#DNL25 · NOVEMBER 26–28 · 2021

WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE

EXPOSING SYSTEMS OF POWER & INJUSTICE
CONFERENCE & BOOK LAUNCH

THE 25TH CONFERENCE OF THE DISRUPTION NETWORK LAB

KUNSTQUARTIER BETHANIEN - BERLIN & ON STREAMING

Rewatch Whistleblowing for Change · Get the book

Schedule · Introduction · Full Programme · Workshops · The Book · Speakers · Tickets

What are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts?

25th conference of the Disruption Network Lab. Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Workshops curated by Lieke Ploeger. 

LOCATION: STUDIO 1, KUNSTQUARTIER BETHANIEN, MARIANNENPLATZ 2, 10997 BERLIN

Streamed for free (Film screening excluded).

IMPORTANT: Please note we have decided to make this a 2G event UNDER THE CURRENT COVID-19 REGULATIONS FOR cultural events in the state of BERLIN. For the safety of all visitors, please wear a mask that covers your mouth and nose. proof of vaccination or proof of having recovered from COVID-19 is required to attend AND it WILL BE checked at the entrance. we thank you for your understanding.

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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Friday, November 26 · 2021

18:00—18:10 · OPENING

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE), & Lieke Ploeger (Community Director, Disruption Network Lab, NL/DE).

18:10—19:45 · GERMAN PREMIERE: United States vs. Reality Winner

1h 33m, in English with english subtitles

A 2021 American documentary film, directed and produced by Sonia Kennebeck. The film is the story of 25-year-old NSA contractor Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.

20:00—22:00 · PANEL/Q&A: United States vs. Reality Winner: Q&A 

Reality Winner (NSA Whistleblower, US), Billie Winner-Davis (Former Social Worker, mother of Reality and Brittany Winner, US), Sonia Kennebeck (Film Director, MY/DE/US), John Kiriakou (Former CIA Officer & Anti-torture Whistleblower, US). Moderated by Anna Myers (Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK).

Saturday, November 27 · 2021

16:00–16:30 · BOOK LAUNCH: WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE), Elena Veljanovska (Senior Project Manager, Disruption Network Lab, MK/DE).

17:00–18:50 · PANEL: Crowd-Sourced Civic Action: Subverting Vigilance, Empowering Whistleblowers

Barrett Brown (Writer & Activist, Founder of Project PM, US – on video), Naomi Colvin (Programme Director at Blueprint for Free Speech, UK), Lauri Love (Computer Scientist, UK), Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, Computer Security Researcher, Former Core Member LulzSec, UK). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).

19:15–21:20 · PANEL: Challenging Discrimination & Polarisation: Whistleblowing in the Post-Truth Era

Daryl Davis (R&B and Blues Musician, Author, Actor, US), Annie Machon (Former MI5 Intelligence Officer, UK/BE), Robert Trafford / Forensic Architecture (Researcher, Open Source Investigations, UK/DE). Moderated by Peter Matjašič (Senior Program Officer at the Open Society Initiative for Europe – OSIFE, ES).

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COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS

Sunday, November 28 · 2021

11:00–13:00 · WORKSHOP - UPDATE: WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE

Building Secure Whistleblowing Platforms with GlobaLeaks Free Software

With: Rima Sghaier (Senior Community Operations Manager and MENA Regional Lead for Team CommUNITY, TUN/IT). Read more & register

14:30–17:00 · WORKSHOP - UPDATE: POSTPONED TO FEBRUARY 2022

To Play or Be Played? De-gamification Workshop

With: Agnese Trocchi (Digital Communications Manager, Educator, IT) and Jacopo Anderlini (Researcher, Systems/Operations Engineer, IT/DE). Read more & register

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Whistleblowing for Change · The Book

Whistleblowing for Change:
Exposing Systems of Power & Injustice

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Ed.)

