Government surveillance is ramping up as the U.S. Army plans to monitor global social media to protect the "NATO brand". Plus, Joe Biden's rhetoric on democracy despite the U.S. selling MORE weapons to authoritarian countries, what ‘Succession’ tells us about the media and power, and our special guest is ex-MI5 intelligence officer, Annie Machon.For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Thanks for joining me on this voyage to truth and freedom.
If you're watching this on YouTube, we'll be there for about 10-15 minutes, then we will be exclusively available on free speech, or as some are calling it now, Freach Platform Rumble, where you can freely talk about stories like NATO censoring anti-NATO rhetoric on social media.
Please don't criticise NATO!
That's a hate crime!
Also, we're going to be talking about RFK Jr's claims about Anthony Fauci, which literally can't be discussed on YouTube, as well as talking at some length about the 4.5 million people who died in the post 9-11 conflicts, and let's think about how that was framed.
When it happened.
But to ensure that we remain somewhat frivolous, my on-screen assistant and I, we're going to bring you a story where a British regional news reporter for the BBC, which Elon Musk would say is what?
State media.
Elon Musk would call that.
State media calling to Elon Musk.
Have you seen that guy?
Boogie.
Watch her.
She ends the news with the phrase, good boy.
I don't know.
Does the news end with good boy?
It would if it was in your world.
Yes, it would.
Good boy.
You are a very good boy.
Yes, well, I think so.
I don't know.
Oh, God, is this good?
Let's have a look.
Tonight, Luke North is back in BBC Breakfast from 6.25.
Good boy.
What is that aimed at?
What does she do afterwards?
Does she react?
Does she sort of acknowledge that that was a weird thing to do?
Nope, she just looks down at the pen and carries on.
Look North.
I would have loved to see the reaction of you watching that real time, on your own, in your bedroom.
If I watched that on my own bedroom and she went, good boy, I'd be writing a fan letter straight away.
Dear News Lady, you're the only one who understands me and what I need to feel okay.
Also, sorry to hear about that massacre in Lincoln.
Hey, look at this.
If you need to smuggle drugs and you don't because drugs are bad... Allegedly!
No, actually they are bad, aren't they?
They actually are bad, aren't they?
Why not try dressing up your cat as a... Look at this headline.
Woman dressed cat up as baby in attempt to smuggle drugs into resort.
She dressed the cat up... Attempt?
I mean, she didn't even get away with it.
She went to all that trouble.
Look at that little cat.
That is an adorable little guy, isn't it?
It looks quite passive and, I don't know, is it actually, if you look right into the eyes of the cat, you can see it's a bit pissed off.
Right.
It's annoying that this is happening.
Although some animals don't seem to mind.
What?
Dressed up in clothes?
Yeah, they don't seem to mind.
I think they've been, in some way, chemically neutered.
Right, I see.
Those animals, because that's robbing their dignity, isn't it?
To sort of, like, I've got Children, my children want to dress all my animals up.
We put a bow in Bear's hair once, that wasn't the right thing to do.
How did he feel about that?
He was actually, he was alright.
He was alright about it, he didn't know though.
I think if I'd shown him that it was compromising him, he wouldn't have liked it.
The thing about this is that already, like, she's, like, they're suggesting that if she'd have done it with a real baby that she might have got away with it.
But it was the fact that they discovered, first of all, hang on, that's not a baby, it's a cat.
Okay, let's just check what's going on here.
Wait a minute, that's not a baby, it's a cat!
And what's in its pocket?
It's drugs!
What the hell is this now?
Oh, sorry, the cat's addicted to drugs.
That's what's made it think it's a baby.
Oh, carry on then.
This all makes sense now.
You're right, what drugs do you imagine it was that the drugs are in?
I'm going to say cocaine.
Potential drugs?
No, you've missed an opportunity for a joke, and here are all the jokes.
Catamine, that's a potential one.
Meow meow, which is a slang term for drugs.
