 And the spies do like former employees to remain in contact. It's useful to have good chaps and good places. Because we always had the James Bond franchise. And we had John Nicare and all the adaptations. We had Spooks in the naughties about MI5. They can go and commit crimes abroad. Up to and including murder. Probably the world's worst spy. Because everywhere he goes, he's expected. Annie, how are you, my friend? I'm very well. How are you, Chris? Yes, I'm super. I'm really, really chuffed to be speaking to you. It's so kind. You agreed to come on the show for our friends at home. Massive welcome. Thank you for supporting the podcast. Annie Mashon is a former MI5 intelligence officer. I've got that right, Annie. And I'm just absolutely delighted that you've come on the show, Annie, because you're going to show us a side of life and an insight that probably not many people get to hear. It's my pleasure. I mean, most people say I've had a tumultuous life, which I have. But then I was reading about you and I thought, bloody hell, that's completely different league. So it's a real pleasure to meet you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. I have our people on the podcast and they've been so fascinated in my story that they've just asked all the questions. Well, if they are fascinated, they should go to your website, chrisforall.com, and look at the books, buy the books, watch the videos and buy the merchandise. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And you didn't ask me to say that anyone who's watching. I just, I was enthralled. Yes. Yes. I'll chuck you the tenner later, Annie. All right. So I was fascinated to see your father was a pilot. My father was a pilot. Yes. And in his first professional iteration, he flew for BOAC way back in the day. I think it was the late 1960s, early 70s. So he traveled the world. And then he went and resettled back in our home island of Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, hence my funny French surname, and went into journalism. So he sort of followed his father into that line of work. And my father became the editor and of the newspaper. And also an award-winning journalist. So I learned a lot about the whole idea of, you know, speaking truth to power, about media ethics, and everything from my father. Unfortunately, what I also learned from him, because he was a complete spy aficionado, he was a complete fan of John Locare and lendator novels and things, was a lot about, you know, the so-called world of espionage. So he was the one who sort of dropped me into MI5. So it's all his fault. Yes, it's a funny old world. Especially with my mate, who I've known for a while now, just dropped in the other MI5 agent. I was like... But when dad was a pilot, did you ever get a chance to go up in a cockpit? No, I loved it. He used to fly VT-10s. So he did all the long-haul flights around the world. And I remember, I mean, this is, you know, pre-hyper-security days when I was a kid. I mean, we're talking 50 years ago, when he could take me to Heathrow and he could turn me down the airplanes and all that sort of thing. I would have said 25 years ago. You flatterer. I'll give you the tenor bag. But no, I mean, I was a complete plane spotter as well. He said that, you know, I could recognize any plane shape in the sky and things like that. I was, you know, completely enthralled. And his father, who was also a journalist and editor, had actually flown Spitfires in the Second World War. So I've always grown up with that sort of sense of military service and a love of aviation and love of air shows, but also, you know, this in-depth absorption of what the media should be doing as well. So it was very strange upbringing, but I loved it. Yes. Well, I'm a qualified pilot and one of my most fascinating experiences was actually flying the Spitfire. Oh. But if I say I never left the ground, I don't know if you can figure what... A very dear chap, kind man, up there at Goodwood Racing Track, I think it is, has... Richard has a Spitfire mock-up, you know, a simulator. But it's actually a Spitfire. You know, it's all built from a Spitfire. So you sit in it, you're in a Spitfire. You take off just like literally as you would as a pilot. It's all got these vibrating things on it. So you feel the power, you know, you feel the... Wow. The turns and you can pick anywhere you want. So I said Harrabir Airfield, which is in the Southwest. It was one of the... I think it was one of the few airfields in the war that the Luftwaffe never discovered. And you can still go out there now and see all the remnants and the bunkers and all this kind of thing. So, yeah, I flew over that and it was wonderful. I know this is supposed to be an interview, but it's a chat, right? Yeah. Is it something, it's sort of an experience you can sort of pay for? Because this would be a wonderful present for my father at some point. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Tell me the link after this. Yeah, so I'm going to write my notes here to put a link for the Spitfire. It was just absolutely brilliant. And my son got to fly it as well, which was just a dream come true for me. In fact, he wouldn't leave my side. So as I'm sort of turning to, you know, attack the Red Baron or whoever, there's my boy there. Oh, all right, mate. Yeah. Okay. One second. I just got to get on the machine guns. Yes, wonderful. And the DC-10, that was a propeller. No, VC-10. VC-10. They have fast jets before Concorde. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, the Concorde era. Showing our age, aren't we? Oh, unfortunately, yes. Can't escape. Yeah. Every night guaranteed if you lived in the southwest of England, come 10 o'clock. Yeah, we had that in Guernsey. Yeah. The Sonic Boom. Sonic Boom. Yes. Wow. So how does one get into the intelligence services? Do you have to meet on a park bench in Prague under the moonlight or something? No, that's what you do afterwards. Well, I was recruited in 1990 again, showing my age. And back in that day, it was still very much the old school type recruitment, where either you got a tap on the shoulder, that's an Oxbridge College, or you applied to something like the Foreign Office, which is what I did. And then they sort of identified you and sent you a very mysterious letter from the Ministry of Defence saying, would you like to try other jobs you might find more interesting? Which is how I got in. This is why it's my father's fault, because when I opened that letter and it just said, maybe other jobs you find more interesting, if so, please ring this number. And I was in the family dining room at the time, and my father was with me. And I said, in my usual ladylike manner, I hope your listeners don't mind swearing. I went, oh, fuck it's MI5. I don't know why, but it's gut instinct. And that's when my father just said, well, if it is MI5, please go and try and find it out. Because as I said, he loved all the spy literature and everything. And then 10 months later, I found myself working there. So that was the old school. Then in the 1990s, later, they began to open it up with sort of mysterious, anonymous articles and newspapers saying, if you're into kind of affairs and stuff like politics, then there may be a job you'd like to apply for. So they went through recruitment consultants. Now it's much, much easier. They've opened up so much. So if anyone's interested, and I would never, despite my experiences, I would never discourage anyone from joining, so long as you have a strong ethical framework and can keep that on the inside. Now you can just go to their website, MI5, the MI5 website, and you do a preliminary test. And if you pass that, then the whole process that I went through will start. One of the ways that the British intelligence agencies have been most successful is through this mythologizing of intelligence. I mean, even the CIA doesn't have it, despite Jason Bourne or whatever else has been going on, because we always had the James Bond franchise. And we had John Likare and all the adaptations. We had Spooks in the noughties about MI5. So in a way, in terms of a, so I'm putting this, a sort of use of soft power, the British intelligence agencies, despite being some of the most secretive in the world, have actually done incredibly well. Anyhow, what did you think when they came out and said that the intelligence services have never had an assassination policy? In Bond, obviously, it's the famous license to kill, isn't it? And I think if we're in a certain country in the Middle East, I think they have no issues with that sort of thing, but when the British government said that they, you know, they've never assassinated, I found that a bit of a stretch. Yes. And even though I don't want to go into the geopolitics around Israel, if you're talking about their assassination policy of Iranian nuclear scientists, yes, they've been doing it, yes, they've been caught out, but nobody's in portrait justice. And that's been over the last decade. In terms of the UK, they have always said that, but boringly legal just for a moment. So the spies at the moment are controlled by two different acts of parliament. The Security Service Act 1989, which governs MI5 and makes them accountable to the Home Secretary. And the Secure, sorry, Intelligence Services Act 1994, which governs SIS, the James Bond Wing, British Intelligence, and also GCHQ, which is the listening post in the UK, which is governed by the Foreign Secretary, the political masters nationally. And particularly with the Intelligence Services Act, which governs MI6, I think it's Section 7 that basically means if they have the prior written permission of their political master, the Foreign Secretary, they can go and commit crimes abroad up to an including murder. That's not explicit, but it's implied. And they will be legally exempt from prosecution. So that is a very civil service way of writing what is effectively a license to kill. And this is going to take me into some of the MI5 stuff because I mentioned I got recruited. I was there for six years. And during that time, I met my former partner and colleague David Shaler. And we resigned after six years to go public to blow the whistle about a whole series of incompetence and also crime that we'd witnessed on the inside. And we tried to raise our voices on the inside as many of our peer group did and were all told just to shut up and just follow orders. So David and I took the decision to go public knowing that WREC are professional lives and potentially land us in prison. And the key case that made us quit and made us do that was indeed an illegal assassination attempt against a foreign head of state who has come over to Gaddafi of Libya. And this took place in 1996 and was planned and funded by MI6. Now technically under the Intelligence Services Act, Section 7, they could have done it legally under British law but in this case they didn't even get the prior in permission of the Foreign Secretary. So that meant that this attack which manifestly failed because Gaddafi survived to be assassinated another day in 2011 also killed innocent people and the security shootout around the explosion under a wrong car. So we have MI6 funding, a group that was at that point just coming onto the radar of MI5 as a threat which was al-Qaeda in an illegal assassination attempt against a foreign head of state without prior in permission which went wrong and killed innocent people. Now you think how heinous can things get? So yes, things have happened. Things will always happen. All intelligence