ORDER PRINT VERSION (29,50€)
from Transcript Verlag. Other shops: Dussmann (DE), Columbia University Press (US), WHSmith (UK)

FREE DIGITAL VERSIONS:
Download EPUB / PDF

The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within.

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conference Introduction

WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE

Exposing Systems of Power & Injustice

Whistleblowing is one of the most difficult means of exposing misconducts and informing the public about unknown facts that must be revealed. It is an act based on ethics, honesty and accountability, that confronts abuses, discrimination, corruption and exploitation. Whistleblowers are people that want to change systems for the better, but that in many cases encounter reprisal and persecution. In other cases, they trust the systems too much, realising too late, and at high personal costs, that these systems are not willing to improve.

Inspired by courageous acts of whistleblowing reporting wrongdoing and social injustices to the public, this event presents the concept of WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE. Disruption Network Lab releases its book on whistleblowing (published on November 27, 2021, by transcript Verlag), giving voice to 30 contributors among which whistleblowers, journalists, activists, artists and critical thinkers, that report on deemed illegal, unsafe or abusive behaviours perpetrated by the systems they are part of. The challenge is to reflect on the impact of whistleblowing at a broad level, as a practice that can help to shape a better world. 

In some contexts of law, politics, and society, whistleblowing is still targeted as a form of treason. This is seen not only in the context of releasing classified information, but also in the mindset that stigmatises such acts as something deplorable. The consequence is that in our society, whistleblowers are persecuted, disregarded, isolated, and strong measures are taken against them. 

We believe that whistleblowing should become a civil right. Our hope is that by conceptually expanding this act to a various set of practices, it will contribute to making people who are heavily persecuted for speaking out more supported. Many of the authors who have been invited to take part in this anthology, and are speaking at this conference, contribute to exposing systems of power and injustice, and often pay a high price for revealing the truth.  

It is very difficult to understand the deep meaning of whistleblowing without getting to personally know the people who have blown the whistle, or the wider community of activists, journalists, advocates, and researchers who work in this field. Although whistleblowing is often part of a dry and technical discourse, it relates intimately to the lives of the people who experience it, or work on it. Our conference and the related book anthology seek to bring these lives and this work closer to the audience and, therefore, many speakers will present their personal reflections on the matter.

At the conference WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin, whistleblowers, journalists, activists, artists, filmmakers, advocates and critical thinkers, meet to discuss how whistleblowing is contributing to change in society, culture and politics. The common goal is to connect different expertise, foster new investigations, and examine collective methods to expose systems of power and injustice.

The conference WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE starts with the German premiere of the film United States vs. Reality Winner (2021, by Sonia Kennebeck), the story of 25-year-old NSA contractor and whistleblower Reality Winner, and develops through panel conversations with some of our book’s contributors. 

WHISTLEBLOWING FOR CHANGE is an invitation to dig deeper and keep fighting. 

The event is the first step of a deep debate on the effects of whistleblowing in culture, politics and society, and it is linked to a second conference, NETWORKED WARFARE, that will take place at the same venue in Berlin on March 25-27, 2022. In March we will focus on the drone war and surveillance technologies, which were the topics of our first conference in April 2015 and also an important topic of our anthology. 

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Full Programme

Friday, November 26 · 2021

18:00—18:10 · OPENING

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director and Programme Curator, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE),  & Lieke Ploeger (Community Director, Disruption Network Lab, NL/DE).

18:10—19:45 · FILM SCREENING (GERMAN PREMIERE)

United States vs. Reality Winner

1h 33m, in English – in presence of the film director.

DIRECTOR: Sonia Kennebeck; PRODUCER: Ines Hofmann Kanna; EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Wim Wenders; DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Torsten Lapp; EDITOR: Maxine Goedicke; COMPOSER: Insa Rudolph.

A 2021 American documentary film, directed and produced by Sonia Kennebeck. The film is the story of 25-year-old NSA contractor Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.