Catnip, another drug.
Okay, but that isn't... Yeah, that's not news.
My mum buys that.
Oh God!
Does she dress her cat up as a baby?
Did she dress you up as a cat?
Do you see?
This is a bit like in Fight Club when he learns swimming.
I'm actually... I'm on my own in this fight club!
It's only me I'm sitting in first row!
Yeah, what are you telling me for?
I am you.
Oh, well, you already know, so, you know, the stuff about don't talk about it.
Yep, I know that.
I am me.
OK.
A speeding driver has found an ingenious way to foil a arrest.
So he's pretending that his dog drove the car.
That's worse than speeding.
Yeah.
Sir, can I tell, I'd like to know from you that you're travelling at 35 miles an hour and this is a 30 mile an hour area?
Well actually, talk to my dog because he was actually driving.
Well, you are actually legally culpable for a much worse crime.
What's that baby doing in the back of the vehicle?
What kind of family are you living in?
Sylvanian families, only from Tomy.
You'll get that if you're British.
If you're not, you might not, and you might even now be frantically demanding a refund.
Where's my free speech?
Where's my conspiracy theories?
Where's information that will reveal to me that the establishment is corrupt, that we've been lied to, that the mainstream media are corroborating and supporting lies, as in the Russiagate case, then still trying to claim some moral high ground.
Where is some analysis of succession that shows me in spite of its ingenuity it still functions as a kind of neo-liberal propaganda that suggests there is a bifurcation down the center of American politics where there's goodies on one side and baddies on the other when in fact the establishment is stinking corrupt and needs to be brought down from within?
All those things coming up.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
All right, listen, we're going to come off of... Oh yeah, no, let's just leave it now, shall we?
We've covered that.
We're going to leave YouTube now because we've got to.
I want to talk to you about some stuff that's pretty serious, as a matter of fact, that I definitely would not be able to talk about on YouTube.
When we spoke to RFK the other day, he made some claims about Anthony Fauci and gain-of-function research, and in particular, Well, you cut me off at the point where what I'm saying gets too risky, right?
RFK said that Anthony Fauci was doing gain-of-function research in this country.
It got shut down by the Obama administration, should be safe so far.
It got re-initiated by the Trump administration, should still be okay.
Then he repoed it, because he's like, "Oh, we can't do this in America,"
to a certain town in China that you may have heard of that sounds a bit like a hip-hop collective whose name ends
in "clan."
Yeah, let's have a look now at RFK.
If you watch this on YouTube, there's a link in the description
to take you over to Rumble. Have a look at this.
And then in 2014, three of the bugs escaped from labs in the United States,
and everybody finds out about it.
Congress has hearings, 300 scientists write letters to Obama, sign a letter to Obama saying, you gotta shut down Tony Fauci, he's gonna create an epidemic.
Obama shuts down all of Fauci's projects, orders them closed, has a moratorium, but Fauci doesn't shut them down.
He continues doing them, and then he starts shipping everything over to Wuhan, Where he can do it offshore out of sight of, you know, these federal overseers and all the nosy scientists like Richard Ebright and the others from the Cambridge Working Group who were horrified by what he was doing.
And that's kind of why the short story of why, you know, we're doing all this stuff in Wuhan rather than doing it at University of North Carolina in Galveston, which is where they were doing it before.
Okay so if that's your introduction to RFK you won't be familiar to the fact that the guy is a sort of a truth bomb or at least extraordinary fact bomb or indeed information.
I don't know if you believe RFK or not.
Certainly he says a lot of extraordinary stuff.
I personally really liked him.
Let's break some of this stuff down.
So here's a story from 2014.
White House to cut funding for risky biological study prompted by controversy over dangerous research
and recent lab accidents.
The White House announced Friday it would temporarily halt all new funding for experiments
that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous, aka gain of function.
Let's have a look at the next piece of information.
Feds lift gain-of-function research.
