Intelexit is an international project that helps

intelligence officer An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile or analyze information (known as intelligence) which is of use to that organization. The word of ''officer'' is a working title, not a rank, used in the same way a ...

s to exit their organisations because of ethical or psychological reasons. It is a project from the

Peng Collective The Peng Collective is a group of culture jamming activists based in Berlin. In 2016, the collective was part of the Berlin Biennale, in 2018 of the Manifesta Biennale and the Athens Biennale. In 2018, they were awarded the Aachen Peace Prize. It w ...

, usually known for subversive campaigning and

tactical media Tactical media is a term coined in 1996, to denote a form of media activism that privileges temporary interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets. Examples Tactical media projects are often a mix ...

and was launched on September 28, 2015.

Outreach activities

To reach the

target group A target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to said intended audience. In marketing and advertising, it is a particular group of consumer within the predetermined ...

of intelligence officers and subcontractors, the organisations launched their campaign with a website offering details about ethics and procedure to exit secret services and an automatically generated resignation form. The security expert

Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...

and Thomas Drake support the campaign in their advertisement video. As part of an international advertisement campaign involving advertisement trucks in front of the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

building at Fort Meade, USA, and one of the NSA contractor's favourite lunch places Cafe Joe's, in front of the

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Unit ...

in the UK and the

Dagger Complex The Dagger Complex is a US military base in Darmstadt (Germany), close to Griesheim and located at the ''Eberstädter Weg'', south of the August-Euler-Airfield. The complex is under US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) command ...

, the

Lucius D. Clay Kaserne Lucius D. Clay Kaserne (german: Flugplatz Wiesbaden-Erbenheim) , commonly known as Clay Kaserne, is an installation of the United States Army in Hesse, Germany. The ''kaserne'' is located within Wiesbaden-Erbenheim. Named for General Lucius D. C ...

, the

US Embassy The United States has the second most diplomatic missions of any country in the world after Mainland China, including 166 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, as well as observer state Vatican City and non-member countries Kosovo a ...

and the

Federal Intelligence Service The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence head ...

buildings in Berlin, Germany. They distributed leaflets in front of several buildings at the same time, being sent away from GCHQ in the UK by security guards. In Germany, they wheat pasted a part of the German constitution at the building of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and documented how the employees tore it off. Intelexit also performed an airborne leaflet operation over the

with a drone advertising for the exit program.

Positions

One of the spokespersons,

Jérémie Zimmermann Jérémie Zimmermann (born 1978) is a French computer science engineer co-founder of the Paris-based La Quadrature du Net, a citizen advocacy group defending fundamental freedoms online and co-founder of Hacking With Care, a "collective compose ...

claims that the organisation "speaks to employees who are unsatisfied in their jobs, due to moral conflicts, and encourages them to consider termination of employment as an act of personal strength and a contribution to democracy." “We know for a fact that there are many, many people working there who are conflicted, anxious and ultimately completely against what these agencies are doing,” says Ariel Fisher, another press officer of the organisation. As described at the press conference, the organisation is not advocating for

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

s but to support the individuals in their courage to overcome ethical and psychological pain. It is not just an ethical standpoint against mass surveillance, war crimes conducted by secret services or local misuse of secret structures like the German case of the Nazi Terror group NSU that was backed up by the German internal intelligence.

Campaign material and resources

A brochure is available to distribute to the personnel of spy agencies, photographs of previous actions, a press kitPress kit
Intelexit. and other documents are available for reuse.

References

{{reflist 2015 establishments in Germany Organizations established in 2015 Political advocacy groups in Germany Organisations based in Berlin Internet-related activism Civil liberties advocacy groups Freedom of expression organizations