Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche journalist Frederik Obermaier soon found themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help the super-rich to hide their money. In the face of the largest data leak in history, they activated an international network of fellow journalists to investigate every line of enquiry. Working in strict secrecy for over a year, they uncovered incriminating cases involving aristocrats, kings, international dictators, celebrities and European prime ministers.

We will be joined by Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier – in conversation with The Guardian‘s Luke Harding – to hear the inside story of what Edward Snowden has called “the biggest leak in the history of data journalism.”

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer are award-winning investigative journalists at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest broadsheet. The first people to have access to the Panama papers, they were previously part of the international team of journalists who revealed the Offshore Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks and Swiss Leaks.

Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake

Whether they spoke out against torture or mass surveillance, government officials who blew the whistle on the deplorable changes made to U.S. legislation after the 9/11 attacks have been left bankrupted, broke and broken.

The documentary Silenced, directed by James Spione and screened at the Frontline Club on Monday 9 March, follows the cases of three prominent whistleblowers who confronted and made public the unlawful practices of U.S. authorities.

Focusing closely on former CIA analyst and case officer John Kiriakou who spoke out against the CIA’s use of torture, Silenced shows the impact on Kiriakou and his family in the lead up to his nearly two year imprisonment, which ended in early February 2015.

In a Q&A following the screening, two of the film’s protagonists – activist and retired NSA executive Thomas Drake, and former DOJ Ethics Advisor Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project – discussed their struggles as whistleblowers and how journalists can help foster change.

.@SilencedFilm @frontlineclub Q&A: knowing what you know now would you do it again? @Thomas_Drake1: yes, but I’d go to the press earlier.

— Jen Robinson (@suigenerisjen) March 9, 2015

What Could Have Been Done Differently?
Thomas Drake said that both he and the government should have done things differently before and after he blew the whistle on the dubious legality of NSA dragnet surveillance. “I would have gone to the press a lot sooner,” said Drake.

“Despite the huge personal costs, what price do you put on freedom and liberty? We don’t have to forsake the future of freedom and liberty for all. Are there threats to civil society? Yes. It doesn’t mean that we turn everybody into suspects, even if it’s virtual. What it means to be free and what it means to have liberty means more to me now than ever.”

He responded to an audience question about how methods of surveillance could be changed to protect privacy. “You certainly don’t have to go outside of the constitution,” Drake said. “The U.S. unchained itself. Because they had failed to protect Americans, they decided they would unchain themselves from the rule of law. Five days after 9/11, Cheney said ‘we’re going to the dark side.’”

Both before and after bulk surveillance was introduced, Drake said he had continuously advocated for the use of a program called ThinThread, which would have protected the privacy of American citizens.

Foundation of Courage
Much has changed since Radack and Drake first spoke out, not least of which are the mass surveillance revelations by Edward Snowden, who brought international attention to the act of whistleblowing.

Radack praised the establishment of the Courage Foundation last year, set up to help financially support whistleblowers as they navigate the expensive court cases that stem from their revelations. “That foundation is now supporting legal defence for [Edward] Snowden, other clients of mine, other clients of other attorneys. None of that existed back when I blew the whistle and when Tom and John were going through their ordeals,” she said. Even if a whistleblower is found ‘not guilty,’ Radack added, “it’s very hard to recover,” and “there’s still such a price” financially.

Panel discussion with two of the “Original 7 #Whistleblowers” who were prosecuted under #Obama @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/RiIOrpgBeH

— Luigi Rappallo (@LuigiRappallo) March 9, 2015

Double-edged Media
The media is both a key aspect in “demonising and vilifying the whistleblower,” Radack said, and at the same time their “saving grace” since “robust investigative journalism has been a tremendous help to whistleblowers.”

Whistleblowers “are always painted as being out for fame, or profit, or revenge,” she said. “Some journalists in the U.S. act more like the government lapdog than the government watchdog. And they very much care about maintaining their contacts.”

But the war on whistleblowers is really a backdoor war on journalists, Radack maintained. “There’s been a war on whistleblowers, a war on journalists, a war on hacktavists, and an overall war on information… because information is the currency of power, especially in the digital age.”

