REALTIME FILE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION 2020 Pioneer Awards OCTOBER 15, 2020 CART CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: WHITE COAT CAPTIONING * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * (Music playing) >> CINDY: Oh, hey.    I'm just dancing here.    Um, thank you so much, Redstickman, for starting us off.    You can check out mixcloud.com.    (Echoing).    You can check out mixcloud.com/Redstickman to hear more.    Welcome to the 29th Annual 2020 Pioneer Award Ceremony.    I'm Cindy Cohn.    Thank you for joining us this evening to honor groundbreaking leaders in online (Breaking up).    EFF's mission is to support freedom, justice, and innovation for all the people of the world, and tonight I'm so excited that our lineup so strongly aligns with that vision.            I'd like to thank the following folks for supporting this year's 2020 Pioneer Award Ceremony.    Dropbox, No Starch Press, Ridder, Costa & Johnstone, and Ron Reed.    One of the fortunate things about going virtual this year is that we get a chance to connect with you wherever you happen to be and we never sell out the venue, so thank you for celebrating with us.    If you have any questions or need assistance tonight, please feel free to drop a note in the chat on twitch or to email.            Now this summer, EFF has passed a major milestone.    We're celebrating 30 years of learning, growing, and fighting for internet technology users.    The world is leaning on the internet more than ever before, and that makes EFF's mission to defend online privacy and free speech all the more crucial.    We're also in the midst of a 30th anniversary challenge, trying to get 30,000 new or renewed members.    We're just over halfway, and I hope that all of you can help us get all the way over the top either by renewing directly or reminding your friends and loved ones about the work that we do or joining, if you've never been an EFF member.    At EFF, we work for tips, so please help us continue to stand up for you and for a better future for everyone.            We know we are all treading the murky waters of a pandemic, increasingly dangerous weather and wildfires, and unprecedented reckonings with our ideals of equity and justice, especially those raised by police violence against people of color.    It's a dark and scary time, and many of us have lost loved ones.    But in the haze, there is opportunity to do better for ourselves and for our future.    That's why we chose a lighthouse for our 30th anniversary image.    When we're doing our job well, we hope to stand up and point the way to safety for a better internet for everyone.    Our team is killing it despite so many obstacles.    We're busy right now.    We're in the busy in the courts, including a new lawsuit that we just launched last week against the City of San Francisco for allowing the cops to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters and the pride parade in violation of an ordinance that we helped pass.    And we also did the Public Records Act work to discover what they were doing.    We're busy.    We're busy building technologies, including continuing our crucial role of encrypting the web.    We're busy in the California legislature, continuing to push for broadband for all to serve as a model for the rest of the nation about how we all need fiber to the home.    We're busy across the nation and around the world, standing up for your right to simply have a private conversation using encryption and technologies to help you do so and for your right to build interoperable tools, even if you don't have one.            I want to give a special shutout right now to our COVID response teams, and a special shout‑out to Adam Schwartz for the work he has done organizing the legal team.    As with so many issues, EFF quickly pulled together a group of technologists and lawyers to combat the policies that were coming along with the pandemic.    From those first days in March until now, that team has had your back.    They articulated a set of tests for evaluating technical COVID responses from exposure and contact tracing to other ideas.    We batted back many attempts to try to COVID wash awful corporate surveillance schemes they were trying to sell to governments, and the team addressed issues arising from our massive reliance on Zoom and other video conferencing systems (Breaking up) fiber‑based broadband students and workers working from home.    They responded to press, politicians, and the public from CEOs to major companies to just concerned EFF members all with speed and calm.    They have been firing on all cylinders.    Especially to Adam, who kept it all running smoothly and has never said no to a request, but tonight isn't about us at EFF.            Each year, we take a moment to honor those who have advanced online freedom for the people of the world.    After 30 years, we can tell you the job may have been gotten bigger, but with our allies we've also gotten much, much stronger.    I'm excited to recognize a few of those influential figures tonight.    The Barlow award, named for one of the EFF founders, is a reminder of where (Breaking up) but not where it is today.    We have learned so much from those early days, both how technology does good and how it can do bad.    While our early internet founders had incredible vision, they didn't get everything right, nor did they anticipate all the problems, but they did create a permanent institution that could adapt and grow with technology users, and here at EFF we have.    They also started this tradition of EFF recognizing others who are helping to build a better world alongside us.    We are all dedicated to building a better digital future, but to do so we must learn from the mistakes of the past.            Our Pioneer Award winners this year have helped shed light on some of those mistakes, such as, one, tech companies that build technologies that fail to recognize the vast diversity and inequity of our societies or worse building technologies that reinforce or double down on those inequities, second, that the U.S. Congress used a censorship law to try to address some real problems but instead (Breaking up) that law has been used to silence marginalized voices.    