SYNOPSIS:

June 3, 2017. In Augusta, Georgia, a 25-year-old female Air Force veteran and NSA contractor with the unusual name Reality Winner is being interrogated by two armed male FBI agents in a backroom of her home, while nine others search her house. Outside, the street is lined with black government-issued SUVs, and surveillance teams are securing the area.

In the narrow makeshift interrogation room inside, Reality is backed up against the wall, while agents probe her with questions. Under duress and without being read her Miranda rights, she admits to having leaked one classified document to the online publication The Intercept. Immediately after her taped confession, Reality is arrested.

Two days later, just after The Intercept publishes the leaked five-page document, Reality Winner is publicly charged as Trump’s first leaker under the controversial century-old Espionage Act, facing a decade in prison. It’s clear from the start that the new administration wants to make an example of her to prove its tough stance against whistleblowers.

By retracing Reality Winner’s media leak, her interrogation and prosecution, and the impact of her disclosure, this character-driven documentary also shines light on the personal sacrifice one young woman made in order to inform the public about a threat to American democracy, ultimately leading to the longest sentence a whistleblower has ever received in federal court.

With unprecedented access to the Winner family, the editor-in-chief of The Intercept, Betsy Reed, and the most important whistleblowers of our generation, Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake, UNITED STATES VS. REALITY WINNER documents a historic moment in American politics: when elections are under threat by foreign actors and the government is trying to suppress that information by going after whistleblowers and journalists.

20:00—22:00 · PANEL

United States vs. Reality Winner: Q&A 

With Reality Winner (NSA Whistleblower, US), Billie Winner-Davis (Former Social Worker, mother of Reality and Brittany Winner, US), Sonia Kennebeck (Film Director, MY/DE/US), John Kiriakou (Former CIA Officer & Anti-torture Whistleblower, US). Moderated by Anna Myers (Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK).

The screening of “UNITED STATES VS. REALITY WINNER” is followed by a panel conversation with the film director, Sonia Kennebeck, and some of the protagonists of the film: Billie Winner-Davis, mother of Reality Winner and Brittany Winner, and author of the opening chapter of the anthology Whistleblowing for Change, which provides a narrative of her journey alongside her daughter, after Reality Winner’s arrest and prosecution by the United States Department of Justice under Trump; John Kiriakou, former CIA Officer & anti-torture whistleblower, who in the book tells the story of when, in a crisis of conscience, decided to go public with what he believed were his Agency’s crimes against humanity, and after his capture of Abu Zubaydah, thought to be al-Qaeda’s number three, subjected to unspeakable torture at the hands of Kiriakou’s colleagues. The conversation is moderated by Anna Myers, executive director of Whistleblowing International Network (WIN), who also writes in the anthology on her own experiences working at a non-profit legal advice centre dedicated to public interest whistleblowing. 

Saturday, November 27 · 2021

16:00–16:30 · PRESENTATION

Book Launch: Whistleblowing for Change

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director and Programme Curator, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE), Elena Veljanovska (Senior Project Manager, Disruption Network Lab, MK/DE).

The anthology Whistleblowing for Change is based on a conceptual montage of contributions from an interconnected network of whistleblowers, investigative journalists, members of the hacker and tech community, political activists, researchers, artists, and critical thinkers. It is a journey through 30 individual stories, practical and theoretical perspectives from writers and speakers who have been crucial in inspiring and developing the activities of the Disruption Network Lab. The majority of the writers have actively been part of the Disruption Network Lab’s programme, and some of them have even been in contact with Tatiana Bazzichelli before April 2015, when the first conference of the Disruption Network Lab, “Drones: Eyes From a Distance”, took place in Berlin at Kunstquartier Bethanien. 

