This is a story about good vs. evil...

Ten days ago I made a video declaring my solidarity with my Parisian brothers & sisters. I never could have imagined what would happen next. We are all shocked and saddened by the barbarity of humanity, when pushed to extremes. It's hard to understand how or why people would act like that.

A week ago I conducted a kind of experiment, where I attempted to empathise (NOTE: not sympathise) with the mindset of a person who would be driven to extreme behaviour. I was disappointed with the response. People just didn't seem to share my concerns. An Evening Standard journalist rang me up for comment, and he actually thought it was funny.

I was moved to see thousands Parisians out on the street, ignoring the curfew, and united under a banner that read "Not Afraid". This kind of solidarity and non-violent protest against the rise and rise of terror shows that humans can collectively beat barbaric behaviour. I include war in this statement, as I don't believe that you can shoot and bomb people into submission, either as an act of terrorism OR an act of war. It just doesn't work.

As I have been urging in a series of blog posts, I beg people to act in nonviolent protest, and to demand that our politicians don't carry out acts of war in our name. War is the fuel for the fire of hatred, terrorism, extremism, pain, destruction.

I know that the French people are reeling from the attack, and it must be unimaginably hard to cope with something so horrible happening to your family, friends and fellow French people. I'm so sorry, as a human, that some of my fellow humans are so barbaric.

I don't think that warfare is the right response.

That is all.

Tags: #terrorism #france #europe

This is a story about setting a good example...

If you take drugs in front of your children, you are a sh1t parent. Period. No ifs. No buts.

If you are high on drugs, drunk or otherwise intoxicated, stoned, coming down, craving drugs or generally in a f**ked up state because you are abusing drugs and alcohol, then you are an inconsistent parent, and this sends very mixed messages to your children, which affects the development of their personality.

Your children are like sponges. Little rabbits have big eyes and big ears. They can pick up on the variations in your mood. They can sense the instability caused by drink & drugs. It affects them.

If you smoke your drugs or cigarettes in a confined space with your children, even worse. Drugs are measured in the body using a unit called mg/kg. That's milligrams of drugs in the bloodstream per kilogram of body weight. I don't know if you've noticed this but children are a lot smaller than adults.

If two adults are smoking in a car, and there is a small child present, that child may be forced to smoke the equivalent of several boxes of cigarettes for even a short car ride. Nicotine is a horribly addictive drug. Imagine addicting that child and making them go through nicotine withdrawal over and over and over again, when the child doesn't have a clue what's happening to them or any ability to explain what they're going through.

My friend's parents used to call me Nicotine, as a nickname, because I used to stink like an ashtray. My parents were always driving somewhere, smoking. I was just part of the baggage being lugged around. I felt like a burden. My parents just wanted to get drunk and take drugs. I was an accident. Oops.

If you are a sh1t role model for your children, they will want to run away from home as soon as they can and never come back.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I don't think my parents are very responsible. I don't think they are very good role models.

It's unbelievable, but they actually think they are cool for taking drugs. That seems rather immature to me, but then I've always felt like I have to be more mature than them, because they're not very responsible.

I left home as soon as I had a job and enough money for a flat, age 17. I couldn't wait to get away from such bad role models. They are liars and hypocrites and they are lazy and project their inadequacies onto their children, who are hard working and mature and responsible.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I'm very disappointed with their behaviour.

Parents must try harder. All my friends in my generation are very responsible parents. I think the baby boomers could try taking a leaf out of our book. Don't try and roll it up and smoke it though, like you usually do.

Did you know my own father refused to read anything I write? Pretty p1ssed off about that.

"La la la, I'm not listening" I imagine him saying while putting his fingers in his ears. How childish.

And parents wonder why their kids run away from home and never want to come back. Tsk!

That is all.

Tags: #parents #childhood #bullying #drugs #oxford #london #homeless

This is a story about intrusive thoughts...

I've never been able to find the 'off' button for my brain or my mouth. That's a problem.

