On October 2 in San Francisco, we will be celebrating the work of the 2014 Pioneer Award winners. The celebration will include drinks, bytes, and excellent company.

We are proud to present awards to this year's winners:

We are also happy to welcome Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos—better known as the Yes Men—as this year’s keynote speakers. The Yes Men are known for their elaborate parodies and impersonations to fight government and corporate malfeasance.

EFF established the Pioneer Awards in 1992 to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. The awards celebrate those who have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications. Their contributions may be technical, social, legal, academic, economic, or cultural. This year’s Pioneers will join an esteemed group of past award winners that includes late visionary activist Aaron Swartz, Tunisian citizen media community Nawaat.org, and open-source pioneer Limor "Ladyada" Fried, among many remarkable journalists, entrepreneurs, public interest attorneys, and others.

More about the 2014 Pioneer Award winners

Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work uses methods from science, journalism, and other disciplines in an attempt to "see" the historical moment we live in. Paglen’s groundbreaking projects exposing government secrecy have included documenting U.S. government drone flights, using high-end optical systems to photograph top-secret governmental sites, and tracking classified spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. In a recent project, Paglen photographed the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, releasing the images without restriction for public use. Paglen’s visual art has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many other places. Paglen is also the author of five books including Torture Taxi, an early look at the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

Frank LaRue

Frank La Rue is the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection for the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Since his appointment in 2008, La Rue has brought technology to the forefront of the fight for free expression around the world, declaring that access to the Internet is a fundamental human right, and highlighting the importance of uncensored communication and anonymous speech in increasingly filtered and tracked network. La Rue also fought the global “book famine” for people with visual and reading disabilities, advocating for an international Treaty of the Blind to reform over-restrictive copyright that hindered the production and distribution of books in accessible formats. Last year, La Rue published a highly influential report on the dangers of widespread state surveillance, arguing that privacy is an essential requirement for true freedom of expression. Before taking his post at the U.N., La Rue spent years working on human rights issues, including bringing genocide cases against the military dictatorship in his native Guatemala in 2000 and 2001.

Zoe Lofgren

For nearly 20 years, Rep. Zoe Lofgren has been a crucial voice in Congress on technology, innovation, and free speech—defending the free and open Internet, fighting for privacy and free speech, blocking dangerous copyright laws, and pushing for sensible alternatives. Lofgren rallied congressional opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), one of the defining moments of Internet activism in recent history. Currently, Lofgren is fighting to reform some of the worst legal threats to our digital rights: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates our email privacy with outdated standards; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has been used to block phone unlocking, jailbreaking, and our freedom to tinker; and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law used to unfairly prosecute Aaron Swartz. Lofgren chairs the California Democratic Congressional Delegation, the largest delegation in Congress.

Get your tickets now! For more information about the Pioneer Awards, please contact nicole@eff.org.