Building networks of trust is an essential resource for whistleblowers. The social structure of friends, advocates, supporters and colleagues is extremely crucial before and after blowing the whistle. Tatiana Bazzichelli (book author) and Elena Veljanovska (editorial coordinator) introduce the methodology behind the book Whistleblowing for Change and discuss how to make sensitive subjects and networks accessible to a larger public. The book’s goal is to connect different expertise, foster new investigations, and examine collective methods to expose systems of power and injustice. 

Bazzichelli and Veljanovska explore the “behind the scene” of the anthology, and introduce to the public the main topics of the book: the impact of whistleblowing in society and politics; art as evidence; the drone war, tracking and surveillance; uncovering corruption and illicit money flow; fighting discrimination and exposing abuses; whistleblowers’ persecution and protection.

17:00–18:50 · PANEL

Crowd-Sourced Civic Action: Subverting Vigilance, Empowering Whistleblowers

Barrett Brown (Writer & Activist, Founder of Project PM, US), Naomi Colvin (Programme Director at Blueprint for Free Speech, UK), Lauri Love (Computer Scientist, UK), Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, Computer Security Researcher, Former Core Member LulzSec, UK). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).

What are the implications of speaking out in the networked society? Which are the personal consequences of revealing classified information and large datasets involving war, spying and corruption? How can we all empower whistleblowing and develop crowd-sourced civic action? 

This panel reflects on how digital technologies and the grassroots re-appropriation of vigilance can be effective in impacting the whistleblowing phenomenon. In many cases, whistleblowers lose control of the narrative they set in motion, and it is a collective responsibility to take agency to guarantee the success of their disclosures, contextually inserting them into the civic consciousness in a manner that prompts substantive change. Barrett Brown, Lauri Love, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Naomi Colvin bring to public attention networked acts of whistleblowing, truth-telling, and publishing that contributed in making a deep change in society, and discuss cases of people, including themselves, that are still paying a high price for this. 

By connecting hackers, activists, advocates and journalists that fight for a common cause in the light of freedom of speech, the panel starts with the live contribution of Barrett Brown, who is currently seeking asylum in UK following his persecution in the US for his journalism. In the book Whistleblowing for Changehe addresses the necessity of networked acts of whistleblowing and accountability developing crowd-sourced investigations into private intelligence contractors, to enable oversight of surveillance and disinformation methodologies. 

Naomi Colvin highlights the unjust dimensions of whistleblower oppression, i.e. the US Espionage Act, describing the many cases of whistleblowers and truth-tellers that paid the price of having this draconian law still in use – including Julian Assange, who has been incarcerated at the Belmarsh high-security prison in the UK since April 2019. In the anthology, Suelette Dreyfus and Naomi Colvin trace important moments of the life of Julian Assange, from the early releases of WikiLeaks in 2010, and his meeting with Daniel Ellsberg, to the present. 

The subject of pervasive invisible surveillance infrastructures informs the reflections of security engineer and activist Lauri Love, who discusses the notion of “Sousveillance'', to denote vigilance upwards from below. He provides an analysis on the current ethical issues concerning technological and intimate surveillance, reflecting on the urge of self-empowering ourselves from centralised power and authority. 

Finally, Mustafa Al-Bassam, former core member of LulzSec, will bring his perspective on the matter, reflecting on the role of mass and corporate surveillance in the context of whistleblowing, and on the importance of advising human rights defenders around the world on protecting their data and communicating securely online. 

19:15–21:20 · PANEL

Challenging Discrimination & Polarisation: Whistleblowing in the Post-Truth Era

Daryl Davis (R&B and Blues Musician, Author, Actor, US), Annie Machon (Former MI5 Intelligence Officer, UK/BE), Robert Trafford / Forensic Architecture (Researcher, Open Source Investigations, UK/DE). Moderated by Peter Matjašič (Senior Program Officer at the Open Society Initiative for Europe – OSIFE, ES).