agencies of course get up to nasties. The key point is to get the balancing act of oversight and accountability within the country from which they're operating. And that, I mean, I'm not trying to say they're all evil. That has always been a very key discussion both for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ over decades is trying to get that right balance for accountability and oversight. But if there are mistakes or if there are rogue elements that go ahead and do things without trying to get that accountability then that's why we have a problem because therefore the intelligence agencies are operating outside the government and democratic control and can commit crimes with impunity. Yes, and didn't David also come to prominence? Can we say when buildings started to fall out of the skyline and he was quite vocal about we can call it an FF. I think all my viewers know what I'm that to which I am referring. I mean, there's a lot of nonsense going on in the world, isn't there? And there seems to be like two factions within every service whether it's military, government, secret service where those that are trying to get on and do an honest job and do their best for the people and there's those that let's just say maybe they work for another master. Yes, and if you're talking let's just be blunt. If you're talking about 9-11, I presume you are. Yes, we can chuck some numbers in there. Yes, David was very outspoken about that. I did take an interest in the very shallow waters around that because some very credible people came out of the intelligence agencies particularly in America saying that there had been huge missteps and fuck-ups and in fact direct orders not to further investigate people who then went on to be the perpetrators of this crime. Most notably, Colin Rowley, former FBI agent, officer who blew the whistle on a series of problems in the run-up which could have potentially stopped the attack within the FBI and she and many of her colleagues were told to stop investigating by HQ. So she went public somehow managed to avoid prosecution in the US and was actually nominated, elected as Time Person of the Year Time Magazine Person of the Year 2002 for what she did and there have been many other credible people saying we haven't got the full story. I mean both from survivors of the attacks and from architects and engineers and all sorts of that. So I don't know the rights or wrongs of it. I know that there's a whole messy swamp of conspiracy theory behind it but I always think that within a democracy we are all allowed to have our views and we should all be questioning and what got me intrigued the whole 9-11 issue was how quickly it enabled particularly the USA and the UK and its NATO allies to slide into the war on terror. Whatever happened on the day, I don't know but in terms of using it as a pretext one to invade Afghanistan which had nothing to do with it really invade Iraq which definitely had nothing to do with it and then go on for another few Middle Eastern countries and also strip away a lot of our traditional freedoms in our own homelands as well. And that's always been the angle that I've been particularly fascinated with and the war on terror is something that I've done a lot of talking and commentating make films about everything over the years. Yes, they should call it the war on how to create terror because they've not done a good job of it. You look at the mess across the Middle East and Central Asia I mean it's just the humanitarian cost from the war on terror not least also the evisceration of basic human rights the concept of extraordinary rendition which is like kidnapping of people extrajudicial killings with drone strikes Gitmo of course which is an ongoing weeping sore in America's side. I mean all these things have been absolutely terrible. So yeah, there's a whole rich rich scene to mind there absolutely in how the West responded what it has meant for the values and also the spiralling moral decline of some of our intelligence agencies. So I mean going back to the Gaddafi assassination attempt in 1996 and that was all super secret and had to be covered up and the person who exposed it the whistleblower had to go to prison and be seen to be punished for exposing it and it could never be investigated and then you fast forward to 2011 which is still, God, 11 years ago when Colonel Gaddafi, you know when NATO started bombing Libya and Colonel Gaddafi was assassinated then and it was all done in the full glare of international media and it was all justified as yeah, we've toppled a dictator well they tortured him and then murdered him as well and so I think for me that particular moral slide that moral decline in Western values is of particular concern to me you know, I've been advocated human rights and privacy and all sorts of other stuff for many years and to see that acceptance by the Western media that this is right, this is justified rather than it has to be kept secret because nasty has always gone on right but now it's okay we can do it and then publicise it I find that horrifying, I really do. Yes, we could get quite deep into this Yeah, I think we've gone, I don't like to get out of the shallow end of that pool that particular pool Yeah, I think there's two things going on well, two things going on there though there's what I call matrix politics which most people if they want their pension and they want their promotions it's quite good to analyse this and orchestrate your daily life living in a matrix because it's quite safe and it's one version of reality and then there's two sets of groups outside the matrix there's those of us that know the truth we love all people when we're enlightened individuals and then there's a psychopaths or sociopaths who control the matrix so it's