Annie Machon 

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Annie Machon worked for MI5 during the 1990s as a counter-terrorism officer with a focus on the activities of the IRA.  In 1996 she resigned from the Security Service and blew the whistle on a series of alleged crimes that she claimed to have witnessed during her time in the intelligence services. She then went into hiding with her partner, David Shayler, and the two fled across Europe to escape prosecution before spending two years in exile in Paris.

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Now she works as a journalist and prominent campaigner. In 2013 she was appointed Chair of the Courage Foundation, an organisation that fights for the protection of whistleblowers and has campaigned for such high-profile figures as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Lauri Love.  She resigned from the Courage Foundation a year later and today works as the European Director of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organisation of current and former law enforcement agents and government officials who oppose the War on Drugs.

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Video: https://youtu.be/xN8XyJ2586g

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Privacy, Hacktivism and the Politics of Surveillance in a Digital Age

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Are we witnessing the end of privacy? Today all of our emails, text messages and social media are being monitored. Every time we use our bank cards, every time we go on Facebook and every time we run a Google search, we leave a digital trace. As the leaks of whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed those traces are increasingly accessed by governments, or mined by major corporations, to build a digital profile of us and place us under surveillance. Watch former LulzSec and Anonymous hacktivist Jake Davis, AKA Topiary, along with the intelligence and security expert Professor Richard Aldrich and contemporary political philosopher Professor James Connelly discuss these issues.

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Video: https://youtu.be/ZA1Jp0xHR4I

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Rise of the Machines: Artificial Intelligence and Us

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Are you curious about artificial intelligence? Are you worried that machines might rule over us in the not-so-distant future? This is a discussion about the current state of artificial intelligence, and its implications for society. Panelists include Dr Mike Brayshaw, an expert in Artificial Intelligence; Dr Mary-Ellen Large, who lectures in cognitive neuroscience and is an expert in object recognition and visual pathways in the brain; Professor Michael Gratzke, an expert in the changing nature of love in the 21st Century; and Dr Stephen Burwood, who lectures in Philosophy and is an expert in the concept of “transhumanism”. The panel is chaired by Dr Simon Willmetts.

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Video: https://youtu.be/IeMBKAKK95U

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