Supremacist ideologies, deliberate disinformation, hate speech, and the spreading of false facts are on the rise. The recent Facebook Papers – the internal documents disclosed by a consortium of media outlets and provided to the US Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower – show strategy plans, company research, emails and internal communication around Facebook’s core mechanisms. The papers call for Facebook’s responsibility on letting hate speech and misinformation spread on the platform, and consequently, on the civic society. 

Following Disruption Network Lab’s seven year research on providing literacy on hate speech, misinformation, and the growing phenomenon of right wing extremism (see the conferences: A GAME OF YOU, IGNORANCE, TRUTH-TELLERS, HATE NEWS, INFILTRATION, HATE NEWS VS. FREE SPEECH and the current FACING DISINFORMATION project) with this panel we aim to address how whistleblowing can serve the cause of challenging discrimination, political polarisation, and dominant cultural narratives. 

Combining an analysis on the impact of whistleblowing, the urgency to expose injustices and discrimination, and the effectiveness of generating collective processes for producing evidence of human rights violations, this panel brings together  Daryl Davis (author, R&B and blues musician from US), Annie Machon (former intelligence officer for the UK’s Security Service MI5), and Robert Trafford (researcher and open source investigator at Forensic Architecture).

Daryl Davis, who made a difference as a black American befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan since the 1980s, and making them leave the Klan, exposes the reasons behind White supremacy, racial hate and the recent US Capitol insurrection. His piece on Whistleblowing for Change outlines the grounds of the stigmatisation of truth-tellers, starting from the adoption of the informal Blue Code of Silence shared among police officers to protect colleagues’ misconduct, leading to severe violence against people of colour.

Annie Machon, who helped blow the whistle on the misconducts of the British spy agencies in the late 1990s, will deal with the reasons why, despite being faced with high risks and repercussions, whistleblowers choose to speak out, reflecting on the effectiveness of whistleblowing for making concrete changes in politics and society. 

Robert Trafford, whose investigative work with Forensic Architecture has spanned from police violence against US protesters to the extrajudicial killing of civilians by Cameroon’s special forces, will interlink two different but complementary attempts to drive change in the ‘post-truth’ era: ‘big data’ whistleblowing, based on an overwhelming mass of data, and open source investigation, based on fragmentary image or video evidence.

Workshops · Sunday, November 28 · 2021

11:00—13:00 · WORKSHOP (ONLINE ONLY)

Building Secure Whistleblowing Platforms with GlobaLeaks Free Software

With: Rima Sghaier (Senior Community Operations Manager and MENA Regional Lead for Team CommUNITY, TUN/IT).

Cost: €8 · Language: English · Tickets

Understanding the power of anonymous whistleblowing in allowing more and more citizens to speak truth to power, the hacktivist community engaged in a number of research projects in order to create an accessible, secure, and easy-to-use whistleblowing tool. GlobaLeaks is a free open source software enabling the easy creation of anonymous whistleblowing platforms, a tool used today worldwide by more than 4000 media, NGOs and companies in 90 languages to create web-based contact pages that whistleblowers can access anonymously through the Tor Browser to report and share evidence of corruption, human rights violations and malpractices.

This workshop aims at improving the knowledge and the capacity of civil society organizations, journalists/media professionals and activists in using the GlobaLeaks software (demo and best practices) to build their own secure whistleblowing initiatives and presents the different ways they can contribute to the project from localization to feature requests.

REGISTRATION

• The number of participants is limited to 20. Booking is essential. Please get your ticket here: https://pretix.eu/disruptionlab/whistleblowing-for-change

• Bring your laptop, mobile devices or just a notebook and a pen

• No prior experience is required
  

14:30—17:00 · WORKSHOP

UPDATE: POSTPONED TO FEBRUARY 2022

To Play or Be Played? De-gamification Workshop

With: Agnese Trocchi (Digital Communications Manager, Educator, IT) and Jacopo Anderlini (Researcher, Systems/Operations Engineer, IT/DE)

Cost: €8 · Language: English · Tickets

A ride through classic video games to today’s socials and apps

We all knew, somewhere in our brains, that social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, weren’t good for our social and physical health. Even before the Cambridge Analytical scandal, even before the Facebook Papers disclosures… still we are not really able to stop using these devices. Do you ever scroll the Facebook timeline or the suggested video section of You Tube well past the point where it was fun? Why?

