What Big Tech Doesn’t Want You to Know – and What to Do About It

In conversation with Misha Glenny, Beeban Kidron offers an insider’s guide to how politicians and policy makers have sold our democracy to Silicon Valley and what we need to do to take it back.

In 2013, former Hollywood director Beeban Kidron made a ground-breaking documentary about the lives of children online. She uncovered a shocking story of exploitation and greed that changed everything – and ignited her relentless crusade to hold the tech giants accountable.

In this live conversation with Misha Glenny, Beeban will reveal everything she’s learned from her life as a campaigner and legislator, taking you inside the halls of Parliament and the UN to the White House and Silicon Valley. Through her encounters with lobbyists and tech bros, she’ll share her insights into the ruthless tactics these powerful men use to lie, cheat and steal their way to unchecked power, all while avoiding the rules and regulations meant to protect us.

You’ll see how the issue is not technology itself, but its use and abuse. How tools built to connect people are redeployed to divide, punish, distract, and control; while our tech overlords come to own everything – but continue to be held responsible for nothing.

Now that we know their game, it’s time to fight back.

Event Schedule

6:15pm: Pre-event socialising and networking
A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

6:30pm: Event begins

7:30pm: Event ends

Speakers

Baroness Beeban Kidron is a global authority on digital regulation and accountability and a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment. She has played a determinative role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. Baroness Kidron sits as a crossbench peer in the UK’s House of Lords, and is Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation. She is also a Visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, where she chairs the research centre Digital Futures for Children. Before being appointed to the Lords she was an award-winning film director and is co-founder of the charity Into Film.

Misha Glenny is an award-winning journalist and presenter with a focus on global organised crime, cyber crime and cyber security, and big picture geo-politics. He is the author of six best-selling books, including McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime, now a major BBC/AMC drama show; DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia; and The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-2012. A former visiting professor at the LSE, Columbia University and University College London, he is currently a Research Fellow at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles where he is working on a history of the world between 1989 and 2016. A former BBC Correspondent, Misha has been a recipient of the Sony Gold Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, and the BT Award for Security Journalist of the Year.