The National Institute of Health today lifted a three-year moratorium on funding gain-of-function research on potential pandemic viruses such as avian flu, SARS and MERS, opening the door for certain types of research to resume.
That's from the end of 2017.
Let's have a look at what's next.
Fauci reportedly relaunched NIH gain-of-function research without consulting the White House.
That's something that's been discussed, Nick.
They're using the word reportedly, which is print journalism.
Allegedly!
A version of allegedly.
But certainly, RFK says in his famous best-selling book, The Real Anthony Fauci, that many claims made in extraordinarily small print across a number of pages are all undergirded by cast-iron information.
What do you think, Gareth, about Fauci reportedly relaunching NIH gain-of-function research without concerning the White House?
Is that something we have any more information on?
Well, look, I mean, somebody did, didn't they?
I mean, whether it was Fauci or not, I mean, it happened.
I mean, I think they were doing it, but they were doing it.
I think the issue here is that this, this risky gain of function research was going on and continues to go on.
I think, you know, it's controversial for a reason and we know what it's potentially led to.
At the very beginning of the virus, the idea that it in any way would like...
There were two sort of major things going on.
Oh, there's this disease.
Like, remember these sort of innocent days before we all had to occupy
these mad little online enclaves of exchanging true information
that may nevertheless be censored.
There was a bit at the beginning where I came to it with my indigenous mistrust of authority.
This is weird but I did take it in good faith.
There's this virus that's coming out of this place called Wuhan in China.
That was one thing I was aware of before it sort of crept into the popular imagination.
There were spikes of terror before there were spikes of protein.
And now one of the other things I was aware of was Anthony Fauci.
This guy is in charge of the NIH.
Oh and like people that were anti-Trump liked him because he would like roll his eyes behind Trump.
And I can remember people I really respect going, you know, this Anthony Fauci,
this is what shows you what it is to be someone who's dedicated their self to medicine and science
for their whole career, and then come of the hour, come of the man,
this guy is like nailing it.
And then to find out a bit later, oh, they are, through DARPA,
there are connections to the Wuhan laboratories and Anthony Fauci,
that potentially royalties have been received--
Allegedly.
By Anthony Fauci through the CDC, as a result of pharmacological experimentation.
Like the amount of information that has accrued subsequently means that,
I mean, I wonder, do you know anyone that is still got a 2019 perspective on the pandemic?
By that I mean, You better take those vaccines because you'll be immune and you won't spread it.
You're irresponsible when you're killing others if you don't take it.
You should be locked down all the time.
You should be wearing a mask.
If you're vaccine hesitant, that's irresponsible.
You know, it came out of a wet market in China.
I mean, this is kind of what this what RFK is talking about is the origins, isn't it?
Is that where did this come from?
I don't think there's anyone How many people still believe that it came out of a wet market?
I think almost even the mainstream I think now are talking about the fact that it's unlikely.
You know, there's so many big organizations have come out and said this came, this was a lab leak.
They must be fuming down that wet market.
We've run a pretty tight ship down this wet market.
Yeah, the floor's covered in slobber and sputum and gack and gunge.
But other than that, there are delicious snacks available for all, and at a price that's right.
This wet market's taken a real hit.
Not since McDonald's started employing little boys and girls has a food establishment been so unfairly derided.
And we'll be going into this story with a little more depth later, or next week I guess we'll be covering this way we go.
Yeah, sure.
Earlier, and let me see if I've understood this correctly, that people that were not showing symptoms were not infectious and that there was a tool available to diagnose that that was suppressed for reasons we don't know.
We don't know if suppressed but ignored by the CDC.
Yeah, a special test was developed and the researchers at Stanford, I think this was, yeah Stanford, found that 96% of people who were PCR positive but without symptoms We're not infectious.
That's basically nearly 100%.
That's what 96 means.
Remember, one of the common myths was, the thing about this, what makes it so bad and so easy to lock down a population that are increasingly difficult to control is even if you're not showing symptoms, you could still kill your nan.