an interesting it's an interesting place place to be I wouldn't want to go any further down that particular path today though No, no, let's not so how did your career progress, what stuff did you enjoy what stuff were you good at did you have any successes or did this sort of sudden halt or this, you know, expose a kind of put a bit of a damper on things That's a very British way of describing yes, it turns your life inside out and upside down if you go public it does, it is a moment of no return it's sort of crossing the Rubicon moment for any whistleblower coming out of any sector be it health or finance or whatever it is because it effectively ruins your professional reputation for the people coming out of the military or intelligence or central government or the foreign office and diplomacy there's the added bonus that you might go to prison for exposing the crimes of others so it was a very difficult decision to take particularly because of the impact and cost it might have to our friends and our families not just us but sometimes you get to a point where you just feel well, if we don't do it, who else is going to do it and so afterwards I mean the whole case around whistleblowing from when it happened through all the court cases and arrests and all the rest of it, it took seven years to resolve it and come 2003 when it was finally resolved and it was a case of well, what now and those were very difficult years and David and I, well David particularly had suffered because he was the one who went to prison twice so we ended up separating in 2006 and then it was a case of well what do I do now, how do I rebuild a life after this so that was pretty tricky and I did learn a number of different lessons from the years of the whistleblowing when we were at the focus of media attention having to deal with a lot of lawyers, having to deal with a lot of invasion and also dealing with a sense of personal privacy anywhere so I sort of pulled back a bit and took a while to think about this and I started thinking well what's the intersection between the media and intelligence or the media and government and having seen my partner at the time reduced in court, well not reduced in court when he was inevitably convicted for breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989 and went to prison for that the judge at the time said that he accepted he hadn't done what he did for money and he hadn't put any agent lives in danger and the headlines from the journalists sitting in that courtroom that day were exactly the opposite so it's like hang on, how is that flipped as the government, how is the intelligence agency to control the media so I started digging into that and talking to some of my more trusted media friends and ended up doing a lot of talks across Europe to investigative journalist conferences for a few years about that sort of power intersection and what I found particularly interesting during those years was I'd be giving these talks and thinking a lot of them might be sounding a bit conspiracy theorist perhaps I'm a bit too out there and yet all of the journalists afterwards would come up to me and say it's even worse in our country the other key lesson I took away from those years was the concept of living with no privacy at all so when I say that because if I were the person behind an MI5 desk hunting me as David and I went on the run around Europe and I didn't know what was going on I knew exactly how I would do it and I was pretty good at it so you couldn't trust that your electronic communications of course would not be bugged and this is still vaguely the analogue era by the way you couldn't trust that your home hadn't been bugged and you couldn't trust cars or your workplace or even the people who were meeting would not be bugged the whole thing just makes you so bloody paranoid living that way so what happened after that was in 2007 I sort of fell headlong into a sort of technological hacktivist sort of route across Europe so I met some people and started talking to I'm not talking about hackers, the criminal hackers I'm talking about hacktivists, people who are concerned about spies or corporations or criminals might be exploiting our informational lives online so I got to know a lot of them and learnt so much from them and then ended up doing so many talks with them and for them at conferences that has become a major strand in my life and also there's been a string of whistleblowers coming out of the US intelligence agencies particularly over the last 15 years people like Thomas Drake from the NSA the US listening agency Chelsea Manning of course the private who came out of the American military and was alleged to be one of the sources for the Wikileaks disclosures I had some contact with Wikileaks as well and I'm still appalled by the treatment for Julian Assange legally at the moment and by the press for Julian it's just got worse hasn't it he's now facing extradition from Belmarsh yep I just want to say on this very strongly one I know what a hellhole Belmarsh is because when David Chalo was convicted in 2002 of a breach of the Official Secrets Act he had to spend weeks there for over two years even though he served his sentence for jumping bail but he's awaiting this extradition under the Espionage Act in America even though he's an Australian award-winning journalist and publisher living in the UK which is absurd so we have a situation where this poor man has been banged up in a hellhole for over two years and where he even though he's a journalist even though he's a publisher is going to face Espionage charges when he goes to the USA for publishing evidence of people of that country's war crimes as well as crimes committed by corporations and other countries around the world and it's such an appalling