Many video games capture our attention so much that they create forms of addiction, masterfully built on the vulnerabilities common to all humans. In a similar way we are induced to participate and contribute relentlessly to online “communities”, built according to gamification techniques.

Every experience of social interaction becomes a complex race, with lots of points and rankings, levels and champions. We know from direct experience the rules of these “games”: if we behave well we receive many “likes”, like, strikes and notifications, ie sugary for our brains (in the form of dopamine), if we are scarce, we stay dry-mouthed. In any case, it’s never enough to “win”, we always have to work harder, the “game” never ends…

In our experiential workshop, using the Hacker Pedagogy methodology, we will have a chance to reflect on our behaviour and our automatisms in relations to digital mass technologies. We will do a ride through vintage videogames, and through interface analysis of social networks platforms, we will uncover gamification techniques.

There will be no points to gain and no prize to conquer. We are gathering to play together to win ourselves back.

REGISTRATION

• The number of participants is limited to 20. Booking is essential. Please get your ticket here: https://pretix.eu/disruptionlab/whistleblowing-for-change

• No prior experience is required

Some of the contributors to the book

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Conference Speakers

Reality Winner

NSA Whistleblower, US

Billie Winner-Davis

Former Social Worker, mother of Reality and Brittany Winner, US

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, 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 is safe.

Twitter: @bjwinnerdavis

Sonia Kennebeck 

Film Director, MY/DE/US

Sonia Kennebeck is a Malaysian-born, New York City-based independent filmmaker and investigative journalist with 17 years of directing and producing experience. Her most recent documentary thriller ENEMIES OF THE STATE premiered as one of only 50 films in the official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival 2020. Her first feature-length film NATIONAL BIRD about the U.S. drone war premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2016, was selected for Tribeca, Sheffield, and IDFA festivals, and received the prestigious Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize and a 2018 Emmy-nomination for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary. Before she became an independent filmmaker, Sonia Kennebeck directed eight television documentaries and more than 50 investigative reports for German public television. Sonia Kennebeck is a first-generation college graduate, who worked full time while completing her master’s degree in international affairs at American University in Washington, D.C..

Twitter: @soniakennebeck

John Kiriakou

Former CIA Officer & Anti-torture Whistleblower, US

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, saying that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then-President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of the revelation. 

Twitter: @JohnKiriakou

Anna Myers

Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK

Anna Myers is the founding Executive Director of Whistleblowing International Network, UK. She has worked in the field of whistleblowing for 20 years—advising individual whistleblowers, employers of all sizes and sectors, and national and international policy makers. Anna is originally from Canada and prior to getting her law degree at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, completed her history degree (BA) at the Université de Montréal in Québec. Anna was Deputy Director of Public Concern at Work (now called Protect) for 9 years, and has worked at Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and at the Government Accountability Project in Washington DC. Anna is a Member of the Law Society of England and Wales, and she resides in Glasgow, Scotland. 

Barrett Brown

Writer & Activist, Founder of Project PM, US

Barrett Brown is a writer and activist. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Intercept, Huffington Post, New York Press, Skeptic, The Daily Beast, Al Jazeera, and other outlets. In 2009, he founded Project PM (projectpm.wiki), a “distributed think tank” later repurposed to oversee a crowdsourced investigation into private intelligence contractors and little-known surveillance/disinformation methodol gies. In 2011 and 2012, he worked with Anonymous on campaigns involving the Tunisian revolution, state misconduct, and other issues. In 2012, Brown was arrested and later sentenced to four years in federal prison on charges stemming from his investigations into HBGary, Stratfor, Palantir, Archimedes, and other firms that would later be implicated in election interference operations in the US and UK. While imprisoned, he won the National Magazine Award and other journalism and writing honours for his column, “The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison.” Upon his release in late 2016, he established the non-profit Pursuance to develop a platform for mass civic engagement and to promote his doctrine of non-institutional “process democracy.” His third book, My Glorious Defeats, is available for pre-order from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Twitter: @ProjPM