So get indoors, you count nan killer.
Well, that weren't true, and it could have been proven at the time.
Exactly what this article suggests, or what it says, is it undergirded policies on, as you say, distancing, quarantines, masks, all of those kind of things.
This thing in particular.
And now it's going to be proven that that wasn't the case.
But not only do we now know that it wasn't the case, but that there was a test to demonstrate this at the time.
This is just a story that Gareth and I are cooking up right now.
Gareth and I were just discussing that before we went on air.
It's not cooking it up, it's making it up.
It's true.
We're just simply discussing it now and we'll be going into more depth at some point.
That's why it's worth joining us every day.
That's why it's worth joining us on Locals and becoming a member of our community here.
And it's also worth it because we take a deeper look at the news.
We tell you stories that they won't tell you.
We give you perspectives that they won't give you.
We feed back to you your own insights, your own intuitions.
You knew that you were right all along, didn't you?
And we're here to tell you that you were.
And we're here to tell you that they will continue to lie, but we will continue to form new alliances.
We will continue to grow.
That's why it's so important that you subscribe.
That's why it's so important you join us.
Some of you don't know what Sylvanian families... Oh, is that the big thing to have come out of today?
Oh, what do you want me to say?
Oh, big tech's more powerful than countries.
I know that.
Joe Biden's administration was selling weapons to the worst people in the world.
I know that.
No one's got any moral authority anymore.
Succession is a satire that's so biting and accurate that people go, I know that.
I've always known it.
What I don't know is Sylvanian families only from Tony.
Let's have a look at those little.
Oh, brilliant.
They are.
This is what they're like.
If you're an American person or a Canadian person or a Tunisian person, if you're anything other than the Sylvanian, which I think means the countryside.
I never knew that.
Yeah, I think it means something like that.
Have a look at these little guys.
My kids have got some.
Let's see what they're all about.
about Sylvanian families only from Tomy.
Sylvanian families, they come from far and near.
A brand-new baby's here.
Sylvanian Families.
Sylvanian Families just don't feel complete without a little baby.
So they all have one.
With its own cradle and baby bottle.
Sorry, go on.
I'm saying that this is Vain and Famous.
Oh, you've got to have a baby.
Don't have to.
Oh dear.
I know people that feel complete that don't have a baby.
Right, you're right.
Although we are studying the effects of declining populations and we'll be talking about that next week, won't we?
And how the world is changing.
Now, If you don't know enough about Sylvanian families now, you never will.
I give up the ghost.
I've tried everything to educate you people and you've let me down again and again.
We are on the back of many of our complex conversations with figures that understand the deep state.
We are questioning the legitimacy of the CIA.
The FBI.
And who better to discuss that with than a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle on illegal phone taps around the illegal, unnecessary, and I would say a bit out of order, assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.
We all remember seeing him in the back of that van.
It was bang out of order.
Bang out of order.
Now, Annie Mashon is going to be joining us.
Annie, are you OK?
I am.
And I love your jacket rope, whatever you call it.
You're rocking it.
It's my wife's housecoat, Annie, as a matter of fact, and I don't know what journey I'm on now as I...
I've learned to dwell happily in middle age, but it appears to be some form of dressing up in my wife's clothes, which used to be quite a conventional way to get through this difficult time.
Annie, thanks for joining us.
There's loads of things we want to ask you about.
Let me just sketch out the parameters of this conversation, with it finally being revealed that all of the Russiagate allegations were unfounded and untrue, and they were known to be untrue at the beginning, and yet the FBI pursued them.
With RFK saying that he would disband the CIA and that he believes that the CIA assassinated JFK, he's obviously not the first person to say that, I'd like to ask you, as a former member of the intelligence community, albeit a goodie, much more James Bond than, I don't know, one of them ones that's killing people for the government, Do you think that these institutions are fundamentally corrupt?