When leaks come from official sources, such as in the recent Hillary Clinton email controversy that has seen the former Secretary of State release State Department emails to the public, and former CIA Director David Petraeus’ leak of classified material to his lover, “they’re very self serving,” said Drake. “Whistleblowing is done in the public interest. The whistleblowers, the truth tellers, are really the canaries in this democratic liberty and freedom coal mine.”

Visit the Silenced website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.

On Wednesday 29 October, the Frontline Club held a special preview screening of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’s new film CITIZENFOUR ahead of its UK cinematic release on Friday 31 October.

While working on a documentary trilogy about post 9/11 America, Poitras began to receive encrypted emails from a subject known only as ‘Citizen Four’. This citizen claimed to be ready to blow the whistle on a global intelligence effort involving private information and communications of regular people. Poitras and confidant Glenn Greenwald flew to Kong Kong on Citizen Four’s instructions, where they would dissect the information he had to give them. It was here that Citizen Four revealed himself as the man we now know as Edward Snowden.

The film recounts the next eight days of interviews between Snowden, Greenwald and other investigative journalists. Poitras takes us through the day-by-day process of interviewing Snowden, making sense of the documents, writing the stories, and then eventually releasing them to the world. CITIZENFOUR puts to its audience clips from other experts such as Bill Finney, shedding light onto one of the most debated and controversial topics of the 21st century.

29/10/14 I cannot urge this enough – go see @laurapoitras @citizenfour @frontlineclub – chilling, compelling SEE IT pic.twitter.com/xq40XmycsS

— Fiona Hampton (@FionaHampton) October 29, 2014

Poitras joined via Skype from Germany, where she had just received the Leipziger Ring Award, at the Dok Leipzig Film Festival.

The first question addressed the style of the film, which one audience member characterised as ‘dressed down’. She wondered what her approach had been while editing the film. Poitras responded she “wanted it to unfold chronologically”. This would give the audience an idea of how the actual events unfolded, leaving them with the feeling they were actually present in the room.

Next, Poitras was asked how the film had effected how she communicates with people everyday and whether, as Greenwald joked, Snowden’s fear of snooping had rubbed off on her.

Poitras explained that even before she started this project she used encrypted messages and had only recently started using Skype for Q&As such as tonight’s, but had never felt it was secure as a means of communication.

When asked whether the film was able to attract a wider audience, Poitras said that it was more to do with a “shift in consciousness” and that it was the nature of the information that Snowden leaked that was attracting the attention.

@frontlineclub UK journalists putting questions to Laura on Skype after #CITIZENFOUR as she can't enter UK pic.twitter.com/natfLmbjQi

— SearchMe@universeodon.com (@jesssearch) October 29, 2014

Another question queried why Poitras thought the large telecoms and internet companies implicated in the scandal were willing to work with the US and other governments.

Poitras alluded to companies such as Twitter who did resist pressure from the US government to give them access to their user databases and then at the other end of the spectrum there is Microsoft who gave the NSA warning about encryptions and security changes ahead of them taking place so that the NSA could get a head start. Poitras’s main reason as to why she thought these companies were so compliant was the US government persuasion factor, sending National Security letters to these companies under legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and the PRISM program.

To find out more about the tools of encryption that were used in the making of the film, read this article.

CITIZENFOUR will be released in cinemas across the UK on Friday 31 October. Find our more screenings dates here.

In January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was several years into the making of a film about abuses of national security in post­-9/11 America when she started receiving encrypted e­mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four”, who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programmes run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely unique in the history of cinema: a 100% real-­life thriller unfolding minute-by-minute before our eyes.

Directed by Laura Poitras
Duration: 120′
Year: 2014

Citizenfour will be released in cinemas across the UK on Friday 31 October. More details here.

This evening of tributes, talks, film, food and drinks is open to all. It coincides with a simultaneous celebration at Shakespeare and Company Books, 7 Rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris to be linked by video and live-streamed.

The purpose of this occasion is to show gratitude to Manning, Assange and Snowden for their revelations and the risks they took to bring them to public notice.

Come, bring friends and say thanks.

More about “Anything to say?”:

Speakers:

Vaughan Smith, founder of London’s Frontline Club, award-winning independent cameraman and member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

Norman Solomon, the coordinator of ExposeFacts.org, a new organisation for whistleblowing and independent journalism and author of many books on media, war and public policy.

Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism and visiting professor at City University London.