Naomi Colvin

Programme Director at Blueprint for Free Speech, UK

Naomi Colvin is UK/Ireland/Belgium Program Director at Blueprint for Free Speech. She has a particular interest in whistle- blowing as a freedom of expression issue and the intersection of digitally-mediated whistleblowing with the criminal law. She occasionally writes for Byline Times. 

Twitter: @auerfeld, @BPFreeSpeech    

Lauri Love

Computer Scientist, UK

Lauri Love is a Security Engineer and activist based in the UK. In 2018, he successfully fended off the prospect of 100 years in the US prison system for his alleged involvement in online activism. That landmark appeal ruling has proven a critical precedent in subsequent high profile extradition cases. He played a prominent role in the student and Occupy movements in Glasgow during 2011-12. Love is being recognised as an expert on hacking, surveillance and privacy issues in the UK and has made a principled stand against the country’s forced decryption laws.

Daryl Davis 

R&B and Blues Musician, Author, Actor, US

Known as the Rock’n’Roll Race Reconciliator, award-winning musician Daryl Davis tours nationally and internationally with his own band and has worked extensively with the late, great Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley‘s Jordanaires, The Legendary Blues Band and many others. He is also an actor and author who is considered an expert on White supremacy. His book Klan-Destine Relationships and documentary Accidental Courtesy detail his work with the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other White supremacists and racists. Today, Daryl owns numerous KKK robes & hoods given to him by active members who renounced their racist ideology after meeting him. As a race relations expert, he has received numerous awards for his work and is often sought by news media as a consultant on race relations and White supremacy and nationalism. His latest book is The Klan Whisperer (forthcoming). 

Twitter: @RealDarylDavis

Annie Machon 

Former MI5 Intelligence Officer, UK/BE

Annie Machon was an intelligence officer for the UK’s Security Service, MI5, before resigning to help blow the whistle on the crimes and incompetence of the British spies. She is now a writer, media pundit, and international public speaker on a wide variety of geopolitical issues, including the wars on terrorism, whistleblowers, drugs, and the internet. In 2021 she was awarded the SA Award for Integrity in Intelligence by the Sam Adams Associates, a global group of intelligence, diplomatic and military whistleblowers. She served four years as the European Director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership and remains a member of the European Board, is a director of the World Ethical Data Foundation, and is an advisory board member of the Good Technology Collective and the Courage Foundation. Annie has an MA (Hons) in Classics from Cambridge University. 

Twitter: @AnnieMachon

Robert Trafford / Forensic Architecture 

Researcher, Open Source Investigations, UK/DE

Robert Trafford is a research coordinator with Forensic Architecture, a pioneering investigative agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. His role at Forensic Architecture covers open-source research and visual investigation, editing and writing for scripts and exhibitions, as well as coordinating investigations. His investigative work with Forensic Architecture has spanned from police violence against US protesters to the extrajudicial killing of civilians by Cameroon’s special forces. He also jointly coordinated investigations into the 2011 killing of Mark Duggan by UK police, and the agency’s acclaimed TRIPLE-CHASER investigation, which premiered at the 2019 Whitney Biennial in New York. Robert is trained as an investigative journalist, a graduate of the University of Oxford and City, University of London. Prior to joining Forensic Architecture, he was a freelance journalist, covering the 2015 refugee crisis from Greece and France. 

