Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned to help blow the whistle on the spies’ incompetence and crimes.

She has a rare per­spect­ive both on the inner work­ings of gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and the media, as well as the wider implic­a­tions for the need for increased open­ness and account­ab­il­ity in both pub­lic and private sectors.

She speaks on a vari­ety of issues: secur­ity and intel­li­gence, eth­ics and cit­izen­ship, the war on ter­ror, the war on drugs, press and media freedoms, secrecy legis­la­tion, civil liber­ties, total­it­ari­an­ism and police states, account­ab­il­ity in gov­ern­ment and busi­ness as well as dis­cuss­ing her per­sonal story of being ‘on the run’.

Annie is co-Director of Code Red and European Director of LEAP.

She read Clas­sics at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity and then began a career in pub­lish­ing. In 1991 she was recruited by MI5 where she was pos­ted to their polit­ical and counter-terrorism departments.