And if the goal was to radically revise our global infrastructure in order to create a fairer and better world, do you think you'd get rid of them?
Or do you think that they're things that can be saved or things that are necessary?
What do you feel, Annie?
I think there is a balance.
There's always got to be a democratic balance, because we do need defences against other countries that are going to be using the same sort of aggressive tactics.
But if we want to call ourselves democracies, we need to make sure that they are under democratic control.
So there has to be a proportionality about the powers that they can exert.
And there has to be a proportionality about what they can legally cover up.
Otherwise, we don't function in a democracy.
And so what you were talking about earlier in terms of the linkage between big tech and government is a very dangerous path to go down.
And this is something Edward Snowden disclosed many, many years ago, a decade ago.
Jesus.
Yeah, I know you love a whistleblower.
I know like you're always giving them awards and stuff like that.
Didn't you give Daniel Howe one?
Am I saying his name correctly?
I feel like you gave Daniel Howe an award pretty recently, but the Twitter files revealed that the FBI were, you know, a little too involved in censorship of information that was posted on that platform, censoring information of legitimate authorities, censoring information that's been proven to be true.
So it shows you that the deep state is a real thing, that the FBI, excuse me, and the CIA Can't really be regarded primarily as defensive organisations that are stopping us from yielding to the threat of North Korea or domestic radicals of some persuasion or Islamic terror or all of the other reasons.
I mean, look at Biden pushing through the very legislation That Snowden revealed, like, you know, like the stuff, the Patriot Act stuff that was there to spy on individuals in order to defend Americans from potential attacks, that that is up for review and they want to revive it under the auspices of the threat of American, excuse me, of Mexican drug cartels.
So, like, what is the essential function of these organizations?
Is it to defend the American people or is it to control the American people?
Well, the first question I would ask would be why are we only focusing on America?
I mean, is this the you know, the democracy?
No.
It's been shown to be very corrupt.
And there is an issue around what is called the deep state.
Having said that, what do we mean by the deep state will be the key question, in my view.
So in terms of having law enforcement agencies there to try and protect basic rights of their citizens, that is a good thing. In
terms of their being corrupted or subverted or unknowingly being
used to link into things like the military industrial complex
or the military censorship complex or whatever, that is a bad thing. So a lot of very good people go into these
organisations trying to do good. And often they can feel quite
powerless in confronting the bureaucratic monolith that often
and these organizations become.
So this is one of the key things that Edward Snowden disclosed 10 years ago, I can't believe
it was 10 years ago, when he started talking about, one, the PRISM programme, and then
all sorts of other hideousness to show quite how embedded the tech and intelligence agencies
have become across the Western world.
So there's a lot to unpick and unpack here in terms of the interrelations and the interleaving
of the spies and the corporate and government intersections.
So where do we want to start?
If we want to go back to Edward Snowden, that means his very first disclosure in June 2013
was the PRISM programme, which showed that there were back doors built into all the big
tech global giants coming out of the USA.
And whether or not they knew it was happening, or whether or not it was unwittingly done
to them, means that it still left all of us vulnerable, so that the intelligence agencies
could hoover up all our intelligence data, all our internet data.
So we're talking about metadata, we're talking about personal data, we're talking about access
to hacking our computer systems.
And this is something I've written about, as you know, because you very kindly promoted
my book, The Privacy Mission, which is shortlisted for a very nice award tonight.
But the key point is, whether or not they knew it was going on, or whether they agreed to it going on, it means that there is this collusion, this interleaving between the intelligence agencies and the global tech companies.
Of course, this also means that the vulnerabilities can therefore be exploited by the criminal hackers as well.
There's a few things.
One is, of course, we're not condemning individuals that join the CIA, the FBI, MI5, of course, an organization that you're a member of, any more than I would condemn a member of the police force or the National Health Service or the teaching profession.
