#DNL23 · March 18-20 · 2021

BEHIND THE MASK

WHISTLEBLOWING DURING THE PANDEMIC

Tactics of Empowerment – Part 4
The 23rd conference of the Disruption Network Lab

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Pre-Events · Livestream Schedule · Introduction · Full programme · Workshops · Speakers

Free Online Screening: Coronation - A Film by Ai Weiwei

Whistleblowers, human rights advocates, journalists, activists, artists, lawyers and researchers denouncing abuses and wrongdoing in the course of the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

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Pre-Events

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Livestream Schedule

Thursday, March 18 · 2021

15:00–15:10: OPENING

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE) & Lieke Ploeger (Community Director, Disruption Network Lab, NL/DE).

15:10–15:30 · CORONATION Film Interview

Conversation with Ai Weiwei (Artist & Activist, CN) and Jess Search (Chief Executive of Doc Society, UK). Introduced by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE). 

15:30–17:00 · PANEL

DEFENDING THE TRUTH IN THE PANDEMIC: Is Whistleblowing the Magic Wand?

Thuli Madonsela (Professor, Stellenbosch University, Former Public Protector of South Africa, ZA), María de los Ángeles Estrada (Executive Director of the Transparency and Anti-corruption Initiative, MX), Stefano Fusco (Co-founder, Noi Denunceremo / We Denounce - Truth and Justice Committee for Covid-19 Victims, IT). Moderated by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE). 

18:30–20:00 · KEYNOTE

WHISTLEBLOWING & COVID19: Telling the Truth at the Center of Crisis

Erika Cheung (Theranos Whistleblower, Co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, US). Eileen Chubb (Care Industry Whistleblower, Compassion In Care Founder, Co-Founded The Whistler, UK). Moderated by Delphine Halgand (Lead Rapporteur, Infodemics Report & Director of The Signals Network, FR/US). 

Friday, March 19, 2021

15:00–16:30 · PANEL

DIGGING DEEPER INTO HEALTHCARE: The Vaccine Rollout, Pandemic Journalism & Corruption

Sarah Steingrüber (Independent Global Health Expert, Global Health Lead for Curbing Corruption, DE), Serena Tinari (Investigative Journalist, Co founder, Re-Check, IT/CH), Alexander Nanau (Film Director, Colectiv Documentary, DE/RO), Moderated by Jonathan Cushing (Head of Global Health Programme, Transparency International, UK). 

18:30–20:00 · PANEL

VOICES OF CARE: Exposing Dangers to Public Health

Delphine Halgand (Lead Rapporteur, Infodemics Report & Director of The Signals Network, FR/US), Yvonne Dellmark (Chair, Karolinska University Hospital's Medical Association, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Medical Association, Physician at Karolinska University Hospital, SE), Helen O’Connor (Former NHS Nurse, GMB NHS Union Organiser, UK). Moderated by Cassie Thornton (Artist & Activist, Collective Healthcare Researcher, US/CA).

Saturday, March 20, 2021 

11:00–13:00 · PANEL

JULIAN ASSANGE: Repression, Isolation & Lockdown  

Suelette Dreyfus (Technology Researcher, Executive Director, Blueprint for Free Speech AU/DE), Jennifer Robinson (Human Rights Lawyer and Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, AU/UK), Stefania Maurizi (Investigative Journalist, IT), Felicity Ruby (PhD Candidate at Sydney University, Researcher on Surveillance and Democracy, AU). Moderated by Anna Myers (Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK).

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BEHIND THE MASK

WHISTLEBLOWING DURING THE PANDEMIC

Tactics of Empowerment – Part 4

Whistleblowers, human rights advocates, journalists, activists, artists, lawyers and researchers denouncing abuses and wrongdoing during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

BEHIND THE MASK presents acts of whistleblowing in times of the coronavirus and exposes practices dangerous to public health during the pandemic. In the context of the Disruption Network Lab programme on the relations between technology, politics, and society, we invite experts that have been speaking out to save other people’s lives by denouncing misconducts and corruption in healthcare systems. Alongside, we focus on forms of retaliation suffered by whistleblowers during the pandemic, and on the stories of those forbidden from speaking out publicly about the coronavirus. The conference and the programme around it also present new forms of collective care, social justice and resistance to foster accountability and literacy, and to defend human rights at a global scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted power asymmetries and injustices that already existed in society, but which are now impossible to ignore. Together with people who lost friends, family or jobs, and who suffered violence during the lockdown, are also the ones who never had a job or a home, and who suffer violence almost every day. The work of whistleblowers and those who speak out in times of crisis becomes incredibly important to produce global awareness.

