News debate on Russian “hacking” allegations

On 9 Janu­ary RT hos­ted a live streamed debate on its news show about the US intel­li­gence report that attemp­ted to prove that Rus­sia had “hacked” the US election.

Also in the debate were former CIA Dir­ect­or, James Wool­sey, and former CIA intel­li­gence officer, Larry Johnson.

Here it is:

RT Debate about Intel­li­gence Report into alleged ‘Rus­si­an hack­ing’ (Streamed Live) from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Perils of Censorship in the Digital Age

First pub­lished on RT OP-Edge.

The ripple effects of the Don­ald Trump elec­tion vic­tory in Amer­ica con­tin­ue to wash over many dif­fer­ent shorelines of pub­lic opin­ion, like so many mini-tsuna­mis hit­ting the Pacific rim over the last few last weeks.  The seis­mic changes have indeed been glob­al, and not least in Europe.

First up, the Euro­crats have been get­ting in a bit of a flap about the future of NATO, as I recently wrote.  In the past I have also writ­ten about the per­ceived “insider threat” - in oth­er words, whis­tleblowers — that has been wor­ry­ing gov­ern­ments and intel­li­gence agen­cies across the West­ern world.

Cur­rently the Twit­ter­sphere is light­ing up around the issue of “fake news”, with West­ern main­stream media (news pur­vey­ors of the utmost unsul­lied prob­ity, nat­ur­ally) blam­ing Trump’s unex­pec­ted vic­tory vari­ously on the US alt-media shock jocks, fake news trolls and bots, and sov­er­eign-state media out­lets such as the Rus­si­an RT and Sput­nik.

In the wake of US Demo­crat claims that Rus­sia was inter­fer­ing in the elec­tion pro­cess (not a prac­tice that the USA has ever engaged in in any oth­er coun­try around the world what­so­ever), we now have the US Green Party pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate appar­ently spon­tan­eously call­ing for recounts in three key swing-states in the USA.

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment has already expressed con­cern that such “fake” news might adversely influ­ence the almost inev­it­able re-elec­tion for a fourth term as Chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel.  Des­pite hav­ing been pro­claimed the closest part­ner of the USA by Pres­id­ent Obama on his recent speed-dat­ing vis­it to Europe, and per­haps wary of the rising nation­al­ist anger (I hes­it­ate to write nation­al social­ist anger, but cer­tainly its ugly face is there too in the Ger­man crowd) Merkal is get­ting in an elect­or­al first strike.

At a slightly more wor­ry­ing level, the European Par­lia­ment on 23 Novem­ber voted for a res­ol­u­tion to counter “pro­pa­ganda” from Rus­sia — and incred­ibly equated that coun­try’s media with ter­ror­ist groups such as ISIS — the very organ­isa­tion that Rus­sia is cur­rently try­ing to help crush in Syr­ia and which the West and NATO are at least offi­cially opposed to.

Equat­ing the con­tent of licensed and net­worked media out­lets — how­ever much they may chal­lenge West­ern ortho­dox­ies — to the hor­rors of ISIS snuff videos seems to me to be wil­fully blind if not down­right and dan­ger­ously delu­sion­al. Or per­haps we should just call it pro­pa­ganda too?

Whatever happened to the rights of free­dom of expres­sion enshrined in the European Con­ven­tion of Human Rights? Or the concept that a plur­al­ity of opin­ion encour­ages a healthy democracy?

In Amer­ica too, we have had reports this week that Google and Face­book are cen­sor­ing alleged “fake” news.  This is the start of a very slip­pery slope. Soon any­one who dis­sents from the ortho­doxy will be deemed fake and dis­ap­pear into the cor­por­ate memory black hole.  Google in 2014 sug­ges­ted a pre­curs­or to this, the Know­ledge Vault, a search sys­tem that would pro­mote approved web­sites and dis­ap­pear those deemed inac­cur­ate at least by Google algorithms. But who con­trols those?

Once again our cor­por­ate over­lords seem to be march­ing remark­ably in time — almost a lock step — with the mood of the polit­ic­al establishment.

