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 … Con­tin­ue read­ing

UK sets up yet another costly spy agency

This art­icle was first pub­lished on RT Op Ed a month ago. The UK Min­istry of Defence announced on 21 Septem­ber the estab­lish­ment of yet anoth­er Brit­ish spy agency, an amal­gam of mil­it­ary and secur­ity ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als designed to wage cyber … Con­tin­ue read­ing

The Sam Adams Associates — the Weirdest Club in the World

Since 2002 a unique award cere­mony has taken place annu­ally in either the USA or Europe: the Sam Adams Award for Integ­rity in Intel­li­gence. This year it occurred in Wash­ing­ton DC on 22 Septem­ber and was giv­en to vet­er­an journ­al­ist and … Con­tin­ue read­ing

What price whistleblowers?

First pub­lished on Con­sor­ti­um News. For­give my “infam­ously flu­ent French”, but the phrase “pour encour­ager les autres” seems to have lost its fam­ously iron­ic qual­ity. Rather than mak­ing an example of people who dis­sent in order to pre­vent future dis­sid­ence, … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Ibsen and Whistleblowers

The Chichester Fest­iv­al Theatre in the UK has been sta­ging Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People, explor­ing the com­plex­it­ies of whis­tleblow­ing. The CFT asked me to write an art­icle for the fest­iv­al pro­gramme about the value and role, the … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, Berlin 2015

Last week in Ber­lin the 2015 Sam Adams Award for Integ­rity in Intel­li­gence was presen­ted to the former Tech­nic­al Dir­ect­or of the NSA, whis­tleblower and tire­less pri­vacy advoc­ate, Wil­li­am Bin­ney. A 36-year intel­li­gence agency vet­er­an, Bill Bin­ney resigned from the … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Oxford Union Society Debate

I recently had the pleas­ure of tak­ing part in a debate at the Oxford Uni­on Soci­ety.  I spoke to the pro­pos­i­tion that “this house believes Edward Snowden is a hero”, along with US journ­al­ist Chris Hedges, NSA whis­tleblower Bill Bin­ney, and former UKCon­tin­ue read­ing

Circumventing the Panopticon, Transmediale Berlin

Last month I was on a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Ber­lin Trans­me­diale con­fer­ence with NSA whis­tleblower Bill Bin­ney, Chelsea Man­ning rap­por­teur Alexa O’Bri­an, and act­iv­ist Diani Bar­reto. Here is the link to the full two hour event, and here is my speech: … Con­tin­ue read­ing

In Celebration of Whistleblowers

First pub­lished on RT Op-Edge. In the UK last week there was a series of events to cel­eb­rate the won­der­ful work of whis­tleblowers. In pre­vi­ous dec­ades these brave and rare indi­vidu­als have often been all too eas­ily dis­missed with the usu­al, … Con­tin­ue read­ing

Head of MI5 goes public

For 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 … Con­tin­ue read­ing