Whistleblowers around the world have been silenced or persecuted during COVID-19. Li Wenliang in Wuhan, China, who died infected by the coronavirus, was forced to sign a police statement that his warning about the coronavirus was illegal; emergency room physician Ming Lin in Seattle, WA, was fired because he gave an interview about inadequate protective equipment and testing; Christian Smalls, an Amazon warehouse worker in Staten Island (New York), was fired for saying that the company is not doing enough to protect them from exposure. But the act to imagine a society with less corruption, more transparency and less power intrigue, where there is the freedom to choose and to denounce abuses, should not be discriminated against or suspended.

BEHIND THE MASK focuses on the role of courageous people who expose wrongdoing in institutions and work environments, both in the digital sphere and everyday life. In the current crisis, we must devote our time to generate new ideas and to produce more literacy around misconducts and abuse in healthcare. Inspired by whistleblowers, and in dialogue with them, we advocate use of collective strength and energy to learn from this pandemic and foster societal changes beyond isolation.

Conference Programme curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. In cooperation with Transparency International.
This programme follows our streaming conversation: Whistleblowing During COVID-19 (Disruptive Friday #7 , May 15, 2020).

Community Meetups & Workshops

The Activation community programme extends the Behind the Mask conference with a two community workshops on 20 and 27 March, as well as with two meetups leading up to the conference on 17 February and 10 March. Speakers from the Pirate Care Network, Re-Check, The Congress of Essential Workers, Berlin vs Amazon, Tech Workers Coalition, Coronavirus Tech Handbook and the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) will share their work on defending essential workers' rights during the pandemic, crowdsourcing a library of tools, services and resources relating to COVID-19 response, establishing and documenting forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy” and other ways of mobilising communities to address issues arising as a cause of the coronavirus pandemic.

Community Programme curated by Lieke Ploeger

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Free Online Screening - Available in germany 17-21.3 - tickets

CORONATION - A film by Ai Weiwei

Coronation examines the political spectre of Chinese state control from the first to the last day of the Wuhan lockdown. The film takes us into the heart of these temporary hospitals and ICU wards, documenting the entire process of diagnosis and treatment. Patients and their families are interviewed, reflecting their thinking about the pandemic and expressing anger and confusion over the state’s callous restriction of their liberties. The footage was made by different film-crews across China, some paid, some volunteers and directed remotely from UK by AI Weiwei.

Free tickets available here - only available in Germany

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Full Programme

Thursday, March 18 · 2021

15:00–15:10: OPENING

Tatiana Bazzichelli (Programme Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE) & Lieke Ploeger (Community Director, Disruption Network Lab, NL/DE).

15:10–15:30 · FILM INTERVIEW

CORONATION

Conversation with Ai Weiwei (Artist & Activist, CN) and Jess Search (Chief Executive of Doc Society, UK). Introduced by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE). 

Coronation examines the political spectre of Chinese state control from the first to the last day of the Wuhan lockdown. The film takes us into the heart of these temporary hospitals and ICU wards, documenting the entire process of diagnosis and treatment. Patients and their families are interviewed, reflecting their thinking about the pandemic and expressing anger and confusion over the state’s callous restriction of their liberties. The footage was made by different film-crews across China, some paid, some volunteers and directed remotely from UK by AI Weiwei.

Watch Coronation online for free - in Germany only

15:30–17:00 · PANEL

DEFENDING THE TRUTH IN THE PANDEMIC: Is Whistleblowing the Magic Wand?

Thuli Madonsela (Professor, Stellenbosch University, Former Public Protector of South Africa, ZA), María de los Ángeles Estrada (Executive Director of the Transparency and Anti-corruption Initiative, MX), Stefano Fusco (Co-founder, Noi Denunceremo / We Denounce - Truth and Justice Committee for Covid-19 Victims, IT). Moderated by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE). 

Whistleblowing, or the act of exposing wrongdoing has different legal, political, and social connotations depending on where you are. As the COVID-19 pandemic has caused harm to societies at large, where the most vulnerable and under resourced have suffered the most, defending the truth has become a matter of survival. But it can be dangerous too, even deadly.

Countries around the world have been forced to handle this crisis in different ways. In most cases their pre-existing democratic and human rights practices have guided their responses. They have all applied extraordinary measures that have curbed freedom of movement, reunion and in many cases freedom of speech and access to information. In this context, the misuse of public funds, concentration of power, discretional decision making, censorship and barriers for social oversight, have even become rampant. These are not merely outcomes of the emergency conditions but manifestations of how deeply corrupt a system is.

