• Gray Area / Grand Theater (map)
  • 2665 Mission Street
  • San Francisco, CA, 94110
  • United States

Whistleblowing for Change at Gray Area Festival (San Francisco)

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab)

Billie Winner-Davis (Former Social Worker, mother of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner, and Brittany Winner) 

Lisa Ling (US Air Force Drone Surveillance Programme Whistleblower, Former Technical Sergeant)

Event Page at Gray Area Festival · Free Panel tickets
Free online access code:

Use the code *GAFEST-PanelOnline* at check out when selecting the ticket named Virtual Pass on the festival ticket page.

In this presentation, Tatiana Bazzichelli introduces for the first time in the US the book Whistleblowing for Change: Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice (Nov. 2021, transcript Verlag).

Based on the work of Berlin’s Disruption Network Lab and the contributions of 30 authors in the field of whistleblowing and social justice, the book offers a new methodology to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing practice contributing to change in society, culture, and politics. Whistleblowing for Change opens to the public unique stories of whistleblowers, journalists, activists, artists, filmmakers, advocates, and critical thinkers.

This panel involves two of the book’s contributors: Lisa Ling (Whistleblower, former Technical Sergeant, US Air Force Drone Surveillance Programme, US), co-author with Cian Westmoreland of The Kill Cloud: Real World Implications of Network Centric Warfare, a revealing chapter dealing with the present and the future of modern warfare, and Billie Winner-Davis (former Social Worker, US), who tells the story of her daughter and whistleblower Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.

This event is presented at Gray Area Festival and co-organised by Disruption Network Lab, Goethe-Institut San Francisco, City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, and Gray Area.

Tatiana Bazzichelli is founder and director at Disruption Network Lab, a Berlin-based nonprofit organisation in Germany that has since 2014 organized events at the intersection of human rights and technology with the objective of strengthening freedom of speech, and exposing the misconduct and wrongdoing of the powerful. Her focus of work is whistleblowing, network culture, art, and hacktivism. She is author of the books Whistleblowing for Change (2021), Networked Disruption (2013), Disrupting Business (2013), and Networking (2006). In 2011-2014 she was programme curator at transmediale festival in Berlin. She received a PhD degree in Information and Media Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Aarhus University in Denmark in 2011. Her PhD research, Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking, was the result of her 2009 visiting scholarship at the H-STAR Institute of Stanford University. In 2019-2021 she was appointed jury member for the Capital Cultural Fund by the German Federal Government and the city of Berlin, and in 2020-2022 jury member for the Kulturlichter prize, a new award for digital cultural education in Germany.

Billie Winner-Davis is the mother of Reality Winner and Brittany Winner. Prior to June 3, 2017, Billie was a social worker enjoying her lifelong (26+ years) career with Child Protective Services in South Texas. On June 3, 2017, when her youngest daughter Reality Leigh Winner was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act, Billie’s entire life changed, and she became a mother with a mission: to advocate for her daughter Reality and ensure that the public heard their side and that her daughter was not forgotten. Since Reality Winner’s arrest, Billie has utilised social media, has written to numerous organisations, congressional leaders, and media outlets; doing anything she could think of to build awareness and support. She has worked with a small number of supporters to develop a non-profit organisation — Stand With Reality (https://standwithreality.org), as well as other whistleblower and veteran’s support groups. Most importantly, she has been an advocate for her daughter within the system, communicating with her for support and communicating with the jail and prison officials to ensure Reality’s needs were met and that she was treated fairly and was safe.

Lisa Ling began her military career in the early 1990s as a medic and nurse. She became recognised for her information systems skills, and was encouraged to enter the combat communications field, where she participated in the operations, maintenance, and security of networked communications technology. The Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise required more people to build and operate it, so her Combat Communications Squadron was assimilated into the Drone Program and moved to Beale Air Force Base. During her Military Career she was deployed to various locations, including the DCGS headquarters at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, an Air National Guard site in Kansas, as well as several overseas deployments. Lisa served her last active-duty assignment with the site at Beale Air Force Base in California. After her military service, she travelled to Afghanistan to see first-hand the effects of what she participated in. She has a BA in History from UC Berkeley where she hopes to further her education.