Jean-Marc Manach

Jean-Marc Manach is a French investigative journalist working on surveillance, privacy and intelligence issues (among other things) since the late 90s. He has written numerous information security manuals explaining how to protect ones sources and communications,

worked with Reporters Without Borders for their Online survival kit, with WikiLeaks on numerous issues, including its SpyFiles, and wrote two books about privacy and the surveillance society, and another about Amesys, the French company that designed and sold a “massive” internet surveillance system for the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Working with Nicolas Kayser Bril, for OWNI, which won 2 Online Journalism Awards, in 2010 & 2011, he was one of the (French) pioneers of the #datajournalism new ways of dealing with facts & figures. In 2013, prior to Snowden’s coming out, he co-authored a documentary, “A Counter History of the Internet”, featuring several internet freedom fighters including Julian Assange, John Perry Barlow, Rickard Falkvinge, Eben Moglen, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Bruce Schneier and Richard Stallman.

In 2014, he was part of The Migrant Files, a project wich revealed that, since 2000, more than 23 000 migrants died trying to seek refuge in Europe, which received a Data Journalism Awards and an European Press Prize.

Jean-Marc Manach won the 2015 European Press Prize Innovation Award with ‘The Migrants’ Files: Surveying ­migrants’ deaths at Europe’s door’