The concept of whistleblowing is primarily a western one. But it’s not the same across countries and regions. The legal, cultural and even linguistic differences around this term are vast. Those who expose sensitive information, including whistleblowers, activists and independent journalists have been confronted, in varying degrees, by state coercion and social tensions and therefore have been forced to exercise different degrees of caution, and apply strategies to protect themselves.

This session features social actors and experts from 3 countries from the Americas, Europe and Africa who will debate how defending the truth can be, as it often is, a dangerous activity and how different are the notions around exposing the truth and holding the powerful to account. The session will reflect on the challenges faced when exposing the truth and whether whistleblowing could be understood as a one size fit all solution.

18:30–20:00 · KEYNOTE

WHISTLEBLOWING & COVID-19: Telling the Truth at the Center of Crisis

Erika Cheung (Theranos Whistleblower, Co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, US). Eileen Chubb (Care Industry Whistleblower, Compassion In Care Founder, Co-Founded The Whistler, UK). Moderated by Delphine Halgand (Lead Rapporteur, Infodemics Report & Director of The Signals Network, FR/US). 

This keynote conversation brings together Eileen Chubb, a former care assistant in the UK who became a whistleblower and later a campaigner, and Erika Cheung, one of the key whistleblowers in the Theranos scandal and today co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship. The developments of Covid-19 has heightened the need for transparency and honesty both in the social care sector and the bio-tech world. Alongside, it is crucial to consider the consequences of the pandemic for vulnerable people and anyone working in the health care sector. However, in the healthcare industry as elsewhere, whistleblowers who want to expose abuses and wrongdoing often risk their safety, lose their jobs or are forced to quit.

As Eileen Chubb points out, whilst the attention on data concerning the pandemic is of great importance, we should not forget that we are not just dealing with numbers but people. Her charity Compassion in Care runs a helpline for whistleblowers, supporting carers and other staff members disclosing problems and other wrongdoings in social care. Similarly, Erika Cheung, after blowing the whistle with Tyler Shultz on the Silicon Valley start-up company Theranos, has launched the initiative Ethics in Entrepreneurship to help businesses to create a culture of honesty and strengthened ethics.

This conversation, based on two important experiences of raising concerns in the healthcare field, wants to discuss systemic problems around corporate governance, ethical decision-making and the importance of protecting people that decide to hold companies accountable and highlight poor standards of care. The keynote panel is moderated by Delphine Halgand, executive director of The Signals Network, a non-profit organisation that supports whistleblowers who have shared major public interest information with the press.

Friday, March 19, 2021

15:00–16:30 · PANEL

DIGGING DEEPER INTO HEALTHCARE: The Vaccine Rollout, Pandemic Journalism & Corruption

Sarah Steingrüber (Independent Global Health Expert, Global Health Lead for Curbing Corruption, DE), Serena Tinari (Investigative Journalist, Co founder, Re-Check, IT/CH), Alexander Nanau (Film Director, Colectiv Documentary, DE/RO), Moderated by Jonathan Cushing (Head of Global Health Programme, Transparency International, UK). 

This panel focuses on the need of transparency in the pharmaceutical industry, in the context of the debate around corruption and the COVID-19 pandemic. Global health expert Sarah Steingrüber will provide an initial overview of corruption in the health sector, both in what was commonly observed prior to the pandemic, as well as the emerging dynamics we have seen over the past year due to COVID-19 in the areas of research and development and health procurement. She will provide some brief information about the lack of transparency and equity involved in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and how this is restricted by the current intellectual property and patent system. Finally, she will link the ongoing failure to address the need for vaccines and how this heightens the risk of substandard and falsified medical products circulating in the medical supply chain.

Serena Tinari, co-founder with Catherine Riva of Re-Check, a nonprofit organization working at the intersection between Evidence-Based Medicine and investigative journalism, will dig deeper in the ‘big picture’ of health affairs, a field where vested interests, multifaceted agendas and Ghost-Management play a key role in shaping the knowledge and influencing policy. She will describe how mechanisms they research about since years are at play also in the current global crisis. Giving a particular attention on the role of mainstream media during the pandemic, she will highlight the current habit to simplify and rely on experts’ opinions, dooming any chance for the evidence-based approach the public deserves. Furthermore, she will address her concern on social media posing as Minister of Truth, scientists hailed as TV stars, and a troubling silencing of the healthy scientific debate.