miscarriage of justice but actually more importantly going down into the future it's an appalling precedent for any journalist around the planet and this American hegemony can extend to picking out an Australian journalist out of the UK and then banging him up then any other journalist who might expose US war crimes for example anywhere in the world it's going to be equally vulnerable and the fact that these I was going to say a really rude word there the fact that these people don't see that threat and therefore they don't fight for the principle of press freedom and it's actually I would say dishonorable the press should be standing up for this man and they haven't Yes it's awful and also I always stick up for our American brothers and sisters many of whom I've met in many places around the world and who are the most wonderful people on earth the most kind and generous obviously not every single American but you know let's not pretend here this is not America this is controlling interests which is two completely separate things people say oh Boris Johnson dude stop thinking Boris Johnson A controls the UK or B cares about anybody in it he's so controlled by let's just call it a globalist agenda which has nothing to do with our country nothing to do with America nothing to do with you know you can drag every country on the planet in Ukraine you know Libya whatever it's a globalist agenda and they control the whole goddamn show and they do it really really well Well it's been like saying you know all Russians are evil well no I mean Putin has done an astonishingly bad thing I don't want to go again into the geopolitics around this but in terms of humanitarian suffering and the way it brought the world again into a nuclear brink for the first time in decades is appalling but you know Russians are being stigmatized there's so many there's a diaspora of Russians all around the world and they are being threatened and blamed for this and it's not it's because of the power structure within Russia it's the same with USA and yet you know as I mentioned I know a lot of the US whistleblowers coming out of the NSA coming out of the FBI coming out of CIA I mean one of the most lovely people I know is a guy called Ray McGovern who was a very senior CIA analyst for decades he was honored for his service he used to be the person who provided the intelligence brief to the president in I think it was George the first presidency and he gave it all up because of the war in Iraq and just said they said I don't want the honors I'm just going out I'm going to talk peace and he's the founder of another wonderful organization I work for called the Sam Adams Associates which is how I know all these lovely American whistleblowers and not all whistleblowers but some of them are just truth they just put it out this is how the system works and it's been an honor to meet people like that Americans aren't stupid I remember I got my pilot license in America I was in the supermarket and when people heard your English action you could buy a pilot license in the supermarket when I was getting my pilot license I was in a supermarket and they'd come up and say hi and they would just say how grieved they felt that they had this blubbering idiot I use the term president loosely they don't control anything not not to my mind at least but they weren't stupid they weren't stupid you know smoking guns smoking guns and if something can't be if the facts in the media can't be backed up scientifically then it's propaganda or it's just a massive lie I feel for them but then you mentioned Putin this is a guy that's in this world economic forum he's all in this cloushwob thing that's trying to dominate every aspect of our life and implant things into our children implant stuff into our brains in digital currency it goes on and on and this is all documented the M.O.D recently brought out a paper on transhumanism that the future soldier will be half machine by machine I mean you know tech technology this is a robocop type thing yeah exactly because there's a great deal to be gained by circumventing if that's the right word human limitation such as tiredness human body structure okay so possibly the use of advanced steroids and all this kind of stuff plus the fact that if you're on the battlefield you might hesitate taking this target out but if you can circumvent that part of the brain then it's all documented and also won't go too deep into this one but Mr. Putin has been very much part of a ludicrous past 24 months fully supporting it for his people so he's one of them it's just that simple you know well I think there's no way that people get to the top of the greasy pole if they're not a bit of a sociopath I think it's the best way of putting it and as you mentioned in the US people in the supermarket or whatever most people just want normal things they want a happy family they want to be able to have a job that vaguely they can enjoy they can put food on the table they can survive, have a community whatever you know it's not too much to ask I wouldn't think but it's the control mechanisms behind each government that are the frightening bits anyway let's not go down it we need to make this sound like a conspiracy talk and we're not because we're both professionals we know what we're talking about Ed Snowden then come on he's around about the same time wasn't it it's Julius Sange he popped his head above the parapet and did a quite memorable thing he fled to Hong Kong to seek sort of at least temporary asylum if not refuge from retribution and he said basically we're all being inspired all our emails, our phones don't believe the hype it's in that famous interview he did he even put a coat over his head while he logged into his laptop because he said they're watching