People tend to join these service positions, I would like to hope, with the motivation of becoming a valuable member of the community.
operating, my hope is, on the basis that through love and service you can improve the world.
But it seems that there's a tendency through institutions beyond deep state espionage
institutions that operate beyond the tenure of ordinary law that they broadly speaking end up
allying with the interests of the powerful.
One of the other Snowden revelations, of course, was the collaboration between what are known as the five I countries, essentially the anglophonic countries, New Zealand, Australia, Canada.
America sharing information about their domestic populations to bypass the complexity that imposed by their legislative inability to spy on their own populations by sort of doing what are considered to be the international espionage version of wife swapping.
What I would say, Annie, is that currently all of those countries are trying to push through legislation that enables them to impose fines on emergent pro-free speech organisations like Rumble.
Fining them, paring them down.
In fact, we have an asset here to show you.
That, by the way, guys, is the sort of thing that I would have loved on a bullet-pointed document for the conversation with Annie, right?
Here are your assets, Russell, that you can refer to.
So look, have a look at these various pieces of legislation that have been pushed through.
I can't read them because they're on mouse font.
Can you stick them up on the thing?
Cheers.
So like in the UK there's the Online Safety Bill, in the EU there's the Digital Service Act, in Canada there's one, in America there's one, and there's one in that country that's either Australia or New Zealand, I can't tell, because frankly they made their flags too similar.
They all know that and it's time they all owned up to it as nations.
Now with that kind of legislation being pushed through, subsequent to Snowden's revelations, with us understanding, or at least you and I discussing, what the role of these agencies are, do you feel that it seems like there's a concerted effort to control free speech, control the narrative, to infiltrate big tech companies with deep state agencies, In order to essentially support existing narratives at a time where it's possible for independent media like us and everyone, the people that are watching this live on our chat, and you can join us on our chat if you want to by clicking on the red button, to prevent us from communicating freely, not because of hate speech, because we wouldn't put up with that here and we certainly wouldn't spread it, we believe that everyone is equal and has the right to express themselves however they want and we celebrate all forms of identity, but because they don't want people criticising the establishment and talking about the very kind of things you and I are talking about now.
It's about control of the narrative.
That's what they're doing.
So, for example, in the UK, there was a law that was passed in 2016, called the Investigatory Powers Act.
And that retrospectively legalized what had been illegal spying, endemic spying by GTHQ and the NSA.
So this is GTHQ is the UK spying system, and the NSA is the US spying system, which is part of the Five Eyes, but that is the closest intelligence relationship ever.
And the irony was that countries like Russia and China then passed laws after 2016 saying, well, if the UK can pass these laws to snoop on their citizens, why not?
Why can't we do that?
And they get excoriated as countries that have over and dangerous control over their citizens.
So we have a situation where the UK has actually led the charge in terms of spying on their citizens.
They always have, actually, to a greater or lesser degree.
I mean, the US has been pretty close.
And then that can be used as justification around the world for more draconian and more totalitarian regimes.
So that is the situation we're looking at.
What we are looking at now, as you just mentioned, with things like the online safety bill in the UK
and what is known as the C11 law in Canada, is online censorship bills.
So, oh, it's all done to protect children.
Well, actually, no, it's actually done to allow governments to censor what we can see or what we can access online.
So this is completely antithetical to everything that the Internet was designed to be back in the 80s and 90s with the sort of ideologues.
They just wanted free access to information, allowing free Free knowledge to be spread around the world.
And that is what is being taken away from us at the moment, with what's going on technologically.
And in the EU particularly, I mean, I'm based in Brussels, I can see the EU Commission out of my window.
What we're looking at at the moment is not just the European Digital Act, it's also looking at something called the EU ID card, which basically means that All our information, if you get it, because you have to have an ID card to live anywhere in the EU, means that they can have access to your taxes, they can have access to your health records, they can have access to anything they want about you personally.
And we don't know what systems they're stored on.