Finally, film director Alexander Nanau will follow up on the need for a critical investigative journalism in the healthcare sector, describing the story at the center of his film Colectiv (2019), where journalist Cătălin Tolontan and a team of investigators at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor worked to uncover a vast health-care fraud provoking the deaths of innocent citizens. Their work contributed to expose mismanagement of healthcare by public hospitals as well as corruption and lack of accountability of high profile politicians.
The panel is moderated by Jonathan Cushing, head of Global Health Programme at Transparency International.

18:30–20:00 · PANEL

VOICES OF CARE: Exposing Dangers to Public Health

Delphine Halgand (Lead Rapporteur, Infodemics Report & Director of The Signals Network, FR/US), Yvonne Dellmark (Chair, Karolinska University Hospital's Medical Association, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Medical Association, Physician at Karolinska University Hospital, SE), Helen O’Connor (Former NHS Nurse, GMB NHS Union Organiser, UK). Moderated by Cassie Thornton (Artist & Activist, Collective Healthcare Researcher, US/CA).

This panel presents the direct experience of various experts informing on abuses and wrongdoings in healthcare systems and will focus on the stories of those who work within these systems themselves. In the current pandemic crisis, it is crucial to pose attention to the conditions of doctors and patients in the hospitals and care facilities, the scandals and challenges they have faced and are facing, how privatisation has affected the healthcare system at a global scale, as well as how whistleblowers and healthcare workers have been threatened with disciplinary action for speaking out publicly to expose failings in the system and improve the wellbeing of patients during the coronavirus outbreak.

Delphine Halgand will describe the Plasma Files investigation, the result of months of research on hundreds of documents provided by whistleblowers to the media partners of The Signals Network, related to unsafe plasma collection devices manufactured by the US company Haemonetics, banned in France since 2018 but still in use in the rest of the world.

Yvonne Dellmark, chair of the Karolinska University Hospital's medical association in Stockholm, will give an insight perspective about the challenges of the Swedish health care system during the pandemic and the long-term debated situation in the Karolinska hospital after personnel cuts, sharp reductions of the number of beds (decreased by 30% since 2015), budget deficits, and general malfunctioning and mismanagement (was: misconception).

Helen O’Connor, National Health Service nurse in the United Kingdom for many years and today GMB NHS Union Organiser will give a critical perspective on the UK health care system and the measures that need to be taken to protect the rights of the workers, rather than allowing private companies to profit, in order to help resolve the pandemic and future public health emergencies.

Saturday, March 20, 2021 

11:00–13:00 · PANEL 

JULIAN ASSANGE: Repression, Isolation & Lockdown

Suelette Dreyfus (Technology Researcher, Executive Director, Blueprint for Free Speech AU/DE), Jennifer Robinson (Human Rights Lawyer and Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, AU/UK), Stefania Maurizi (Investigative Journalist, IT), Felicity Ruby (PhD Candidate at Sydney University, Researcher on Surveillance and Democracy, AU). Moderated by Anna Myers (Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK).

Julian Assange has been incarcerated at the Belmarsh high-security prison in the United Kingdom since April 2019, facing extradition to the United States and criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. The co-founder of WikiLeaks risks up to 175 years’ imprisonment for his role in publishing the leaks of the Afghanistan and Iraq war diaries and the US embassy cables.

Although media outlets in the US are constitutionally protected to publish materials of relevance, and journalists and publishers like Julian Assange are able to protect their sources, many of which are whistleblowers, he has been heavily persecuted and dehumanized through repression and isolation, first spending more than a year under house arrest, then seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid the risk of extradition to the United States.

This threat grew after publication of classified U.S. cables in 2010, and was later proven real as a Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks came to light. Over the next decade this investigation fragmented the circle around WikiLeaks, putting enormous pressure on its members and forcing some into exile.

This case sets an extremely dangerous precedent for journalists, media organizations and freedom of the press, as expressed by the international journalist initiative Speak up for Assange.

Instead of being afforded the rights of a journalist or publisher, Assange has faced the retaliation, threats and legal challenges of a whistleblower or source. WikiLeaks has been targeted like no any organisation before, and Assange has been “systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed” – quoting the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer who investigated the case. Since his arrest, Assange has been detained in a maximum-security prison in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. The COVID pandemic has strengthened restrictions at global scale, but even more for people in prisons, banning visitations, and applying social distancing restrictions.