So how did this all kick off? With remark­ably pres­ci­ent tim­ing, in Octo­ber the arch-neo­con­ser­vat­ive UK-based think tank, the Henry Jack­son Soci­ety, pub­lished a report entitled “Putin’s Use­ful Idi­ots: Bri­tain’s Right, Left and Rus­sia”. Well, at least it got its apo­strophes right, but much of the rest is just so much hate-filled bile against those who call out the failed Wash­ing­ton Consensus.

The Henry Jack­son Soci­ety is an odi­ous organ­isa­tion that was foun­ded in Cam­bridge elev­en years ago. One of its ini­tial sig­nat­or­ies was Sir Richard Dear­love, former head of the UK’s for­eign intel­li­gence agency MI6, and of some per­son­al notori­ety for ped­dling the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion that took the UK into the dis­astrous and illeg­al Iraq war in 2003, as well as feed­ing in the fake intel­li­gence about Iraq try­ing to acquire urani­um from Niger that US Sec­ret­ary of State Colin Pow­ell used as a jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the same war at the United Nations.

Des­pite all this, he remains hap­pily retired, bloated with hon­ours, while at the same time threat­en­ing the Brit­ish estab­lish­ment with his full mem­oirs to posthum­ously pre­serve his repu­ta­tion and avoid pro­sec­u­tion for a breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act, as I have writ­ten before.

The Henry Jack­son Soci­ety has also fol­ded into itself an organ­isa­tion called the Centre for Social Cohe­sion — appar­ently estab­lished to build bet­ter integ­ra­tion for the Muslim com­munity in the UK, but which for the last dec­ade has done noth­ing but stir up Islamo­pho­bia. As oth­ers have writ­ten, the phrase “mod­ern McCarthy­ites” might not be stretch­ing this concept too far. And now it seems to be turn­ing its ire against Rus­sia.

Its emphas­is has been unre­lent­ingly anti-Islam for many years, so it was inter­est­ing that this estab­lish­ment-embed­ded Soci­ety had a fully-formed report about the renewed Red Men­ace sub­vert­ing our West­ern media just ready and wait­ing to be pub­lished ahead of the US elections.

So where does this all leave us?

It may well be that Face­book will begin to dis­ap­pear so-called fake news — which could have reper­cus­sions for all the act­iv­ist groups that, against all advice and com­mon sense, con­tin­ue to offer up their plans/organise events on that medium.

We may see the same cen­sor­ship on Google, as well as dis­sid­ent web­sites dis­ap­pear­ing down the pro­posed memory-hole of the Know­ledge Vault. Sure, such pages may be recor­ded on sites like the Way­Back Machine et al, but who really searches through that reflex­ively? Most us us don’t even get through the first page of Google hits any­way. In our digit­al age, this will make the 20th cen­tury prac­tice of your ana­logue dic­tat­or — the air­brush­ing of polit­ic­al oppon­ents out of his­tory — look pos­it­ively quaint.

But, just as the Guten­berg Press was a rad­ic­al innov­a­tion in the 15th cen­tury that led to a rap­id spread of writ­ten ideas and the res­ult­ing cen­sor­ship, repres­sion and a thriv­ing under­ground media, so the the cur­rent crack­down will lead to the same push-back.

Then we have to con­sider the poten­tial cen­sor­ship of state-owned news out­lets such as RT, the Chinese CCTV, and the Ira­ni­an Press TV. Where will that leave oth­er state-owned organ­isa­tions such as the BBC, RAI and oth­er inter­na­tion­al Euro-broad­casters? Oh, of course, they are part of the West­ern media club, so it’s all hun­key-dorey and busi­ness as usual.

But this can be a two-sided fight — only two months ago RT’s UK bankers, the state-owned Nat West Bank, announced that they were going to shut down the chan­nel’s UK accounts, with no reas­on or redress. I gath­er that a sim­il­ar threat was then issued against the BBC in Rus­sia, and the case was quietly dropped.

Over the last 20 years I have been inter­viewed by hun­dreds of major media out­lets across Europe, many of them state-owned.  How­ever, it is only when I appear on RT​.com that I am accused of sup­port­ing a state-pro­pa­ganda out­let, of being a use­ful idi­ot — and this has become increas­ingly marked over the last couple of years.

All these meas­ures smack of an ill-informed and out-of-touch pan­ic reac­tion by a hitherto com­pla­cent estab­lish­ment. Before they attempt to air­brush his­tory, we need to remem­ber that his­tory teaches some use­ful les­sons about such elit­ist crack­downs: they nev­er end well for anyone.

