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.

BBC World Service interview about NSA and spy oversight

Here’s an inter­view I did for BBC World Ser­vice radio about the NSA’a glob­al elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance and spy oversight:

BBC “World Have Your Say” debate

A recent inter­view on BBC World Ser­vice radio, on “World Have Your Say”.  An inter­est­ing debate with some oth­er former intel­li­gence types:

BBC World Ser­vice “World Have Your Say” inter­view from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

BBC Radio interview about the “snoopers’ charter”

Yes­ter­day I gave an inter­view to BBC Radio Ulster about the secur­ity fall-out of the Wool­wich murder and the cyn­ic­al polit­ic­al oppor­tunism of those call­ing, inev­it­ably, for great­er powers for the spies and a rein­tro­duc­tion of the pro­posed Com­munuic­a­tions Data Bill, dubbed the “snoop­ers’ charter”.

Here is the link.

UK Anonymous Radio Interview

Here’s the link to my inter­view tonight on UK Anonym­ous Radio — I had a great time and found it a fun, wide-ran­ging, and stim­u­lat­ing hour.  I hope you do too.  So, thank you Anonymous.

And also thank you to Kim Dot­com set­ting up the new file-shar­ing site, Mega, which replaces his illeg­ally-taken-down glob­al site, MegaUp­load.  I have some­where safe, I think, to store my interviews!

What a sham­bol­ic dis­grace that MegaUp­load raid was, and what a clas­sic example of the glob­al cor­por­at­ist agenda that I dis­cuss in the interview.

I do love geeks.

Interview, Czech National Radio

Here is a link to an in-depth inter­view I did recently at the Czech nation­al radio sta­tion in Prague.

As a Dir­ect­or of Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hib­i­tion (LEAP), I was invited to Prague by the pro­gress­ive Czech Nation­al Drug Co-ordin­at­or, Jindrich Vobor­il, to speak at a drugs con­fer­ence in the Czech Parliament.

The Report on BBC Radio 4 — the Death of Gareth Williams

A look at the forensic and police fail­ures around the invest­ig­a­tion of the still inex­plic­able death of intel­li­gence officer, Gareth Wil­li­ams, in Lon­don in 2010.

Here’s the link.

BBC Radio4 Woman’s Hour, 1 December 2010

Fun and games dis­cuss­ing the role of the female MI5 intel­li­gence officer, and the organ­isa­tion’s ongo­ing attempts to recruit them.  The oth­er guest on the show was MI5’s offi­cial his­tor­i­an, Chris­toph­er Andrew.

Link to the BBC Radio4 Woman’s Hour show.

Reg­u­lar as clock­work, this story comes around every few years as you can see from this inter­view I did for The Inde­pend­ent in 2006.  This sug­gests to me that MI5 not only has a prob­lem recruit­ing female spooks, but also can­’t keep hold of them!

BBC Radio Bristol Interview

A recent inter­view on BBC Radio Bris­tol to pub­li­cise the screen­ing of an award-win­ning new doc­u­ment­ary called “The Ele­phant in the Room”, made by tal­en­ted dir­ect­or Dean Puck­ett.

I had the chance to explore the mech­an­isms by which the UK media is con­trolled by the spies and the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the sec­tion in MI6 called I/Ops, which plants false stor­ies in the media to the bene­fit of MI5 and MI6.

Resonance FM Interview

This is an inter­view I recor­ded for Res­on­ance FM with We Are Change UK, a rap­idly-grow­ing  act­iv­ist group in the USA and Europe, in which I get the chance to dis­cuss the spies, their crimes, cov­er-ups, the media, the war on ter­ror and the erosion of our freedoms, amongst many oth­er issues:

Down­load We_Are_Change_Interview.mp3 (25.4M)