Assange’s prison block locked down after a COVID outbreak, banning exercises and showers, while his extradition trial has been delayed due to the pandemic. In January, London police arrested seven people during a gathering of Assange supporters outside the court on the grounds of COVID restrictions. In this situation in which safety measures don’t allow to meet and protest as in the past, we need to strengthen our networks and actions to support whistleblowers and other people who have put themselves at risk by disclosing wrongdoings.

This panel brings together four experts in the field of technology, human rights, investigative journalism and law to address the importance of transparency, government accountability and media freedom through the case and the present conditions of Julian Assange.

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Workshops

Saturday, March 20 · 2021 

15:00 – 17:15 · ONLINE WORKSHOP

Get Your Numbers Straight: Making Sense of Health Data

With: Serena Tinari (Investigative Journalist, Co founder, Re-Check, IT/CH)
Cost: €8 / reduced €5 · Language: English · Tickets

In the current global crisis, journalists and the general public have been forced to become experts in complex public health issues - at warp speed. For a year now, we all have been confronted with a tsunami of numbers, statistical models and a science that seems to change by the day. How can you make sense of competing claims, varied specialists and the now daily jargon of a new, highly medicalized normal? Here’s an antidote: a crash course with a medical investigative journalist whose work is at the intersection between muckraking and Evidence-Based Medicine.

In this 2-hour workshop, you’ll learn why a study is not ‘just a study’ and how come numbers do make sense only if put in a context. Also, how can you spot the flaws in the claims of corporate press releases and government officials? What about conflicts of interest, and how can you develop a spider-sense to spot red flags in public health communication and mainstream media reporting? With concrete examples out of the COVID-19 era, and tips to avoid common pitfalls.

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Saturday, March 27 · 2021 

11:00 – 13:00 · ONLINE WORKSHOP

PIRATE CARE: Politicising Care, Piracy and Biopolitics

With: Valeria Graziano, Maddalena Fragnito, Ana Vilenica
Cost: €8 / reduced €5 · Language: English · Tickets

In this workshop we are starting from the collective work on the Pirate Care Syllabus to present and delve deeper with participants into a variety of disobedient practices of care in light of their political and technological character. We will, specificially, focus on piracy, division of care labour, and radical housing practices in times of corona.

Pirate Care is a transnational research project and a network of activists, practitioners and scholars who stand against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure. Convened in 2018 by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, the project wishes to map and connect collective practices that are emerging in response to the neoliberal "crisis of care" — a convergence of processes that include austerity, welfare cuts, rollback of reproductive rights and criminalisation of migration. In response to that denial of care, imposed by the states and the markets, practices we have called pirate care are organising to help migrants survive at sea and on land, provide pregnancy terminations where those are illegal, offer health support where institutions fail, self-organise childcare where public provision does not extend to everyone, liberate knowledge where access is denied. Crucially, they share a willingness to openly disobey laws and executive orders, and politicise that disobedience to contest the institutional status quo.

Our aim is to foster collective learning processes from the situated knowledges of these practices and together with the practitioners of pirate care we have been working on a collaboratively-written Pirate Care Syllabus and in the early period of the pandemic on a set of notes documenting organising of care titled "Flatten the Curve, Grow the Care".

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Conference Speakers

Ai Weiwei

Artist & Activist, CN/UK

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, activist and documentary filmmaker. He was born in Beijing in 1957. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. Weiwei encapsulates political conviction and his personal poetry in his many sculptures, photographs and public works. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for "economic crimes". He was detained for 81 days without charge. He is the recipient of the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. After being allowed to leave China in 2015, he has lived in Berlin, Germany, and, since 2019, in Cambridge, UK, with his family, working and traveling internationally.

Jess Search 

Chief Executive of Doc Society, UK

Jess is the Chief Executive of Doc Society. Before that, she was a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4 and a founder of Shooting People, the online filmmakers network. She is also a board member of the UK think tank IPPR and has an MBA from Cass Business School. Jess likes to moderate for IDFA, the Skoll World Forum, the Trust Women conference and Doc Society’s Good Pitch.

Thuli Madonsela

Professor, Stellenbosch University, Former Public Protector of South Africa, ZA

Thulisile ‘Thuli’ Madonsela, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, is the Law Trust Chair in Social Justice and a Law professor at the Stellenbosch University, where she conducts and coordinates social justice research and teaches Constitutional and Administrative Law. She is the founder of the Thuma Foundation, an independent democracy leadership and literacy public benefit organisation, and convener of the Social Justice M-Plan, a Marshall Plan-like initiative aimed at catalysing progress towards ending poverty and reducing inequality by 2030, in line with the National Development Plan (NDP) and Sustainable Development Goals (SGGs). She is a monthly columnist for the Financial Mail and City Press/Rapport, and occasionally writes for other newspapers.