The US Election

No doubt you, as well as I, have been watch­ing the 2016 USA pres­id­en­tial elec­tion with a sense of appalled fas­cin­a­tion — has ever a cam­paign been fought so viciously in mod­ern West­ern politics?

But the Amer­ic­ans have made their choice (between the dev­il and the deep blue sea), and will have to live with it. I hope it works out well for them.

How­ever, my focus is more on the implic­a­tions for the rest of the world. As a post-Brexit Brit based in Brus­sels, these are many-layered.

From the Brexit per­spect­ive the Trump vic­tory could be good for the UK — he appears to be more sym­path­et­ic to the so-called “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” than Obama.  He is also prob­ably more likely to try to cut deals with Rus­sia over Ukraine and the ongo­ing war in Syr­ia than the ultra-hawk­ish Hil­lary Clin­ton could ever bring her­self to do.

This can only be good for Europe, as the sanc­tions put in place after the US-backed Ukraine coup in 2014 are hurt­ing European trade.  Yet again, Europe has been caught between Rus­sia and the USA.

Also, let us not for­get the infam­ous quote from Assist­ant Sec­ret­ary of State, Vic­tor­ia Nuland, who said in 2014 “fuck the EU”, when it came to decision mak­ing in plan­ning the Ukrain­i­an coup.

But my main point is the European estab­lish­ment’s response to the Trump pres­id­en­tial vic­tory. And let us not deceive ourselves here — this was an emphat­ic vic­tory. The Amer­ic­an people wanted a can­did­ate for change, for a push-back against the per­ceived Wash­ing­ton polit­ic­al élite.

Per­haps the elec­tion could have swung in anoth­er dir­ec­tion towards anoth­er can­did­ate for change — if Bernie Sanders had been the Demo­crat nom­in­ee.  Alas, as we know from the DNC files leaked to and pub­lished by Wikileaks, his cam­paign was under­mined by his own party in favour of Hil­lary Clin­ton, while pro­mot­ing Trump as the Repub­lic­an can­did­ate that Clin­ton could beat.

Hillary_Clinton_Pant_Suits_2016Hubris is nev­er a good look, just like “pant” suits.

What pains me most is the European main­stream medi­a’s report­ing of Trump’s vic­tory: “lib­er­al demo­cracy” is under threat no less, and pop­u­lism is on the rise.

How­ever, those most wor­ried about “lib­er­al demo­cracy” tend to be the tech­no­crat­ic Euro­crats such as European Coun­cil Pres­id­ent Don­ald Tusk and European Com­mis­sion Pres­id­ent Jean-Claude Jun­ck­er.  And they are the very people try­ing to ram through the thor­oughly *neo*-liberal agen­das of CETA and  the Trans-Atlantic Trade Invest­ment Part­ner­ship — oth­er­wise known as TTIP, widely res­isted across Europe as a rape of our democracies.

TTIP, if passed, would elim­in­ate any mean­ing­ful nation­al sov­er­eignty, repla­cing it with a glob­al cor­por­at­ist hege­mony that could sue our nation­al gov­ern­ments if they passed laws that could con­ceiv­ably — some­time in the future — pass laws that could — con­ceiv­ably in the future — inhib­it the profit-mak­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies of the corporations.

That, and nation­al asset-strip­ping, is the pure defin­i­tion of neo-lib­er­al­ism, and that is what our European over­lords want to enact.  Yet, at the same time, they are inveigh­ing against the death of “lib­er­al demo­cracy” after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump.

Am I miss­ing some­thing here?

Head of MI5 goes public

Andrew_ParkerFor the first time a serving head of a major intel­li­gence ser­vice in the UK, Andrew Park­er the Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of the UK domest­ic Secur­ity Ser­vice, has giv­en an inter­view to a nation­al newspaper.

Inter­est­ingly, he gave this inter­view to The Guard­i­an, the paper that has won awards for pub­lish­ing a num­ber of the Edward Snowden dis­clos­ures about endem­ic illeg­al spy­ing and, for its pains, had its com­puters ritu­ally smashed up by the powers that be.