Finally, three, we cannot seek to empower people around the world to exercise their human rights unless we have a dedicated and active community building them the tools in order to let them do so, so we're pleased to present the 2020 Barlows to three groups of folks who are actively working to address these critical problems.            But first, I want to welcome our keynote speaker, longtime friend of EFF and one of the top reporters covering our all things tech, Cyrus Farivar.    He is currently an investigative tech reporter at NBC news in San Francisco.    I love that you have a bicycle in the background.    In addition to being a radio producer and author, he was most recently a senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica.    He is the author of multiple books, including "Habeas Data."    It hits straight at my heart by taking a look at the legal cases that have had on outside impact on surveillance law in America. I'm proud to say many EFF cases made the cut.    His first book focuses on the history and the effects of the internet on different countries all around the world, so he truly spans the globe.    In 2019, Cyrus and Olivia won the technology reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists for their coverage from Silicon Valley, including reporting on facial recognition, privacy, and much more.    Two years earlier, Cyrus and Joe also won the technology reporting award for their August 2016 story, "Stealing Bitcoins with Badges."    >> What's up Joe Mullen?    >> CINDY: Cyrus helps shine the light on the trickiest of tech issues and is fair, even when he is critical of us at EFF.    Without further ado, our friend Cyrus.    >> CYRUS: Hello, everybody.    I have to say it's a little weird to be speaking to a group.    I have no idea how many people I'm talking to you.    What I'm looking back at is my screen with a picture of me with this bike that I ride every day behind me.    I hope everybody can hear me, and I hope everybody is safe and healthy wherever you are.    I hope you have a beverage with you.    I do.    I just want to say cheers to Cindy, cheers to EFF, cheers to all of you for the work that you do, for those of you who I know, for those of you I don't know. Yeah, I really am honored to be appreciated and to appreciate you back for all the work that you guys do.            Just so you know ‑‑ when I say cheers, I'm supposed to drink, so cheers to you‑all.    I was asked to give a few brief remarks on my sort of journey through digital rights through this crazy thing we call the electronic frontier.    I am 38 years old.    I don't know if I'm quite yet in full‑on gray beard territory, but I'm getting there.    I have some gray hairs in my beard, but I was first aware of EFF ‑‑ I was thinking about this recently.    I was first aware of EFF way back in 1996 when I was in high school during something called the Blue Ribbon Campaign.    You can look this up later if you don't know what this is.    It was an early campaign by EFF and other groups to sponsor free speech online.    I had the little animated spinning gif blue ribbon that went on my website.    I'm sure they're kicking around the internet in some dark corners on long dusted GeoCities websites or whatever.    I chose to spend my free time during my lunch hour in high school with my fellow nerds.    We would sit in our journalism high school class and scroll through slash dot.    We would read through tech news and try to understand what was going on in the world.    I felt very much lost in this new frontier.    I had friends who were building Linux boxes and doing case modes and other crazy stuff.    I was just sitting there trying to follow along and trying to understand all of these things that were happening.    I had a vague understanding of the communications decency Act and other things that were being talked about at that time.            Over the years, I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to be given literal freedom in my childhood, in my high school days.    My mother, my late mother, used to be a professor at Cal State Northridge.    On the weekends, we would have a deal where she would take to me to her office.    The deal was I could go to her campus and use the computer lab, which I don't even think is a term anymore.    This big computer lab on the campus of Cal State Northridge on Saturdays in the 90s.    If I did my homework first, she would set me loose.    It is a commuter school, which means on the weekends it is totally dead.    I, as a high school student, had the run of the place.    It was this giant room of Macs.    I would be sitting there eating tacos.    I took over three computers.    I only needed one, but I took over three just because I could.    I remember mucking around with streaming audio, mucking around with live chat.    That was my first kind of experience of engaging with those kinds of technologies.    It was an incredible experience for me learning about what it meant to be an internet citizen, a netizen.    I spent some time dabbling in IRC.    I'm sure many of you have done that as well.    Again, this is kind of a lost art.    There was a time in my life where I would spend Saturday nights listening to Dodgers games on my radio while trying to find the latest pirated software on Macwares.    I was very fortunate to have grown up in this environment, in this nation, and crazy time.            I was kind of out there on the periphery.    I had some people in the community who understood this, but those of you who are in EFF, who are my elders, my mentors truly were involved in all of this.    As I grew older and had a little bit of an education at UC Berkeley and other places, later on, by 2010, I was able to get the chance to live in Germany where I first really started to think about privacy in a new kind of way.            It's interesting.    I've said this before if you've heard me speak in public previously.    