CovertAction Bulletin Building Social Media Inspired by Openness & Transparency
While most social media platforms spy on us, manipulate our emotions with hidden algorithms, feed our data to governments on request and censor with no notice or transparency, can there be an alternative that’s friendly for everyone to use? We talk with John Kiriakou and Sean O’Brien about Pancake, a new messaging technology being built to address that question.
We also discuss the important news from November 3rd that a New York judge has declared that oral arguments in the case Kunstler v. CIA will be open to the public. The suit alleges that the Central Intelligence Agency conspired with UC Global to illegally spy on Julian Assange and his visitors - including lawyers - at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Finally, we bring you a selection of voices from the November 4th March on Washington for Palestine. To see the entire rally, visit BreakThrough News on YouTube.
About our guests:
John Kiriakou is a journalist, former CIA counterterrorism officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and approved by then-President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of the revelation.
In 2012 the Ralph Nader family honored Kiriakou with the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, he won the PEN Center USA’s prestigious First Amendment Award in 2015, the first Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest in 2016, and in the same year the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, given by retired CIA, FBI, and NSA officers.
Sean O'Brien is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, where he teaches Cybersecurity and founded the Privacy Lab initiative. He is Chief Technology Officer at Panquake, recently launching the Panquake Me link cleaning, shortening, and archiving service. Sean developed a Web3 and Blockchain class at Yale as well as Hacking and Cybersecurity at the Lawfare Institute and was founding Head Tutor at Oxford University Cyber Security for Business Leaders. Sean’s expertise has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, Popular Science, AP News, NBC News, The Financial Times, Wired, The New Yorker, and more.