Courage Resignation

Half a year ago I was asked be the dir­ect­or of a new found­a­tion that would raise funds to cov­er the leg­al costs of high-pro­file whis­tleblowers, journ­al­ist sources and asso­ci­ated cases.  Five months ago I announced the launch of the Cour­age Found­a­tion to an audi­ence of 6,000 at the CCC hack­er­fest in Hamburg:

This week I have resigned my pos­i­tion from the Cour­age Foundation.

Firstly, I find the cur­rent evol­u­tion of Cour­age incom­pat­ible with the way I work.

Secondly, I have so many oth­er calls on my time, trav­el­ling con­stantly across Europe to speak at con­fer­ences around issues such as whis­tleblowers, the media, tech­no­logy, sur­veil­lance, pri­vacy, drug policy, human rights.… where to stop.

I wish the organ­isa­tion all the best for the future. It is doing import­ant work.

I shall also con­tin­ue to speak out in sup­port of whis­tleblowers and asso­ci­ated issues — how could I not?

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International Journalism Festival, Perugia

Here is a pan­el dis­cus­sion I did at the Inter­na­tion­al Journ­al­ism Fest­iv­al in Per­u­gia, Italy, in May 2014:

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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:

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Trans­me­diale, Ber­lin 2014 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The Whistler — the international launch

The Whist­ler, the new whis­tleblower sup­port net­work in the UK, recently held an inter­na­tion­al pre-launch in London.

The Whist­ler has been set up by Gav­in Mac­Fa­dyen, Dir­ect­or of the Centre for Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ism and Eileen Chubb of Com­pas­sion in Care.

Both, through their work, real­ise the heavy price that all whis­tleblowers from every sec­tor have to pay, not just pro­fes­sion­ally, but also socially, psy­cho­lo­gic­ally and also poten­tially leg­ally. And they want to help.

The organ­isa­tion took the oppor­tun­ity to host an event with a num­ber of US intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers from the Sam Adams Asso­ci­ates for Integ­rity in Intel­li­gence who were in the coun­try to present (sadly and inev­it­ably in absen­tia) the 2014 Sam Adams Award to Chelsea Man­ning at a cere­mony at the Oxford Uni­on Soci­ety last week.

Here is the full video of The Whist­ler event:

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The Whist­ler Launch from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

CCC talk — the Four Wars

Here is my recent talk at the CCC in Ham­burg, dis­cuss­ing the war on ter­ror, the war on drugs, the war in the inter­net and the war on whistleblowers:

30C3 — The Four Wars; Ter­ror, whis­tleblowers, drugs, inter­net from Annie Machon on Vimeo.