Twitter: @ThuliMadonsela3

María de los Ángeles Estrada

Executive Director of the Transparency and Anti-corruption Initiative, MX

Ángeles Estrada is the Executive Director of the Transparency and Anti-corruption Initiative of the School of Government and Public Transformation of the Tec de Monterrey. She obtained a Master's Degree in International Law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a Law Degree from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). Her thesis the Geneva Conventions and non-international armed conflicts was published in 2006 by the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIJ-UNAM). She worked for the Institute of Access to Government Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI), and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the Embassy of the United States of America in Mexico City, as the Culture of Lawfulness program specialist. She co-founded Legalidad por México, a nonprofit civil association that aims to provide Mexican children and youth with legal and socio-emotional tools so that they can face situations of illegality and violence. 

Stefano Fusco

Co-founder, Noi Denunceremo / We Denounce - Truth and Justice Committee for Covid-19 Victims, IT

Noi Denunceremo (We Denounce) was founded on March 22, 2020, as a Facebook group, from the agency of Luca and his son, Stefano Fusco, a few days after the loss of their father and grandfather, after having tested positive for Covid-19. The Noi Denunceremo Committee - Truth and Justice for the victims of Covid-19 - was born in Bergamo (Italy) out of a need for justice and truth, to give peace to the people who have not been able to have a proper burial. Noi Denunceremo was created to ensure that those who made mistakes will have to answer questions and take on their own responsibilities. The non-profit committee is collecting every single complaint and making it available to the judiciary at every stage of the investigation and the process that will ensue. The group now counts almost 70,000 members.

Roberto Perez-Rocha

Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE

Under his leadership, the IACC is the world’s largest independent Anti-Corruption forum and a leading agenda setter. He has pioneered ground-breaking global initiatives against corruption. He is the founder of the IACC Young Journalists Initiative, the Films 4 Transparency Festival and along with its partner JMI, the Fair Play Anti-Corruption Music Competition. He is holding renowned international degrees, and for over 25 years he has worked globally in advocacy governance & transparency. 

Twitter: @robertoperez40

Erika Cheung

Theranos whistleblower, Co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, US

Erika Cheung was one of the key whistleblowers in the Theranos scandal that stopped the company from processing thousands of patient’s samples with faulty technology. After working for biotechnology companies, she committed herself to grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Hong Kong and throughout Asia. She helped launch Betatron, a start-up accelerator based in Hong Kong. She is also an advisor for a number of VC firms helping biotech and healthcare companies in emerging markets. She is now the co-founder and executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, a non-profit with the mission of fostering ethical culture and systems for stakeholders in start-up ecosystems. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a dual degree in cellular and molecular biology and linguistics. 

Twitter: @erikamcheung

Eileen Chubb

Care Industry Whistleblower, Compassion in Care Founder, Co-Founded The Whistler, UK

Eileen is one of the seven BUPA whistleblowers who reported the widespread abuse of elderly people in a BUPA care home. This was the first case to use UK whistleblowing law. As a result of her experience, Eileen founded Compassion in Care, to expose elderly abuse and support whistleblowers. To date, over 9,000 whistleblowers and 5,000 families have contacted her helpline. Eileen campaigns for Edna's Law for whistleblower protection. She has written two books and contributed to many. Her book 'Beyond the Facade' is the story of the BUPA seven; 'There is no ME in Whistle Blower' explains the case for Edna's Law. Eileen has spoken widely on such issues as Bounty, CCTV in care homes, why regulators and safeguarding are flawed systems and abuser profiles. Her reports on the Covid-19 Crisis were recently included in the Amnesty International report on UK care homes.

Delphine Halgand

Lead Rapporteur Infodemics report - Director of The Signals Network, FR/US

Delphine Halgand-Mishra is a CIGI senior fellow and an expert on press freedom and regulatory frameworks for platforms. She was the lead rapporteur for the Forum on Information and Democracy’s report on infodemics, which offered 250 recommendations to governments and platforms on how to end infodemics. Delphine is the executive director of The Signals Network, a non-profit organization that supports whistleblowers who have shared major public interest information with the press. She previously served as Reporters Without Borders’ North America director, advocating for journalists, bloggers and media rights worldwide. In May 2017, she received the 2017 James W. Foley American Hostage Freedom Award for her work assisting American journalists detained abroad. Delphine has worked as an economics correspondent for various French media (such as Le Monde, Les Echos and L’Express), focusing mainly on international politics and macroeconomic issues.