Twitter: @bobtrafford, @forensicarchi

Mustafa Al-Bassam

Computer Security Researcher, Former Core Member of
LulzSec, UK

Mustafa Al-Bassam is a British computer security researcher and hacker. Ho co-founded hacker group LulzSec in 2011, which was responsible for several high profile breaches. He later went on to co-found Chainspace, a company implementing a smart contract platform, which was acquired by Facebook in 2019. He is currently a PhD student in the Information Security Research Group at University College London working on peer-to-peer systems. Forbes listed Al-Bassam as one of the 30 Under 30 entrepreneurs in technology in 2016.

Twitter: @musalbas, @CelestiaOrg

Peter Matjašič 

Senior Program Officer at the Open Society Initiative for Europe – OSIFE, ES

Peter Matjašič is a senior program officer at Open Society Initiative for Europe, part of Open Society Foundations based in Barcelona where he leads the work on whistleblowing and right to protest, which links to civic space issues in Western Europe. Previously, he led the work on reclaiming family values and OSIFE's engagement around European Elections 2014. Prior to joining OSF, he had been active in the field of youth work for 12 years, starting with the Young European Federalists and finishing as president of the European Youth Forum (2011- 2014) advocating for the rights of young people and their organizations. Europe, human rights, gender justice, citizen's empowerment, tennis, and languages (he speaks eight) are his main passions.

Twitter: @curlyP

Workshop Leaders

Rima Sghaier

Senior Community Operations Manager and MENA Regional Lead for Team CommUNITY, TUN/IT

Rima Sghaier is an intersectional feminist activist, researcher, policy analyst, FOSS enthusiast, and an avid advocate for internet freedom. She is currently Senior Community Operations Manager and MENA Regional Lead for Team CommUNITY. Her work and research focus on the intersection of human rights, gender, policy and tech. She has consulted for digital rights NGOs including Access Now and the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) on issues of digital rights and digital safety in the SWANA region. Prior to joining Team CommUNITY, she worked with GlobaLeaks program managing and contributing to international projects to support NGOs, media, and investigative journalists to create secure whistleblowing platforms and is now supporting the project on advisory capacity. She was an OTF Digital Integrity Fellow with the Safe First Contact project focused on auditing and supporting the digital security skills of at-risk communities in MENA countries. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of Bread&Net. Rima holds a Bachelor and a Master’s degrees in Public Law and Political Science from the Faculty of Juridical, Political and Social Sciences of Tunis.

Agnese Trocchi 

Digital Communications Manager, Educator, IT

Agnese Trocchi (Rome, Italy) is an italian writer, artist and social media manager. Coming from a media-hacking background (Candida TV 1999/2003), she has been in the field of social media management since 2009, and currently also works as Digital Communications Manager for the Disruption Network Lab. In 2017 she co-founded the interdisciplinary research group C.I.R.C.E. to promote a self-aware approach to technology and social networks using the hacker pedagogy method. She runs workshop and laboratories for kids, adults and affinity groups to “follow the threads of our connections”, to uncover the hidden elements of everyday digital automatism and to invent together new procedures for an ecological relationship with machines. She is the author of the book Internet, Mon Amour (Ledizioni, 2019).

Twitter: @FrenesiGates

Jacopo Anderlini

Researcher, Systems/Operations Engineer, IT/DE

Jacopo Anderlini is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Education Studies at the University of Genoa, as well as systems/operations engineer at Tactical Tech. His main research interests are border studies, refugee studies, migration, critical theory on technologies, social and political philosophy. His work mixes qualitative methods and ethnography – with both multi-sited and digital fieldwork – and critical theoretical reflection. He is currently investigating the transformations of the government of mobility, its infrastructures and logistics, at the southern borders of Europe. He is part of the international academic network on critical migration and border studies Kritnet, of the international academic network at the crossroads between Science and Technology Studies and Critical Migration STS-MIGTEC and is co-founder of the research group on the analysis of digital technologies C.I.R.C.E..