Democracy needs truth-telling - this is not possible when crucial (and sometimes illegal) government policies remain hidden from the public.

• Whistleblowing is essential for bringing such policies into the light: exposing key information related to human rights violations, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war.

• We must stand up for a free press, individual privacy, governmental and corporate transparency, due process and rule of law as we seek to reveal official information that the public has a right to know. 

• The London leg of the international Stand Up for Truth whistleblowers speaking tour is being co-organised by the Media Reform UK and the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, supported by the National Union of Journalists, the Whistleblowing International Network and Public Concern at Work. 

• Speakers:

• Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst who served in Vietnam and risked decades in prison to release the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. 

Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency who blew the whistle on massive multi-billion dollar fraud, waste and the widespread violations of the rights of citizens through secret mass surveillance programs after 9/11. 

Jesselyn Radack, the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project (GAP), the leading U.S. whistleblower organization. 

• Coleen Rowley, an attorney and former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the agency’s pre-9/11 failures, was one of three whistleblowers named as Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. 

• Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, the coordinator of ExposeFacts and co-founder and coordinator of RootsAction.org.

• Justin Schlosberg, Lecturer in Journalism and Media at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an Edmund J. Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University.