I also have a rather photographic memory, and can construct well reasoned arguments based on evidence. Most people just tend to go with their gut feeling, and are happy to be wrong about things, because what they want to be true feels more natural to them. Being wrong is also great if you want to carry on living your decadent hedonistic life in ignorant bliss of the suffering that it causes to other people.

Sadly, if you have a rational, logical brain, good memory and you have collected a lot of varied experiences from around the world, so that you can compare and contrast everything that you see and integrate it into a 'big picture' then you have a limited tolerance for small minded people.

Yes, this is extremely condescending. Sorry about that.

So, fundamentally, I lost my job went homeless and wailed at the moon because of an existential crisis. The first thing I did when I got back to London was to sign up for a Philosophy course. I feel that I have died a thousand deaths, and I fear not one more. My priorities in life are a little different from yours.

The bottom line is this: all this talk of ending war & poverty is hot air. Many years have passed since the so-called 'enlightenment' and we are still allowing evil deeds to be committed in our name. You cannot fight for peace, just like you cannot fuck for virginity.

The war on terror is terrorism. Look at the faces of refugees fleeing the illegal wars in the Middle East. They are terrified.

That is all.

Tags: #homeless #terrorism #notanonymous #politics #career #london #bipolar #politics

This is a story about being an activist...

The streets of London are home to a huge population of runaways, refugees and other homeless people who have been marginalised by society. We tend to ignore them and their struggles. There are so many, we can't help them all, right?

I'm not OK with people freezing to death on the streets, right under the noses of the wealthy. I'm not OK with just walking past human suffering on a daily basis, on the commute to the office. There are people huddling in shop doorways for a little shelter from the elements. It's brutal out there, and things are getting worse.

There are no words to describe just how cold it is, sleeping rough. I have slept on a glacier. Millions of tonnes of creaking ice. That's cold, even with a decent sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and a tent. Sleeping out on the streets is just as tough - most homeless people don't have equipment that cost hundreds of pounds. The most vulnerable people in our society don't even have enough money for food, clothes and other basics that they depend upon.

Normally charities will expect you to reach for your wallet. Normally charities will expect you to donate money. The whole fundraise & spend model of charity has failed, sadly. People and corporations are just not giving enough. People and corporations are treating charitable giving as a way to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for the wrongdoing in a society that they belong to.

Let's start with some empathy, instead.

If you haven't roughed it ever in your life, or it's been a very long time since you were truly soaked to the skin, freezing cold, shivering, and with chattering teeth... then you have lost touch with what some of your fellow human beings are going through. There are people freezing to death, here, in a supposedly civilised advanced Western econonmy. I'm not OK with that.

Please, try and make it to West India Quay with some warm clothes and a good sleeping bag, and sleep out with us. 7pm to 7am on Thursday 12th November 2015. It's incredible that this can take place when Canary Wharf Estate don't really want a whole tent army right under the noses of rich bankers!

The Centrepoint charity has worked incredibly hard to make this possible, and only by agreeing to do things in the most unbelievably controlled way. There is private security for the event, as well as Canary Wharf's own private security force, making sure that the wrong sort of people are not protesting about the abhorrent situation of young people being left freezing to death on the streets of London.

Sadly, in the 3 years that this event has been happening in Canary Wharf, my ex-employer JPMorgan Chase & Co has donated a paltry £70,000. That's a disgustingly small amount of money considering how this bank has wrecked lives. One of my colleagues was driven to #suicide by the insanity of what Global Banking is doing to the world.

I absolutely do not want to see this event lose credibility, so please sign up for an official ticket and donate whatever you can afford: https://www.centrepoint.org.uk/news-events/events/sleep-out/west-india-quay

Whatever happens, please please please tell everyone you know about the plight of the homeless and support this event.

7pm to 7am, Thursday 12th November, 2015.

So, last week, I was working for HSBC on their number one project. The biggest bank in Europe at the moment is HSBC. They just declared quarterly profits have risen 33% to $6bn. That's a substantial amount of cash that they have extracted from the world's pockets!

So, how much do HSBC care about the homeless? Well they employed a homeless person (me) but their due diligence should have prevented me from getting that job and working my way out of poverty and debt. I should have been trapped into living on the streets.