The tim­ing was also inter­est­ing — only two weeks ago the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Tribunal (the only leg­al body that can actu­ally invest­ig­ate alleg­a­tions of spy crime in the UK and which has so far been an unex­cep­tion­al cham­pi­on of their prob­ity) broke ranks to assert that the UK spies have been illeg­ally con­duct­ing mass sur­veil­lance for 17 years — from 1998 to 2015.

This we could all deduce from the dis­clos­ures of a cer­tain Edward Snowden in 2013, but it’s good to have it offi­cially confirmed.

Yet at the same time the much-derided Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill has been oil­ing its way through the Par­lia­ment­ary sys­tem, with the cul­min­a­tion this week.

This “Snoop­ers’ Charter”, as it is known, has been repeatedly and fer­vently rejec­ted for years.

It has been ques­tioned in Par­lia­ment, chal­lenged in courts, and soundly con­demned by former intel­li­gence insiders, tech­nic­al experts, and civil liber­ties groups, yet it is the walk­ing dead of UK legis­la­tion — noth­ing will kill it. The Zom­bie keeps walking.

It will kill all notion of pri­vacy — and without pri­vacy we can­not freely write, speak, watch, read, activ­ate, or res­ist any­thing future gov­ern­ments choose to throw at us. Only recently I read an art­icle about the pos­sib­il­ity of Face­book assess­ing someone’s phys­ic­al or men­tal health — poten­tially lead­ing to all sorts of out­comes includ­ing get­ting a job or rent­ing a flat.

And this dove­tails into the early Snowden dis­clos­ure of the pro­gramme PRISM — the com­pli­city of the inter­net mega­corps — as well as the secret back doors what were built into them.

It will be the end of demo­cracy as we (sort of ) know it today. And, as we know from the Snowden dis­clos­ures, what hap­pens in the UK will impact not just Europe but the rest of the world.

So how does this all link into the MI5 head honcho’s first live inter­view?  Well, the tim­ing was inter­est­ing — ahead of the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill passing oleagin­ously into law and with the ongo­ing demon­isa­tion of Russia.

Here is an inter­view I gave to RT about some of these issues:

Com­ment­ary on MI5’s first nwspa­per inter­view from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

A Good American — Bill Binney

I have for a num­ber of years now been involved with a glob­al group of whis­tleblowers from the intel­li­gence, dip­lo­mat­ic and mil­it­ary world, who gath­er togeth­er every year as the Sam Adams Asso­ci­ates to give an award to an indi­vidu­al dis­play­ing integ­rity in intelligence.

This year’s award goes to former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, who exposed the CIA’s illeg­al tor­ture pro­gramme, but was the only officer to go to pris­on — for expos­ing CIA crimes.

The award cere­mony will be tak­ing place in Wash­ing­ton on 25 Septem­ber at the “World Bey­ond War” con­fer­ence.

Last year’s laur­eate, former Tech­nic­al Dir­ect­or of the NSA Bill Bin­ney, is cur­rently on tour across Europe to pro­mote an excel­lent film about both his and the oth­er stor­ies of the earli­er NSA whis­tleblowers before Edward Snowden — “A Good Amer­ic­an”.

The film is simply excel­lent, very human and very humane, and screen­ings will hap­pen across Europe over the next few months. Do watch if you can!

This is a film of the pan­el dis­cus­sion after a screen­ing in Lon­don on 18th September:

A Good Amer­ic­an” — pan­el dis­cus­sion with ex-NSA Bill Bin­ney from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Thought police

Here is the full inter­view I did recently for RT about the announce­ment of a new sec­tion of the UK Met­ro­pol­it­an Police ded­ic­ated to hunt­ing down “inter­net trolls”.

And here is the clip used in the interview:

Thought Police from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The Nice terror attack

Here is an inter­view I did in the middle of the night for RT about the Nice ter­ror­ist lorry attack:

And here is the art­icle I men­tioned about the French spy chief warn­ing that the next prob­lem­at­ic epis­ode could lead to civil unrest/war.

