CAGE International Director Muhammad Rabbani will be speaking on Schedule 7 at the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s (CIJ) Logan Symposium, titled ‘Conspiracy’

The 2018 CIJ Logan Symposium

Goldsmiths, University of London

19 – 20 October

The Logan Symposium returns to London for a major international event on subterfuge, propaganda and power.

Conspiracy brings together a unique community of investigative journalists, whistleblowers, hackers, artists and experts to challenge power and reinvigorate the field of investigative journalism.

Featuring a packed programme of talks, workshops, documentary film screenings and a brand new exhibition of artworks and specially commissioned installations.

Conspiracy is about the growing machinery of surveillance and censorship and what might be our response to it. New anti-terror laws gift governments with unprecedented powers to spy on the electronic data of their citizens. Should we put our faith in radical transparency and sophisticated electronic techniques with which to evade surveillance, or instead resort to being more careful about what we say? Then there’s official propaganda and subterfuge. Since World War I, the drumbeat to global war has been stoked by modern media. From paid Russian Trolls toiling to Western-funded “media activists” in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, what are the chances for real freedom and democracy when the new media machinery becomes a powerful new weapon of war? The proposed new Espionage Act in the UK, and the renewed threat of prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act in the US, deliberately blurs the distinction between information-seeking investigative journalists and spies from a hostile state. Investigative journalists could be prosecuted for “conspiring” with a source to publish classified information. Are some journalists really spies, and how do we best defend ourselves against the allegation that we are?

Confronted with the growing machinery of state power, Conspiracy presents the tools, tactics and strategies which are reinventing investigative journalism. Faced with the conspiracies on all sides, a unique global network of investigators and doers, rich in practical advice and personal stories, tries to steer a more enlightened path through.

(NOTE: CAGE represents cases of individuals based on the remit of our work. Supporting a case does not mean we agree with the views or actions of the individual. Content published on CAGE may not reflect the official position of our organisation.)