We can't have the wrong sort of people getting ahead in life, can we? It's all about the rich getting richer, at the expense of the destruction of society by people who already have more than they need.

I made sure I got this email from the HSBC Group so that nobody is going to get sued! Hurrah!

I've got a bunch of other emails that prove that Corporate and Social Responsibility is a joke. These companies pay a pittance in order to try and cover up wrongdoing on an unimaginable scale. The institutional corruption is disgusting.

I'm being warned by journalist friends to flee for my life for whistleblowing. You'll be able to find me... sleeping rough somewhere in London. If the Safer Streets teams can't find people, then good luck to the banks with their teams of lawyers out to gag me!

Come and sleep rough with us!

That is all.

 Tags: #homeless #frankie #london #banking #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about goodbyes...

Oh, Megabank Plc. I would go to the ends of the Earth for you. Shame the feeling wasn't mutual and you grew tired of my unique style. Oh well. Best of luck with the #1 project and looking after your 213,000 shareholders in 131 countries, 48 million customers and 245,000 employees in 72 countries.

Here is a picture of a random homeless guy.

Tags: #banking #career #homeless #london #frankie #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about some bags I lost...

I think I might have accidentally left some bags unattended on the underground. When I was riding the tube around London, distributing free colourful cardboard stars, during rush hour on Bonfire Night, November 5th 2015, I think I may have been a little distracted by the fact that I had lost my job. I also haven't been taking my medication. Oops.

I've made this little map, to show where I went with my bags, while distributing free colourful cardboard stars. I have put a star on the map to indicate where I think I might have lost each of the bags. The tube stations were pretty busy at rush hour, so I'm sure lots of people went right by my unattended bags, but whether they picked them up and took them to lost property I don't know yet.

I'm so pleased that there wasn't any disruption caused by me leaving my bags unattended. I know that unattended bags are something that we need to be vigilant of, as Londoners, during a time when we are dropping bombs on Syrians and causing a major refugee crisis. I know that bags on mass transit are something we should be worried about when planes are being blown up in Egypt.

Luckily, in this instance, the bags were totally safe. Nothing to worry about.

Stay safe, London.

Tags: #notanonymous #terrorism

This is a story about lazy presumptions...

Too long; didn't read? Don't try and second guess me. You'll be wrong.

I know that some people have disengaged from my writing. It's tl;dr.

The story ain't over yet.

That is all.

This is a story about the lives of others...

The more a person spies on another person, the more they see themself reflected back. The more they sympathise and see the ordinary humanity in the person that they are spying on. The more empathy they feel, the more they start to doubt the ethics of spying.

We can use software to do a lot of the 'heavy lifting' of spying, but we still need intelligence officers to actually then do in-depth analysis after red flags are raised by the systems that monitor our electronic communication.

These analysts may then be sanctioned to perform further, more in-depth snooping, if there looks to be a strong case to justify the further intrusion into the life of that citizen. They have to argue the case to their superiors. They also have to argue the case because it's their job to make cases. If they didn't think anybody was worth spying on, there wouldn't be any jobs in the intelligence field.

When a case is accepted, then even more information is gathered, sometimes at great expense. Then, somebody has to pick up the bill. It's time to start building a case now against that person, to make them pick up the bill.

The usual ways that the intelligence agencies will make their citizens pay would be prosecution for terrorism, fraud, drug trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, weapons. Unfortunately, this can also extend to anti-establishment activity, which would not be criminal. The only payback would be a smear campaign, which is a lot easier if you have lots of juicy details about that person's private life that you have snooped without their knowledge.

There's never any backing down. Nobody will ever say "On reflection, I was wrong and we should not have pryed into the private life of this citizen" because nobody wants to look stupid. Everybody wants to justify the case that was made and actions that were taken.

All I'm going to say is this: I'm only human, and I've never engaged in organised crime or terrorism.

That is all.

Tags: #privacy #politics #civildisobedience #notanonymous

This is a story about ethics...

The difference between a white hat hacker and a black hat hacker is that the former is ethical and the latter is not. A black hat is out for fame or personal gain.