We don't know what systems they are controlled by, which corporations are controlling them, because lobbyists are big here.
And we don't know how safe they're going to be.
But that also means that they can access your bank accounts and shave money off your bank accounts and
things if there's another economic crisis as in 2008. So it's a really scary thing. There was
a very good film made by a Dutch film company last year called State of Control talking about
this. I would recommend any of your viewers to have a look at that. It's frightening. Post a link in
the description about that chat. Now, here are some of the worst things that the CIA and FBI have
done that we could come up with quite quickly. Annie, you can tell us if these things are
legit or phony.
of...
Allegedly!
I'll be regularly pressing that button in case these things are lies.
They were involved in the assassination of JFK, RFK at length describing that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset.
Successfully supported coups in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, the Dominican Republic and South Vietnam.
And the 2014 Ukrainian coup, interestingly, very current.
At least two of the 9-11 hijackers were recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation, according to an Office of Military Commission's court filing.
That was uncovered by The Grey Zone.
So that's the CIA's three bad things from the CIA.
Here's the FBI.
The FBI used the Patriot Act's business records provision to track all U.S.
telephone calls, as revealed by Snowden's NSA leaks that we've just discussed.
They were instrumental in perpetrating the Russiagate hoax and censoring the Hunter Biden New York Post story, which could be considered to be electoral fraud.
Let us know what you think in the chat.
In 2020, during the arrest of a militia group for plotting to kidnap Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer, 12 out of 14 suspects were FBI informants.
Essentially, they caused the crime, then solved it by saying, we caused this crime, so that's how we know that it was a crime.
Which one do you think comes off as worse between the CIA and FBI?
And would you query any of the assertions made in that recent litany of damnation?
I am not an expert in any of them.
I would say, though, that all intelligence agencies around the world get involved in dirty tricks.
I mean, this is why this is one of the reasons why I got involved in supporting my former partner, David Shailer, trying to expose the illegal Gaddafi plot assassination in 1996, which failed and killed innocent people and was illegal.
And then, of course, he was legally tortured and assassinated in 2011 in the world's full glare of the media.
By the very same groups.
So things shift in terms of the information that is available or the information that is seen to be good that the media puts out is the interesting shift in terms of the narrative drive and in the narrative control.
But yeah, I think we all need to be aware that, you know, Intelligence agencies will get up to naughties sometimes.
The key thing about them is that if we want them to work effectively in a democracy, to protect us effectively in a democracy, they need to learn from their mistakes.
They need to be as transparent as possible.
There are certain things that do need to be kept secret, like ongoing operations, sensible operational techniques, agent names, that sort of thing.
But I don't see why everything has to be a blanket ban, with national security as the issue, you know, the get out of jail free card.
So In terms of a balance of proportionality, and in terms of protecting us all better, they need to be slightly more open.
And that's what they're not doing.
All these new laws you've just mentioned are dragging them back into greater secrecy rather than more transparency.
And as aware citizens, we need to have as much information as we can, particularly on the internet, because that's what they're trying to shut down at the moment.
Annie, you make everything sound so smutty, dirty tricks and naughties.
You're a very British kind of spy.
When it's the sort of America, it all sounds so very grand and technological and jagged and dreadful.
But you've been up to all sorts of scalduggery.
They're very naughty boys and girls.
Look at their bottoms smacked.
They carry on with that.
I can see the EU out of my window.
I'm spying on Brussels right this second with my giant spy eyes that I've got.
You were mates with old David Shaler.
I remember when he came out with his revelations, he took a turn in the media tumble dryer.
He was accused of being a crackpot, a weirdo, a pervert, a near-do-well, an errant orphan boy.
All sorts of accusations unnecessarily levelled at Shaler.
We've got to wrap up the show now, Annie, so I can't give you an opportunity to respond to that.
What are you doing?
What does that expression mean?
I'm gagged.
I'm gagged.
Yeah, we've gagged.
See?
More smart.
You're a smart addict.