You guys might remember Google Street View when it first came to the U.S.    It's kind of weird.    Google Street View is a private company driving down every street in America and taking pictures of everybody's house.    That's kind of weird.    When I arrived in Germany in the spring of 2010 ‑‑ and I know some of you, at least Jillian where it is 2:00 a.m. right now ‑‑ people there back in 2010 had a very different understanding of what it meant to have your picture taken by a foreign company, Google, and put on the internet for everyone.    There was this kind of moment in Germany in the spring of 2010 when there was this collective freak-out over Google Street View.    Every German politician was bending over backwards about that.    I had this strange realization that was kind of new to me.    Seeing it play out in this particular way of what it means to be private and what it means to have surveillance, in this case by a company, and how different cultures and communities react and respond to that.            Here in the U.S. ‑‑ and this is true a lot of the work that EFF does.    A lot of the work you folks do is looking at the government.    Cindy mentioned a moment ago the new lawsuit against the City of San Francisco.    There's the concern about surveillance by the government against people.    In Germany and in a lot of places in Europe and other parts of the world too, I feel like there's a general default setting of trusting government more generally than private companies, whereas here in the U.S. it is kind of the opposite.    I know all you EFF nerds don't trust anybody ever.    I'm sure you have multiple handshake crypto keys or something, but you know what I'm talking about.    You know what I'm talking about.    It was just interesting to live in a place where there's literally a government agency that is tasked with data protection.    In fact, in Germany, specifically every German state, has a data protection agency.    In a way, I kind of think about EFF as one of the best next things.    We don't really have a data protection agency or authority in this country.    Sure, we have the FCC.    We have other government agencies that are responsible for taking care of us, but we don't have something like that.    I feel like one of the things the EFF does probably better than most other organizations is really try to figure out what makes sense in this new reality.            One of the things that has really fascinated me is an intersection between technology, the technological realities we find ourselves in, criminal justice, surveillance, the law, and a question I come back to again and again and again is, is this legal?    I know this is a question that you lawyers listening to this ask yourselves all the time.    For those of us that are not bona fide lawyers, that question is more complicated than you might think.    I started falling down this rabbit hole of learning about various kinds of surveillance technologies.    A lot of my time of learning about and writing about legal cases ‑‑ Cindy mentioned my book ‑‑ has been spent by talking to a lot of you folks at EFF who have kindly and patiently walked me through so many legalistic phrases that otherwise would have been totally lost on me.    I learned about phrases like the reasonable expectation of privacy.    I learned about the third‑party doctrine.    I learned about drinks at Emperor Norton's and the fun list.    I'm so grateful that I could rely on you to wade through this morass of legalistic terms that are often hard for us to understand. I really do appreciate all of the time and efforts that you have put into helping me personally try to do my job better.    I'm very grateful.            As was mentioned, my book covers 50 years of surveillance law in America.    It's crazy to think EFF has been around for about half that time.    If I do more cases, I'm sure EFF will be involved in many of them.            One of the things that I have come to appreciate as somebody who has watched EFF for some time ‑‑ I've been to the previous office in San Francisco.    I'm speaking to you from across the Bay in Oakland, California, my home.    All the times I have talked to you guys over the years and various people that have come and gone through the organization I have come to have a really profound understanding of some of the organization's cases that you've worked on.    Cindy mentioned this new case against San Francisco.    There's a whole list of cases that I won't get into now, but if haven't already, if you want to remind yourself of some of the work EFF has done over the years, I would encourage you too.    There's the one about Bernstein establishing that code is speech, which is such a critical decision that EFF helped get behind.    Another case that EFF was involved in was a case called Grokster.    This was the Supreme Court case that involved file sharing.    I actually camped out on the sidewalk of the Supreme Court.    That happened in 2004.    I slept out in front of the Supreme Court with my buddy Tom Randall.    There are just so many cases that EFF has been involved in.    Many of them have to do with national security.    Many of them have to do with government overreach.    Many of them have to do with various other things, such as dealing with DRM, dealing with overbearing, dishonest people who are extorting other people.    I'm thinking of a story we covered a lot when I was at Ars Technica, an entity known as Prenda Law.    Cindy did mention just a few that the organization is working on now.    The security of COVID software, the security of video conferencing software.    I'm speaking to you through some software I've never even heard of, through something called StreamYard.    I hope this has been fully vetted by EFF.    Otherwise, some crazy entity is going to be grabbing image recognition on my bike.            I just wanted to close out with one of my favorite cases that EFF has worked on.    It's not very famous.    It's not very well‑known, I don't think, outside of a few circles, but it is one of my personal favorites.    It was from a few years ago when I was at Ars Technica.    