Fight for your Right to Privacy

A recent talk I gave to the excel­lent Spark​.me con­fer­ence in beau­ti­ful Montenegro:

Annie Machon at SparkMe con­fer­ence 2016 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The Chilcot Report about the Iraq War

Here is an inter­view I did yes­ter­day about the long-awaited Chil­cot Report into the cluster­fuck that was and is Iraq:

The Chil­cot Report on the Iraq War from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

RT Going Underground — the Snoopers’ Charter

Here is a recent inter­view I did for the RT UK’s flag­ship news chan­nel, “Going Under­ground” about the hor­rors of the pro­posed Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill — the so-called “snoop­ers charter” — that will leg­al­ise pre­vi­ously illeg­al mass sur­veil­lance, mass data reten­tion, and mass hack­ing car­ried out by GCHQ in league with the NSA:

My inter­view starts at 19 minutes in — there is Brexit stuff first, about which I shall write more about soon.…

Defending Human Rights in a Digital Age

This is an (abbre­vi­ated) ver­sion of my con­tri­bu­tion to a pan­el dis­cus­sion about human rights in a digit­al age, hos­ted last Decem­ber by Pro­fess­or Mari­anne Frank­lin and Gold­smiths Uni­ver­sity in London:

Gold­smiths Uni­ver­sity Pri­vacy Dis­cus­sion, Decem­ber 2015 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Parliamentary Evidence on the UK Investigatory Powers Bill

My writ­ten evid­ence to the Scru­tiny Com­mit­tee in the UK Houses of Par­lia­ment that is cur­rently examin­ing the much-dis­puted Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill (IP):

1. My name is Annie Machon and I worked as an intel­li­gence officer for the UK’s domest­ic Secur­ity Ser­vice, com­monly referred to as MI5, from early 1991 until late 1996. I resigned to help my part­ner at the time, fel­low intel­li­gence officer Dav­id Shayler, expose a num­ber of instances of crime and incom­pet­ence we had wit­nessed dur­ing our time in the service.

2. I note that the draft IP Bill repeatedly emphas­ises the import­ance of demo­crat­ic and judi­cial over­sight of the vari­ous cat­egor­ies of intrus­ive intel­li­gence gath­er­ing by estab­lish­ing an Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Com­mis­sion­er as well as sup­port­ing Judi­cial Com­mis­sion­ers. How­ever, I am con­cerned about the real and mean­ing­ful applic­a­tion of this oversight.

3. While in the Ser­vice in the 1990s we were gov­erned by the terms of the Inter­cep­tion of Com­mu­nic­a­tions Act 1985 (IOCA), the pre­curs­or to RIPA, which provided for a sim­il­ar sys­tem of applic­a­tions for a war­rant and min­is­teri­al oversight.

4. I would like to sub­mit evid­ence that the sys­tem did not work and could be manip­u­lated from the inside.

5. I am aware of at least two instances of this dur­ing my time in the ser­vice, which were cleared for pub­lic­a­tion by MI5 in my 2005 book about the Shayler case, “Spies Lies, and Whis­tleblowers”, so my dis­cuss­ing them now is not in breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act. I would be happy to provide fur­ther evid­ence, either writ­ten or in per­son, about these abuses.

6. My con­cern about this draft Bill is that while the over­sight pro­vi­sions seem to be strengthened, with approv­al neces­sary from both the Sec­ret­ary of State and a Judi­cial Com­mis­sion­er, the interi­or pro­cess of applic­a­tion for war­rants will still remain opaque and open to manip­u­la­tion with­in the intel­li­gence agencies.

7. The applic­a­tion pro­cess for a war­rant gov­ern­ing inter­cep­tion or inter­fer­ence involved a case being made in writ­ing by the intel­li­gence officer in charge of an invest­ig­a­tion. This then went through four lay­ers of man­age­ment, with all the usu­al redac­tions and fin­ess­ing, before a final sum­mary was draf­ted by H Branch, signed by the DDG, and then dis­patched to the Sec­ret­ary of State. So the min­is­ter was only ever presen­ted with was a sum­mary of a sum­mary of a sum­mary of a sum­mary of the ori­gin­al intel­li­gence case.

8. Addi­tion­ally, the ori­gin­al intel­li­gence case could be erro­neous and mis­lead­ing. The pro­cess of writ­ing the war­rant applic­a­tion was merely a tick box exer­cise, and officers would routinely note that such intel­li­gence could only be obtained by such intrus­ive meth­ods, rather than explor­ing all open source options first. The reval­id­a­tion pro­cess could be even more cavalier.