Twitter: @DelphineHalgand

Sarah Steingrüber

Independent Global Health Expert, Global Health Lead for Curbing Corruption, DE

Sarah is a global health expert, working with UN agencies, development organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions among others on anti-corruption, transparency and accountability; access to medicines; health supply chain; and collective action. She was previously the Programme Manager of the Transparency International Health Initiative. She holds an undergraduate degree in Health Sciences from York University in Toronto and an MSc in International Health from the Charité in Berlin.

Twitter: @sarahsteino

Serena Tinari

Investigative Journalist, Co founder, Re-Check, IT/CH

Serena Tinari has been working across print and electronic media, radio, and television since 1994. She realized dozens of investigative documentaries for the Swiss public broadcaster and she’s a member of ICIJ, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In 2015 she co-founded Re-Check, a nonprofit whose work is at the crossroads between Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and investigative journalism https://www.re-check.ch. 

Twitter: @serenatinari

Alexander Nanau

Film Director, Colectiv Documentary, DE/RO

Alexander Nanau is a German/Romanian director and documentary filmmaker. After his first feature documentary, “Peter Zadek inszeniert Peer” (2006), he won an International Emmy “Award for The World According to Ion B.” (2009) and several prizes for “Toto si surorile lui” (2014). In his latest movie, “Collective”, Nanau follows a crack team of investigators at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor as they try to uncover a vast health-care fraud that enriched moguls and politicians—and led to the deaths of innocent citizens. „Collective“ is Romania’s Oscar entry for 2021. 

Jonathan Cushing

Head of Global Health Programme, Transparency International UK

Jonathan is Head of the Transparency International Health Programme, which works with the Transparency International global movement to reduce corruption and ensure transparency, integrity and accountability within the health sector. He has over 15 year’s experience working on health systems development. Prior to joining TI he worked extensively in Bangladesh, Malawi, Rwanda and Nepal supporting governments and civil society to improve access to, and the quality of health care services. He possesses an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Finance from the University of LSE/LSHTM.

Yvonne Dellmark

Chair, Karolinska University Hospital's Medical Association, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Medical Association, Physician at Karolinska University Hospital, SE

Dellmark, a reumatologist, is the Vice Chairman of the Swedish Medical Association and a workers representative as the Chair of the Medical Association at Karolinska University Hospital. Karolinska, one of Swedens top hospitals, is now described as the most expensive hospital ever built after a controversial rebuild. Dellmark has criticised the hospital for their staff cuts pre-Covid, for the lack of plans for Covid-infected personell during the pandemic, and has asked Stockholm Region to publish numbers of how many hospital staffers have required hospital care for Covid-19.

Helen O’Connor

Former NHS Nurse, GMB NHS Union Organiser, UK

Helen O’Connor worked as a nurse in the UK NHS for 28 years. As Cutbacks and privatisation were rolling out she saw the adverse impact of this on workers and on patients. She became active in the union as a result and led some opposition to plans to cut pay and services. In 2018 she became a full-time organiser for the GMB union and organises workers in hospitals in south London.

Cassie Thornton

Artist, Feminist Economics Department, UK

Cassie Thornton is an artist and activist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Her new book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press.

Suelette Dreyfus

Technology Researcher, Executive Director, Blueprint for Free Speech, AU/DE

Suelette Dreyfus is a technology researcher, journalist, and writer. Her fields of research include information systems, digital security and privacy, the impact of technology on whistleblowing, health informatics and e-Education. She is the Executive Director of Blueprint for Free Speech. Her specific work at Blueprint is to raise the standards of protection for whistleblowers. She is a specialist in cybersecurity technologies and in integrity systems that work as corrective mechanisms in society. Suelette founded Blueprint in 2014 with a view to improving the standards of laws and practice around the globe that protect freedom of expression. Her work examines digital whistleblowing as a form of freedom of expression and the right of dissent from corruption. She is also a researcher and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.

