national speaking tour organised by the country’s 9/11 groups. And before you roll your eyes, these are citizens’ groups that are calling for a new enquiry — in response to a mountain of evidence from hundreds of credible experts around the world, who question the official account peddled by the 9/11 Commission.
Bearing in mind how the issue of 9/11 has been used and abused by our dear governments to justify the endless “war on terror”, the use of torture, the wars in the Middle East and the erosion of our freedoms at home, I think any concerned and responsible citizen should, at the very least, keep an open mind about this issue and do their own research. Especially as the 9/11 Commission was, in the words of its two chairs, Keane and Hamilton, “set up to fail”!
But back to the tour. Huge thanks go to Patrick, the national organiser of the tour, who had the vision and commitment to pull the whole thing together, as well as sort out all the logistics and arrange a constant flow of media interviews for me, of which more below. And of course to the organisers of the events: Elizabeth, Rukshana, Mark, JF, Michael, Adam, Adnan, Graeme, and all the other activists — too many to name individually.
I had to fly to Vancouver via Chicago O’Hare, which spooked me to begin with. I’ve been through that airport before and it has, in the past, lived up to its well-deserved reputation for power-crazed immigration officers. However, I got a real sweetie — we ended up having an interesting chat about the nature of democracy, before he cracked a smile and waved me through.
In comparison, Vancouver airport is a Zen experience — all native art installations and waterfalls. As I emerged blinking into the late afternoon sunshine (it was about 3am by my body clock), I was greeted by the Vancouver posse and whisked away in the Truth Bus to food, wine and another radio interview.
I did a series of radio and newspaper interviews the next morning (thanks, Rukshana’s mum for the use of the phone!), before being whisked off on a tour of Vancouver by Rukshana and Georgina. The city blew me away with its beauty — mountains up close, parks, sea and arty quarters. If it wasn’t so
damned close to the US border, I would be seriously tempted to move
there.
At the end of the afternoon, I had a fab time being interviewed on Vancouver 1410 CFUN drivetime radio, before one more telephone interview and a well-earned glass of champagne at Georgina and Darren’s.
After this day of recovery, I was then invited onto the Bill Good Show the next morning. Bill is the grand old man of BC media, and he was a excellent interviewer. I had half an hour with him, and the show went out to over a quarter of a million people.
The meeting that night was a great success — I could feel the energy and interest of the audience as I spoke for 1 1/2 hours, and then had over an hour more of questions. I think it’s wrong for the media to say people are no longer interested in politics — they’re just not that interested in the established political hierarchies and systems.
If I had thought Vancouver lovely, the scenery was even more beautiful as I took the ferry down the bay to Victoria, past small wooded islands. Of course, that was the moment my camera decided to pack up…
I had a lovely couple of days in Victoria, pampered by Elizabeth and Brian, shown the beauties of the island and meeting a number of activists. I also had the pleasure of meeting Rowland Morgan, (co-author with Ian Henshall) of the excellent bestseller, “9/11 Revealed”.
I’d done a number of interviews before arriving on the island. The Victoria event was very well attended and I had a standing ovation at the end.
Then it was back to Vancouver for another hour-long interview on Co-op Radio and a pot luck supper with the activists, before flying off to Ottawa for the eastern leg of the tour. I arrived at midnight to be greeted by the lovely Marjorie and Cam, who hosted me for a couple of nights. My sleep was all too brief, as I had to get up at 4.30 to make a 6am radio interview.
The Ottawa event was smaller (I would say it was an extremely rainy night!), but perfectly formed. Despite this, the group seemed very enthused about putting on future events.
The next day brought a Greyhound bus ride up to Montréal. Such moments in life are when you wish you’d put Simon and Garfunkel on your I‑pod. My 18 hours in Montréal were hectic — and we only just made it to the meeting on time, what with an excellent dinner and terrible traffic. The meeting was really vibrant. Afterwards, when everyone else was heading out to party, I had to slink back to my bed for a brief 4 hours sleep, before getting a train at 6.30 to Toronto.
I hit the ground running, with a lunchtime interview, then a peace demo in the city centre. Clinton and Bush Jr were in town, giving a talk to 5000 of the faithful who were flush enough to cough up between $200 and $5000 to hear their bien pensees. Independent media did a couple of good interviews with me. Shamefully, the Stop the War Toronto group only managed to rustle up about 1,000 protesters outside the conference centre, and then refused to give a platform to Splitting the Sky, a Canadian peace activist who had attempted to arrest Bush for war crimes when he visited Calgary in April, and who had himself been arrested for his pains. However, some other peace activists had some good coverage!
The next day, having caught up on some sleep at last, I had an excellent time at the Toronto university radio station, where we had a lively hour-long interview, before heading off to my event at the university.
Next stop, Waterloo University, where I did a round of interviews accompanied by the journalist and campaigner, Barrie Zwicker. The format that night changed to an interview on stage conducted by him, which worked really well.
The final stop of the tour was Hamilton where, after another all-too-brief night, I had three morning interviews — 2 on radio, and one recorded for the TV evening news. A lovely Lebanese lunch with a group of professors from the university followed, and then a much needed chance to sleep it off, before heading out to the final gig, organised by Professor Graeme MacQueen and hosted by Mohawk College. Well, they always say the last one is the best — and I had an amazing evening. Over an hour of talk, following by 1 1/2 hours of questions from an interested and informed audience.
So a great time in an amazing country. Thanks once again to all who made this tour such a success, and good luck with your future plans!
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.
This 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.
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!
On 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!
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