9. When prob­lems with this sys­tem were voiced, officers were told to not rock the boat and just fol­low orders. Dur­ing the annu­al vis­it by the Intel­li­gence Inter­cept Com­mis­sion­er, those with con­cerns were banned from meet­ing him.

10. Thus I have con­cerns about the real­ist­ic power of the over­sight pro­vi­sions writ­ten into this Bill and would urge an addi­tion­al pro­vi­sion. This would estab­lish an effect­ive chan­nel whereby officers with con­cerns can give evid­ence dir­ectly and in con­fid­ence to the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Com­mis­sion­er in the expect­a­tion that a prop­er invest­ig­a­tion will be con­duc­ted and with no reper­cus­sions to their careers inside the agen­cies. Here is a link to a short video I did for Oxford Uni­ver­sity three years ago out­lining these proposals:

11. This, in my view, would be a win-win scen­ario for all con­cerned. The agen­cies would have a chance to improve their work prac­tices, learn from mis­takes, and bet­ter pro­tect nation­al secur­ity, as well as avoid­ing the scan­dal and embar­rass­ment of any future whis­tleblow­ing scan­dals; the officers with eth­ic­al con­cerns would not be placed in the invi­di­ous pos­i­tion of either becom­ing com­pli­cit in poten­tially illeg­al acts by “just fol­low­ing orders” or risk­ing the loss of their careers and liberty by going pub­lic about their concerns.

12. I would also like to raise the pro­por­tion­al­ity issue. It strikes me that bulk inter­cept must surely be dis­pro­por­tion­ate with­in a func­tion­ing and free demo­cracy, and indeed can actu­ally harm nation­al secur­ity. Why? Because the use­ful, indeed cru­cial, intel­li­gence on tar­gets and their asso­ci­ates is lost in the tsunami of avail­able inform­a­tion. Indeed this seems to have been the con­clu­sion of every inquiry about the recent spate of “lone wolf” and ISIS-inspired attacks across the West – the tar­gets were all vaguely known to the author­it­ies but resources were spread too thinly.

13. In fact all that bulk col­lec­tion seems to provide is con­firm­a­tion after the fact of a sus­pect’s involve­ment in a spe­cif­ic incid­ent, which is surely spe­cific­ally police evid­en­tial work. Yet the jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the invas­ive inter­cept and inter­fer­ence meas­ures laid out in the Bill itself is to gath­er vital inform­a­tion ahead of an attack in order to pre­vent it – the very defin­i­tion of intel­li­gence. How is this pos­sible if the sheer scale of bulk col­lec­tion drowns out the vital nug­gets of intelligence?

14. Finally, I would like to raise the point that the phrase “nation­al secur­ity” has nev­er been defined for leg­al pur­poses in the UK. Surely this should be the very first step neces­sary before for­mu­lat­ing the pro­posed IP Bill? Until we have such a leg­al defin­i­tion, how can we for­mu­late new and intrus­ive laws in the name of pro­tect­ing an undefined and neb­u­lous concept, and how can we judge that the new law will thereby be pro­por­tion­ate with­in a democracy?

Webstock in New Zealand

Webstock_2016_2I just want to say a huge thank you to the organ­isers of the 10th Web­stock Fest­iv­al in New Zea­l­and earli­er this month — def­in­itely worth the inter­min­able flights.

This is a tech-focused con­fer­ence that very much looks at the big­ger pic­ture and joins a whole num­ber of dif­fer­ent soci­et­al dots.

Plus they look after their “inspir­a­tion­al speak­ers” exceed­ingly well, with scary coach trips out of Wel­ling­ton and up the cliffs, a chance to appre­ci­ate the finer aspects of bowl­ing at a NZ work­ing men’s club, and a rip-roar­ing party at the end of the fest­iv­al. It was great to have the time to chat with so many amaz­ing people.

Oh, and I exper­i­enced my first earth­quake — 5.7 on the Richter Scale. Slightly dis­tant, but still impress­ive when you’re in a sway­ing 5th floor hotel room.  I ini­tially thought a bomb might have gone off in the base­ment.…  Thank­fully, NZ hotels are made of pli­able, if stern, stuff.

I was also shunted on to Radio New Zea­l­and for a half hour inter­view, dis­cuss­ing whis­tleblowers, spies, drugs and sur­veil­lance.  Here it is — it was fun to do — so thank you NZ.