Twitter: @sueletted

Jennifer Robinson

Human Rights Lawyer and Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, AU/UK

Jennifer Robinson is is an Australian human rights lawyer and barrister with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Her practice focuses on defending cases for freedom of expression before national and international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights. Previously, she served for years as director of the Bertha Justice Initiative, a global network of legal human rights organizations. To support the movement for self-determination in West Papua, Robinson founded the lawyers' association International Lawyers for West Papua. She is also a founding member of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association. Robinson is best known for her role as a long-standing member of the legal team defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Twitter: @suigenerisjen

Stefania Maurizi

Investigative Journalist, IT

Stefania Maurizi is an Italian investigative journalist, currently working for the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, after working 14 years for the Italian daily la Repubblica and for the Italian newsmagazine l'Espresso. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents, and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy. She has also interviewed A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, revealed the condolence payment agreement between the US government and the family of the Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto killed in a US drone strike, and investigated the harsh working conditions of Pakistani workers in a major Italian garment factory in Karachi. She has started a multijurisdictional FOIA litigation effort to defend the right of the press to access the full set of documents on the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks case. She authored two books: “Dossier WikiLeaks. Segreti Italiani” and “Una Bomba, Dieci Storie”, the latter translated into Japanese.

Twitter: @smaurizi

Felicity Ruby

PhD candidate at Sydney University, Researcher on surveillance and democracy, AU

Felicity Ruby is a PhD candidate at Sydney University undertaking research on surveillance and democracy. From 2008-2013 Felicity was the Senior Advisor to Australian Senator Scott Ludlam, who held the Communications portfolio and successfully fought data retention and internet censorship proposals, as well as supporting Australian citizen Julian Assange. Prior to this she headed the UN Office for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, was a policy adviser at the UN Development Fund for Women and at Greenpeace International. She is Research and Policy Adviser, Office of the CTO at ThoughtWorks.

Twitter: @FlickRubicon

Anna Myers

Executive Director, Whistleblowing International Network, UK

Anna Myers is the founding Executive Director of WIN. She has worked in the field of whistleblowing for 20 years - advising individual whistleblowers, employers of all sizes and sectors, and national and international policy makers. Anna is originally from Canada and prior to getting her law degree at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, she did a history degree at the Université de Montréal in Québec. Anna was Deputy Director of Public Concern at Work (now called Protect) for 9 years and has worked at Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and at the Government Accountability Project in Washington DC. Anna is a Member of the Law Society of England and Wales, and she resides in Glasgow, Scotland.

Satellite Event Speakers

Disruptive Fridays · 12 March

Wu Ming 1

Author & Writer, Wu Ming Foundation, IT

Wu Ming 1 is a member of the Wu Ming writers collective created in 2000. He has translated into Italian works by Elmore Leonard and Stephen King. Since 2014 he has managed the Quinto Tipo series of the Italian publisher Edizioni Alegre.

With the Wu Ming collective he has written the novels Q (1999), Manituana (2007), Altai (2009) and L'armata dei sonnambuli (2014). As Wu Ming 1 he is the author of New thing (2004), Point lenana (2013) and Cent'anni a Nordest (2015). His latest book is Un viaggio che non promettiamo breve. Venticinque anni di lotte No Tav (Einaudi, 2016). His latest book is Proletkult (Einaudi, 2018).

Florian Cramer

Reader in 21st Century Visual Culture/Autonomous Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, NL

Florian Cramer is reader in 21st Century Visual Culture/Autonomous Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, and he is teaching at the Piet Zwart Institute (part of Willem de Kooning Academy). He is currently co-supervising two research projects funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Making Matters (bridging art, design and technology through Material Practices) and Autonomy Lab (investigates new meanings that artist/research/activist/interdisciplinary collectives give to autonomy). Cramer is a board member of De Player/De Layer, a space for sound/performance art, PrintRoom, a space for artists’ books and DIY publishing and MONO/Awak(e), an intersectional club, bar and venue for public debates. http://floriancramer.nl

Workshops

Meet-ups

Chris Smalls

Co-founder of The Congress of Essential Workers, Amazon whistleblower, US

Chris Smalls is a former Amazon warehouse management assistant who was fired in March of 2020 after he organized an employee walkout to protest Amazon’s poor response to COVID-19, and its failure to protect warehouse workers from infection. Chris is one of the founders of The Congress of Essential Workers, a collaborative network of workers and allies fighting for the elimination of billionaires, for wealth redistribution, and to protect the working class from exploitative CEOs. He’s sometimes better known by his Twitter handle, “Shut down Amazon”.

Twitter: @Shut_down Amazon

Yonatan Miller

Tech Workers Coalition, Berlin vs. Amazon, US/DE

Yonatan Miller is an activist turned technologist from New York. He moved to Berlin in 2015 and is involved with social movements in the streets and the tweets. He is a software developer and co-founded the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition. When he is not busy organizing, he likes to collect maps and raccoon memes. He is active within Berlin vs. Amazon, a coalition of activists, local initiatives, tech workers and artists who want to mobilize against Amazon and the so-called Amazon Tower in Berlin.

Twitter: @shushugah