IT Defense Conference, Hamburg January 2008

In Janu­ary 2008 I spoke at the IT Defense Con­fer­ence in Ham­burg in Janu­ary 2008.  This is a sum­mary of my talk.

The Spy­ing Game? – Annie Machon

I gave a present­a­tion about the role of intelligence
agen­cies in the cur­rent era of the unend­ing “war on ter­ror”, how they
mon­it­or us, and the implic­a­tions for our democracies.

In the name of pro­tect­ing nation­al secur­ity, spy agen­cies are being
giv­en sweep­ing new powers and resources. Their intel­li­gence has been
politi­cised to build a case for the dis­astrous war in Iraq, they are
fail­ing to stop ter­ror­ist attacks, and they con­tin­ue to col­lude in
illeg­al acts of intern­ment and tor­ture, euphemist­ic­ally called
“extraordin­ary rendi­tion”. Most west­ern demo­cra­cies have already given
so many new powers to the spies that we are effect­ively liv­ing in
police states. As an informed com­munity, what can we do about this?
t‑style: nor­mal; font-vari­ant: nor­mal; font-weight: nor­mal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: nor­mal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: nor­mal;”> The illeg­al MI6
assas­sin­a­tion attempt against Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya

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