If you want to learn how bananas helped a journalist smuggle banned magazines into eastern Europe, or how information was passed around via lipstick in Pinochet’s Chile, then join Index on Censorship for the launch of Spies, Secrets and Lies – our latest magazine featuring stories of censorship and ingenious efforts to evade it.

Expect a lively evening exploring censorship old and new, hear some stories of heroic stands for free expression shared for the first time in the latest magazine, and debate with us what the future of censorship might look like.

From China’s new security laws and South Korea’s new smartphone spies to Eritrea’s agents and the new fighters for free expression online. Where and what are the challenges today and how do they compare to the past?

• With an introduction by Stephen Grey, journalist and author of The New Spymasters.
• Panelists include Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Ismael Einashe. Chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
• Attendees receive a free copy of the latest magazine.

Index on Censorship is one of the world’s leading defenders and supporters of the right to free expression internationally. 

More on the speakers:

Stephen Grey is an award-winning British investigative journalist and author, perhaps best known for uncovering the CIA’s program of ‘extraordinary rendition’. His latest of three books, The New Spymasters, looks at spying in the digital age and how it has changed since the Cold War. The London-based reporter has also reported from conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and covered the subjects of national security, terrorism and security agencies extensively.

Xiaolu Guo is a fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist. Her award-winning works include Village of Stone, I Am China, and the acclaimed film She, a Chinese. Guo, named one of the ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta Magazine and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China, has developed her own unique vision of the country’s past and globalised future.

Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. For nearly 20 years he was editor in chief of the publishing firm of Faber and Faber and is co-author of the Story of English as well as six highly acclaimed novels: In the Secret State, A Loss of Heart, The Fabulous Englishman, Mainland, The Psychological Moment, and Suspicion. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990.

Ismail Einashe is a freelance journalist, researcher and an associate editor at Warscapes, a foreign affairs magazine. He has worked for national and international media including Prospect, the Guardian and the BBC since he first came to the UK as a child refugee.

This event is organised by:

The event will follow a day long workshop on Monday 19 May, for details see here.

Disruptive technology is transforming journalism. Revolutions are tweeted. Drug lords and hitmen have Facebook fans. Wars are waged with cyber attacks. Surveillance and espionage have never been so widespread or easy to conduct.

Traditional news organisations are falling behind as pioneering new tools are being developed to understand and stay at the forefront of fast moving global events. The way we do journalism is being redefined.

Cyber pioneer Rafal Rohozinski will be joining us in conversation with Robin Pembrooke, head of product at BBC News Online, to explore what the next generation news organisation will look like and the techniques and technology that they will be using. We will be discussing the possibilities they present as well as the challenges in ensuring the validity and accuracy of content.

Rafal Rohozinski is co-founder and principal of the SecDev Group, a recognised leader in complex analytics. He spent 17 years working in an operational capacity in 37 countries including conflict zones in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa. He is also a co-founder and past CEO of Psiphon, he served as director of the Advanced Network Research Group University of Cambridge, is the co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor, and co-author of the Ghostnet study of Chinese cyber-espionage. He has written many publications and is a frequent commentator on cyber security and cyber war.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-trade-off-individual

Privacy of the individual, secrecy of the state and national security have been in sharp focus in past weeks due to the leak of material from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA).

It has been revealed that under the so-called Prism programme millions of phone calls have been gathered and Internet use has been monitored on a massive scale. In the UK there are suggestions that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has also accessed the material.

The chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “in order to protect the public that does require, as President Obama said in Washington, some intrusion on privacy in certain circumstances”. The murder on 22 May of Drummer Lee Rigby reignited calls for the draft communications data bill to be re-examined.

As the debate about individual privacy, state secrecy and national security continues, we will be joined by a panel of experts to ask whether it is possible to strike a balance. Are we moving towards a surveillance state or is the idea of online privacy a myth?

Chaired by Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight. He is the author of several books including Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA, The Tank War and Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq.

The panel:

Sir Malcolm Rifkind is MP for Kensington and chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. In 1990 he became Secretary of State for Transport and in 1992 Secretary of State for Defence. From 1995-97 he was Foreign Secretary. He was re-elected as a Member of Parliament in May 2005 for Kensington and Chelsea. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Kensington in May 2010. He served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform until December 2005.

John Kampfner is adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. He is an author, broadcaster and commentator specialising in UK politics, international affairs, media and human rights issues. Previously he served as chief executive of Index on Censorship from Sept 2008 until March 2012 and was editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008. He is the author of a number of books including, most recently, Freedom For Sale.

John Naughton is a senior research fellow at CRASSH, emeritus professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, vice-president of Wolfson College, Cambridge and an adjunct professor at University College Cork. He is director of the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme and a well-known newspaper columnist, writing the Observer’s Networker column. He is author of a well-known history of the Internet A Brief History of the Future and most recently From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet.

Helen Margetts is the director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a department of the University of Oxford investigating individual, collective and organisational behaviour online. Her research focuses on digital governance and politics, investigating the dynamics of online relationships between governments and citizens, and collective action on the Internet. She is the co-author of Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform; The Tools of Government in the Digital Age; and Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and e-Government. She currently holds an ESRC professorial fellowship entitled The Internet, Political Science and Public Policy, is editor-in-chief of the journal Policy and Internet and sits on the Advisory Board of the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office.

External event held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Abermarle St, London W1S 4BS.

Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.

A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.

Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?

The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.

Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.

With:

Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.

Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.

Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

In association with:

“Whether we like it or not, cyber is going to be part of future warfare, just as tanks and aircraft are today. It’s a cultural change.” These were the words of General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff in a recent interview in which he called for a cyber command to deal with online strikes and to launch attacks. The 2010 Strategic Defense Review listed cyber attacks as among the biggest emerging threat to the UK.

Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be examining the claims about what has been described as the “fifth domain of warfare” and assessing the threats posed by states launching attacks against another’s military infrastructure, government and communications systems, and financial markets.

We’ll be looking at who will be the key players, the threats posed and what policies might be put in place to protect against them. We will also be discussing the  impact of the increasing militarisation of the internet and where online activists such as Anonymous fit in.

Chaired by Ben Hammersley, editor at large of WIRED UK.

With:

Dr Rex Hughes, visiting fellow in Cyber Security at Wolfson College, Cambridge University;

Peter Sommer, visiting professor in the Information Systems Integrity Group in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and co author of the OECD study “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk“;

Carl Leonard, senior security research manager (EMEA), Websense;

Claire Yorke, manager of the International Security Programme at Chatham House and co-author of the Chatham House Report ‘On Cyber Warfare’.