David Dormino, a sculptor and visual artist, he works in Rome and teaches sculpture at Rome University of Fine Arts (RUFA).

In Paris, at Shakespeare and Company linked by video, the speakers are William Bourdon, distinguished French human rights advocate and lawyer for Edward Snowden; and Jean Michel Boissier of Reporters Sans Frontieres. Chaired by writer, Adam Biles.

The project is supported by the president of the Human Rights Committee of the Italian parliament, Mario Marazziti and Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF).

“J. Edgar Hoover was apoplectic.”

On Monday 29 September 2014, the Frontline Club screened 1971, the incredible story of eight US citizens whose courage – both moral and physical – led them to break into an FBI office to confiscate evidence of the bureau’s grave abuses of power.

The self-incriminating documents revealed the existence of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the remit of which ranged from spying on women’s tea parties to what Noam Chomsky described as the, “Gestapo-style assassination”of Black Panther leaders.

In the post-screeening Q&A we were joined by director Johanna Hamilton via video link.

“It’s the FBI!” exclaimed a member of the audience, when the video programme experienced a slight delay in connection.

Hamilton began by outlining the two main challenges she faced in documenting a story hidden for 40 years:

“One, that they had never been found. They never revealed themselves. They were talking to Betty Medsger, The Washington Post journalist, she was writing a book and that is how I gained access to the story.

“The other real substantive thing is was that because they had never come out, we weren’t sure how the government would react. It was one of the largest FBI investigations that the bureau had ever undertaken. That’s a very little know fact, obviously because it was such a public embarrassment. . . . This was really a we did it as opposed to a whodunit.”

Hamilton then quoted the FBI’s response to reporters covering the film:

“We’re a different institution today than we were in the 70s. We’re reformed. We’ve reformed ourselves partially as a result of the revelations that happened in the 70s.”

“They didn’t reference the burglary directly,” noted Hamilton, “but obviously that was a great relief that the Citizens’ Commission was not going to go to jail.

“President Obama has become known for prosecuting whistleblowers,” she continued, “and obviously the film was coming out in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations so there was a lot of hoopla surrounding that.”

Director Johanna Hamilton

“I really did want to be able to tell the full personal story and the political aftermath of the story,” said Hamilton, on her decision to use recreations:

“I wanted it to be cinematic, and for people to really be able to put themselves in their shoes. And they’re very unconventional whistleblowers. They’re very non-traditional, they’re not insiders. They were outsiders, so they do have to do this quite extraordinary thing. It was really improbable that they would pull it off, number one, and that they would find what they were looking for, and that they would remain undetected all that time.”

A member of the audience commented that he had left the states as a student in 1967: “What I found in your film, that very few people who are not of my generation may not feel so much, is how innocent we all are. . . . The brutishness of it is still active today. I see Laura Poitras is in your production credits. She’s got an indictment against her . . . and I think the situation has got much worse.”

Future screenings and workshops can be found on the film’s official website and Twitter account.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-syria-crossing

On 20 August last year President Barack Obama gave a speech declaring that if Bashar al-Assad’s government used chemical weapons it would cross a “red line”. It appears that line has now been crossed. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it is “undeniable” that the Assad government is responsible for the use of chemical weapons after an attack on 21 August left hundreds dead.

With the shadow of Iraq hanging over them, MPs in the UK voted against possible military action in Syria. We will be asking what are the implications of this move towards inaction, and whether it will have any impact on a US-led attack.

As the rhetoric about intervention in Syria escalates, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the arguments for and against, and the implications of action or inaction.

If intervention were to occur, what form would it take? What reaction would we see from Syria’s neighbours and other countries already involved in the conflict?

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House.

With:

Lina Sinjab was the BBC’s correspondent in Syria until a few months ago. She has been reporting for the BBC since 2007 and closely covered the uprising in Syria since it sparked in March 2011.

Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView. He is a specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran.

Shiraz Maher is a Senior Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London, and a contributor to The Spectator. He studies terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and is currently working on project to map the Syria opposition.

Jonathan Steele is a columnist at The Guardian, roving foreign correspondent and author. He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and many other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Guardian. He is author of many books, most recently Ghosts of Afghanistan.

Picture courtesy of multimedia journalist Ayman Oghanna.

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.