In the 90s Annie Machon worked for the British intelligence organisation, MI5, as an intelligence officer. It was here she found out about an illegal, state-sponsored assassination attempt that claimed the lives of eleven innocent people.
“I didn’t join the services to become complicit in state-sponsored terrorism”, she says. That was the moment she chose to blow the whistle and leak information about the assassination attempt and many other British intelligence illegal activities and competencies.
Now she’s working with Simon Davies and privacy specialists, journalists, academics, whistleblowers and technologists around the world to launch Code Red – a global initiative to combat surveillance and hold governments accountable.
Watch the interview below, where Machon discusses surveillance, accountability, what should be done to protect whistleblowers and her own motivations for exposing MI6.