from everywhere do you have any take on Ed Snowden Annie huge amounts but just picking up on the thing over the head this was something that even Shaila and I knew about when we went on the run and this is in the late 1990s so I will tell everyone watching this the only way to ensure that you can have a really private conversation with another human being today or even going back to the 1990s is you get a slab of porcelain and you put one single sheet of paper on it and you put a cover over what you're writing so any camera that might be looking at you cannot see what you're writing and you write it down and then you shove the other human being's head that needs to see this information underneath that cover so again there's nothing to be heard, there's nothing to be seen and then as soon as they've ingested that information or whatever you tear up the paper, you burn it and you scatter the ashes to the full winds or down the toilet I mean that's it, that is has been for the last 30 years I tell you now, the only 100% where you can have a 100% secure contact with another human being so what Edward and Snowden was talking about the fact he put his mobile phones in the fridge, the Faraday's cage because they all snoop and can be remotely switched on to record on us this has been going on for decades this is not new David and I were aware of it in the 1990s we had to use those techniques and we did and what I thought was great about the Snowden case therefore moving on to that was the fact that he made it very obvious to people that that was the sheer scale of the surveillance that we are all facing so back in the 90s for David Shaylor and myself going on the run, we knew what they could do and we took steps to avoid that but it was much more analogue and much more labour intensive to do that what Snowden disclosed in 2013 and that's almost a decade ago basically showed that at the flip of the switch on the internet they could do this to us all and they were doing it to us all and that is what we need one to be aware of and two to be aware of what it means for us because a lack of privacy is very debilitating personally if you can't speak freely or read stuff freely or watch stuff freely or you're concerned about what the internet might be tracking on or what a mobile phone might be tracking on and only the mobile phone could be hacked in order to break into your bank account or your health records or whatever but just in terms of the threat to democracy too because if more of us become aware of this we become more inhibited and how we do communicate and this was called the Snowden effect after 2013 then it becomes a less free society where we can get together talk freely, activate a campaign have relationships even have sex online and suddenly we stop doing that because we are frightened about our privacy so these are all huge issues which one has got me into working with the World Ethical Data Forum World Ethical Data Foundation which I will talk about in a minute if we have time and two has brought me to write a new book which is coming out this autumn called Approaching Danger Oh wow yeah give that a shout how's that been writing that it was an interesting process to go through but the first draft is finished and it should be coming out in the first week of October but it's just trying to pull together all the because of my weird history you know the spies and whistleblowing and the media and the tech and the hacktivism and the whistleblowers and all the rest of it trying to pull together what I perceive as a threat trying to pull together what I perceive as the solutions to give people hope and there are solutions you know we're not all doomed not yet but we do need to take action fairly soon What do you think the solution is Annie? Oh multiple levels one is we as citizens become aware of what the range of threats are so we can meet against them be it for ourselves, be it for our work be it for our children being predated on also I think this whole process has been accelerated because of the Covid pandemic forcing us all to live our lives much more online or our work making us have zoom calls rather than meeting in person so that makes us exponentially much more vulnerable to state data harvesting which is what they do corporate data farming which is what they do and criminal hacking and attacking which of course happens too so there's three key things so as individuals there are steps to take as corporations there are definite obvious steps to take and as governments there should be policy to be made and that's what I'm trying to set out but for anyone who's watching this who is concerned about their personal privacy and depending on the risk assessment the threat model they would perceive for themselves because you know it depends what you're doing who you're working with all that sort of stuff you know you need to be more or less paranoid so for example if I were a female afghan journalist at the moment currently now reimposed inside a burqa but still wanting to have contact with the outside world I would definitely be using a suite of different privacy enabling tools starting with open source software moving on to things like Tor which is the onion router which is basically obscured web searching which includes things like tails or cubes programs which are sort of separate operational systems that can be stored in a little disk and then plugged into a computer and it gives you a different operating system you can unplug it and you're back to Microsoft or whatever which can be snooped on up to things like VPNs virtual privacy networks and then on to things like PGP encryption pretty good privacy if you want that although you might get put out some passwords a few months ago so it might not be 100% secure so if you are