You need to go to Smutterholics, in my humble view.
You can get Annie's book, The Privacy Mission.
Even that's quite a saucy title, isn't it?
There's sort of a bit of entendre around that, if you ask me, Mr Roy.
Annie, is there anything else you want to say?
We'll post a link to the privacy statement in the chat here.
As you know, we admire you very much on this show, and we're happy to see that you're on a list as short as a mouse's leg.
What is it for that you've been shortlisted?
It's for the Business Book of the Year, and the award ceremony is this evening actually, in the UK.
So we shall see, but I'm up against a very famous group of authors, so I have no great hopes.
But I did enjoy writing The Privacy Mission.
It was a sort of culmination of years of research and years of speaking to hacktivists and to cybersecurity groups and all that sort of thing.
And also, I had a lot of advice from a wonderful organisation I work with at the moment called the World Ethical Data Foundation.
And we put on an event every year called the World Ethical Data Forum, which at some point, I might try and drag you into.
I will go.
If you want me to give a whistleblower an award, dragged, gagged, in whatever state you'll take me, Annie, I will be there.
Thank you Annie Masham for joining us.
I wish you all the success in the world and I hope you win against those famous authors.
Perhaps you could spy on them and maybe sabotage their efforts using your techniques.
No, in fact, I really hope Cory Doctorow wins.
He's a friend and the most amazing best-selling author, and if you haven't read his stuff, you should because he's really damn good.
Nope, I'm supporting you.
The Privacy Mission's available.
There's a post in the chat there, and I have it on good authority that that other author that Annie just mentioned is...
Dangerous lunatic.
Russian spy.
He's a Russian spy.
He's an Antony Blunt.
He's an asset.
He's an asset.
He's at the pool at Cliveden now.
Perfume-o-ing himself to within an inch of his life.
Shall I stop?
Yeah, probably.
Thanks, Andy Mashen.
Thanks very much.
Allegedly for.
Oh, sorry.
Allegedly.
That was all made up.
Don't know why I said that.
Allegedly.
He's just an author.
He's a good guy.
I don't even know him.
I was just saying it to end an interview.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation for years, and all sorts of other good stuff.
He's a real guru when it comes to tech.
I was joking, I was joking.
I'll go, I'll present an award, alright, if that's what I have to do.
I'll present an award, or I'll stand there and I'll, like, I'll use some of my spy gear that I get from them shops.
You go to London and get a... I've got a handshake thing that goes... Wow.
Yeah?
Get ready for that, Annie!
Oh wow, I thought Annie was the real spy.
No, it's me!
I've been deep cover all these years, baby.
Deep cover in me wife's housecoats.
Thanks Annie.
That was when she just did a thin-lipped nod.
Yes.
What was that?
That was a way of not having to say thank you.
Yeah, it was!
That was avoidance of thanks.
Yes, it was.
Because she didn't want to, like, that shows she's aware of what she's doing.
Like, I'm not going to unconsciously just say thank you because that's what people say in these situations.
Thanks aren't warranted.
That last bit was stupid.
That litany of madness that you just came out with.
Yeah, I went a bit mad for a bit there.
What was that pressure?
I don't know.
Work pressure.
It's work pressure.
All right, that's the end of that for another week.
That's right.
What a week it's been.
What have you learned?
Let us know in the chat.
Join us on Locals.
We do this stuff all the time.
Gareth and I are literally always accessible in this space, just waiting for your call.
Sometimes Gareth takes his top off.
Join our Locals community for exclusive content, including weekly meditations this Sunday with Dear Sweet Dustin talking about evoking deep spiritual power within himself to cope with reality.
There are podcasts that are available, there are events like my community festival between July the 14th and July the 17th with Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar, all sorts of fantastic people.
And Callie Means, who's telling us about how the food industry has poisoned us to within an inch of our lives.
Join us by pressing that red button.
Not that one, that one.
And join us next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