I signed the Official Secrets Act when I was 17, which means that I can't tell you that I hacked British Aerospace's servers when I was 18 and released details of everybody's salaries, as a protest about wage inequality. They covered it up anyway, but you can never stop loose tongues wagging, and I wound up on a watch list at GCHQ. Oops.

I did something similar at Barclays. Again, people tried to cover it up. If you try and cover up an ethical hacker's work, you normally end up in trouble yourself. Just be ethical yourself... nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

I've had the opportunity to defraud my employers out of millions of dollars and be living on a beautiful coral sand island, safe from extradition provided I never set foot back in Europe or North America. At JPMorgan, I knew about a rounding error with Derivative settlements and I knew that our reconciliations weren't picking it up. There were literally billions that were missing and nobody knew except for a handful of programmers.

I'm not a bank robber. I'm trying to help the banks.

At a security briefing for a higher level of clearance, with DERA (Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, which is now QinetiQ) I was told to mistrust attractive women, Chinese people... I was told these people were probably spies. Lolz.

I decided that I didn't like working for the defence industry. They've got dirt on me. They have photos of me sleeping with my male boss. I was only 18, like I said... it was too easy for them to do something like that. Like taking candy from a baby.

I worked on two software systems that were linked with a fibre-optic cable and used quantum entanglement to verify that there was no man-in-the-middle snooping attack going on. That's paranoid, considering that I worked on a military site guarded by Marines with guns, and my car was searched every day.

So, if I seem a little paranoid, it's because I've been trained to be.

I've stood above the working nuclear reactor on Swiftsure and Trafalgar class submarines, and peered into the core and seen the Cherenkov radiation. I've seen the propulsion units that no civilian is supposed to see. These are hunter-killer machines that run seriously quiet.

I know things that I'm not supposed to know. Oops.

So... please leave me be. I'm just trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to be more grown up and consider the wider ramifications of everything I do, but sometimes I feel like nobody wants to act ethically.

Look at the vast number of refugees fleeing wars. Look at the vast number of families who are financially struggling. Their need is greater.

That is all.

Tags: #career #computing #privacy #politics #hacking #civildisobedience

This is a story about you. This is a story about me. This is a story about everybody...

Hi, my name's Nick Grant, and I'm not anonymous.

I believe anonymity creates lonliness, isolation and kills the social ties that bond us all together. If we don't know any of the names of the people with whom we share a cramped tube carriage, then we are living far too anonymously. You know what the person next to you smells like, but you don't know their name.

Without social structure, we can act in inhumane ways. We start to see people as statistics. We start to treat people with no regard for their feelings, for their safety.

SAFE

We all just want to feel safe and secure. Do you feel safe and secure? I hope you do. I see it as a human right. I think it's being infringed by the way we have organised ourselves into ultra dense urban populations, where we are mistrustful of each other.

You shouldn't mistrust me. I just want to be friends. I just want everybody to get along.

London, please don't be alarmed. I come in peace. I'm unarmed and I'm not out to harm, alarm or upset anybody.

So, if you see me on the tube, say "Hi Nick" if you recognise me. I will be overwhelmed that somebody knows who I am. I feel really anonymous. I don't like being anonymous. I feel unloved.

I'm giving out some coloured stars... that's my only purpose this evening. It's totally benign. Peaceful.

If you see me, we catch each other's eye, I might introduce myself. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to make meaningful human connections. All I'm doing is giving away colourful cardboard stars to anybody I feel shines out, as a beacon of human connection. You are under no obligation to accept a colourful cardboard star, which is totally free.

If you're too busy thinking about getting home and getting your dinner, I'll try and read your body languague as best as I can. I'm certainly not inviting myself into your life. It's totally OK to ignore me if I misread your eye contact for human connection. Please ignore me if I make you feel uncomfortable... I really don't mean to.

Have a safe journey home tonight. I hope you're happy, safe and secure.

Stay safe.

I see you shining. Hope to see you soon.

If I see you shining I will give you a star.

Love,

Nick Grant (that's my real name)

Tags: #notanonymous #london #politics #civildisobedience