really really really paranoid or if the threat against you is really really really hard technologically there are a suite of tools that you can use but it makes the use of the internet a bit clunky and most people like convenience right so for me not being involved in certain things at the moment means that I don't worry too much but if I am approached by whistleblowers or journalists who want to talk about sensitive stuff I take measures one has to oh god this is a notorious hacking hack attack came out of an Israeli company called the NSO it was exposed a few months ago and so I am going to rewind a bit are we running out of time no no no we are fine so Pegasus was this thing that came out of an Israeli company which when it was first reported apparently had targeted 50,000 people of interest around the world many politicians diplomats civil servants that sort of thing and what was fascinating about this was it was a zero-click attack so in the past if antagonistic organizations wanted to target your gadgets they would have to send you something that you would click on and therefore your phone particularly they are all wide open and vulnerable but all your computer would be infested this zero-click attack meant that they had backdoor weapons that could get into commonly used apps like WhatsApp for example so you didn't have to do anything you just had to have the app stuck on your phone and your phone could be taken over and in fact I think it was only last week that it was shown that someone's phone in 10 Downing Street UK government HQ had been attacked in this way zero-click attack is interesting this is why I wanted to roll it back so intelligence agencies build up caches of cyber weapons and backdoor vulnerabilities into corporations which they do not disclose to those corporations because they might want to use them in the future and this was something that was exposed in the Vault 7 Disclosures from WikiLeaks in 2017 I think it was and then also another cash of cyber weapons held by the NSA in America fell into the hands of a bunch of cyber criminals called the Shadow Brokers around the same time and they then put it up for auction around the planet and nobody talks about this nobody really knows about it but that means we're talking about military-grade cyber weapons out there on the market or out there being exploited by cyber criminals and this is where a lot of things like the one-a-cry attack against the NHS a few years ago came from I think and other ransomware attacks which now seem to be the biggest thing that can threaten cyber companies in the UK according to MI5 so even spy agencies like the CIA or the NSA cannot protect their cyber weapons cash they fall into the wrong hands they fall into the hands of criminals who then mutate them and exploit them and therefore we get attacks like one-a-cry all at ransomware or potentially Pegasus who knows where they picked that from so this is why I always see there's an intersection between the corporations and their vulnerabilities, the spies and their security vulnerabilities and then falling into criminal hands makes us all vulnerable both individually, societally and internationally as well there's this thing Annie isn't there well say isn't there you don't know what I'm going to say but was it Ho Dilla Garon was the children's home on Jersey or some such something like that yeah I can't remember excuse my pronunciation folks but and I'm going to say allegedly because it just is handy using that word but allegedly some hideous abuse of young people took place there for many years culminating in I think they were excavating the site looking for bones and this sort of stuff and I heard through a certain source that it was allowed to go on for years because our politicians were popping over there to I'm just going to say harm children and it was all caught on camera I don't know it wasn't a case I followed particularly now the intent being that once you've got a politician who's doing stuff that he really shouldn't be doing then you've got them for life and they're going to I mean I think I without going into finer detail I think we saw this in the Iraq war when the whole country is going no and you've got one individual going yes but George is telling me I just wondered if you had any insight I mean it's quite in depth stuff really but it you know once you're compromised you're compromised and if you're in a position of power that's really handy to the powers that be that want to manipulate you and get you to vote this way in this and vote this way in that and put this to your people it's shocking I mean and I can talk about this because it's out there there's one of the ways that spy agencies can recruit agents in the field to get information they want it's an acronym it's mice money ideology compromise ego so money is obvious ideology is obvious ego is obvious but the compromise is usually exactly what you're talking about where someone is caught out and therefore they have to do the bidding they're blackmailed effectively to do what the blackmailers want them to do be it spooks or corporations or whatever and we've seen this time and time and time again to be a very effective way one of the things I mentioned going back to my MI5 days when I the first work I did was looking at subversion I read down to the bed that sort of thing and there was a general election in 1992 and back in those days you had to we had to look at the files held on anyone who was standing as an MP potentially and a lot of old historic files came out of the registry on labor MPs particularly who then went on in 1997 to win the Tony Blair landslide victory so the fact that all these people who were in Tony Blair's government up to including Blair himself knew they had files held on them by MI5 but didn't know what MI5 knew I think was a grave democratic concern there were supposed to be political masters and yet they didn't want to cross paths or take on the spooks because they didn't know what the spooks knew about them I'm sure they all have these little skeletons rattling around in the back of their minds can I just recommend to you and your listeners as well particularly there's a wonderful organisation called Veterans for Peace UK have you come across them Yes I have it's like everything you're going to hear this angle and you're going to hear this angle the other angle being controlled opposition obviously I'm not suggesting that but I have people that have been on the podcast that speak quite disparagingly about them I've had individuals on the podcast that are a member of Veterans for Peace very very lovely people hello Spike if you get to see this but why do you mention it Annie I was just wondering if you'd interviewed Ben Griffin he's been leading it for years I think he stood down now but he was the SAS soldier who refused to serve in Iraq in 2003 because he said the war was illegal he didn't agree with but he'd served all over the world so they couldn't dismiss him as a coward so he's gone on to build up this network of people with credibility to say war is not the answer why not I think it's a great thing to do interview him or go to war interview him he's a lovely guy anyway I've been trying to interview Ben for about four years now okay do you want me to do a word yes we should do I've spoken to like I say Veterans for Peace have been on my podcast what can I say I've been talking to the office on several occasions and I can't speak Ben's story is incredible what a true special forces legend to stand up and tell the truth what next then you mentioned Sam Adams Associates could you tell us more about that because it's not something I've vaguely come across it Annie yeah again this is a weird life post whistleblowing is you do things because you believe in them and then you meet new people and then you stumble into new things and it's great it's part of the joy of life I think and therefore I think there's New York in 2010 or something and I met a number of people from Sam Adams Associates including Ray McGovern and Colin Rowey who I mentioned the FBI whistleblower and they had set up an organization to give an award every year to someone who displayed integrity in intelligence so there was a very rich rich field should we say in the early 2010s 2011-12-13 with people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden Julian Assange all those sorts of people and so a lot of the awards they wanted to hold in Europe and being the person they knew in Europe I ended up organizing them so I got to know them and they'd come over and it was just just such an amazing impact to meet these people who had this strong drive to try and effect change within the US system which of course at that point was seen as really toxic and yeah I just feel honored to be part of them I became one of the organizers and they gave me the award in 2020 which has really really taken it back with because it wasn't for the old whistleblowing stuff it was actually for the advocacy I'd given to whistleblowers and on behalf of whistleblowers throughout the media and public speeches and organizing events over the last decade and that was so touched by that but I would recommend everyone have a look at Sam Adams Associates and some of the people involved most of the people involved are hugely immensely rich back story whether they blew the whistle or whether they tried to change the systems within what their experiences were it's a lovely organization Yes and was there anything in particular you were awarded this honor for Annie or was it your general sort of honesty I saw my advocacy for all the whistleblowers coming out and trying to advance their cause and defend them in media interviews and defend them in talks and debates and giving platforms I think that was the key thing and yeah that was it most people don't understand the human cost that whistleblowing takes I mean as I said earlier in this interview not just intelligence or government NHS whistleblowers or whatever it ruins someone's life but for people coming out of the environments I'm talking about they face prison too oh that reminds me here we go friend of mine in Berlin a lovely woman called Tatiana Batticelli pulled together a sort of ontology of different whistleblower experiences which was published this year and don't you see that okay what's her name Kata Tatiana Batticelli I'll send you a link afterwards but so she got a bunch of us to give our perspectives and she asked me to give the sort of overview of the principles at stake and the costs at stake and everything and then she got various talks from articles from various whistleblowers and a couple of academic articles really good book so it's called whistleblowing for change exposing systems of power and injustice she might be good interviewer as well lovely good friend and it's been great having you on the show thank you for sharing your knowledge I hope this doesn't get you into any trouble feel your as I say to all my guests you're welcome back on at any any time I wish you the best with your book do you know when it's coming out it should be the beginning of October this year so very fast production okay and it's called approaching danger approaching danger we'll put a Luke our editor will put a mention of that below below the video but yes thank you very much to everybody at home massive love to you please look after yourself please make sure you turn off that mainstream media so you're not locked into this to this thought matrix and we'll see you next time thank you Chris you're more than welcome