It involves a website that I encourage you to spend some time with that's called McMansion Hell.    It likes to make satirical commentary about dumb architecture in the world.    It is run by a woman named Kate Wagner who takes Zillow listings and posts them on her website.    She makes very silly commentary about it.            One of the things that many individual creator, independent creators get or are worried about getting is kind of a scary demand letter.    Ms. Wagner received such a demand letter in 2017, in June of 2017.    She was very disturbed because she received this letter from Zillow saying that she had been violating their terms of use.    She violated copyright law.    She may have violated the ultra-scary Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.    She tweeted on June 26th, 2017.    She said I'm currently seeking legal counsel.    Thank you, everyone, for your advice and well wishes.    She was so scared she decided to ultimately take down her entire website for a time.    She turned to a number of organizations and lawyers.    Eventually, she settled on working with EFF.    Literally days later, I wrote about this for Ars Technica on June 26th.    By June 29th, 2017, I wrote an article about this case.    I just wanted to read briefly what might be some of the most powerful words in the English language, which are this.    Dear Mr. Owens, Zillow Group Incorporated Seattle, Washington, the electronic frontier Foundation represents Ms. Wagner.    (Reading).    Our client has no obligation to and thus will not comply with Zillow's demands.    This letter is five pages.    It is signed by one Mr. Daniel Nazer who did a very good job of telling the people at Zillow why they were wrong.    The reason why I love this example is because this site is just so fun.    I could spend a stupid amount of time scrolling through Ms. Wagner's website, Mcmansionhell.com.    It is something that is so small and brings such joy to people like me who like silly things on the internet, who often are intimidated by companies that may have overly ambitious legal claims against them.    The EFF is there to, in my view, take on big ideas and stand up for big ideas, but ultimately support little people and actual human beings that are suffering real harm.    I just wanted to say thank you to all the people at EFF who I have worked with.    Thank you to all the people at EFF who I don't know yet.    I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you.    Congratulations to the winners and cheers to you‑all.    Thank you.    >> CINDY: Thanks so much, Cyrus, for starting us off with a drink.    I appreciate it.    Yeah, that McMansion Hell case was fun.    Good begets good.    Because of that case, we got pro bono help redesigning our logo.    Our new logo is as a result of standing up for McMansion Hell.    Sometimes we take on big fights, but occasionally we take on a bully or two.    We can still write snarky letters without Mr. Nazer, but we miss him.            Please welcome EFF staff technologist from the tech projects team, Daly Barnett.    >> DALY: Hi.    Thank you, Cindy.    Hi, everyone.    I'm Daly.    As Cindy mentioned, I'm a staff technologist at the EFF.    It is a huge honor to be introducing the first recipient of this year's Pioneer Awards.            Among so many people that are struggling to make technology more equitable, there are few people that do it with as much panache as Mistress Danielle Blunt.    She is one of the founders of Hacking//Hustling.    She is New York City's premiere dominatrix.    She focuses on the intersection of sex work and technology.    She isn't afraid of letting her efforts in all of those spill over to the other.    I first met Blunt when I heard that she and Melissa Grant were organizing an event in response to FOSTA‑SESTA.    I was doing these workshops in the same vein called digital privacy and security for online delinquents and perverts, so I knew I had to reach out to them to see if they would be open to some collaboration.    Lucky for me, they were.    A few weeks later, Hacking//Hustling had its first event at iBEAM.    Blunt has been at the forefront at all of it.    I have seen her present academic research at countless conferences and just draw the right connections in order to see her community flourish.    Blunt has all of the qualities that I admire most in activists.    She brazenly challenges respectability politics.    No matter how large or stuffy the institution she finds herself in.    She may be the first person to advertise her work at the Berkman Klein Law Center.    She refuses to draw discrete boundaries between theoretical technologyism and the impact that marginalized communities face because of this.    When she creates a space, she does so mindfully to include those who are marginalized.    She realizes it will enrich and empower the movement from the inside out.    There are few people on this planet that are as well equipped to subvert the toxic power dynamic that big tech imposes on many of us.    Mistress Blunt can look at a system like that, pinpoint the weak spots, and leverage the right tools to exploit them.    She knows that any system can be hacked and any system can be hustled.    Lucky for us, Blunt does both with a spirit of generosity.            So, without further ado, I am so lucky to introduce Mistress Danielle Blunt.    >> DANIELLE: Hey, everyone.    I am thrilled to be here with you virtually.    I am only sad that I'm not there with you‑all in a San Francisco bar in person to hustle or as you call it network.    I'm one of the cofounders of Hacking//Hustling.    We are a small collective of sex worker survivors and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice to interrupt state surveillance and violence that is facilitated by technology.            My slides are coming up, right?    Okay.    Thank you.    We formed Hacking//Hustling in response to the overwhelming silence from tech organizations and policy advocates in the wake of FOSTA‑SESTA.    We've continued to bridge the gaps between sex worker rights, tech policy, and academia.    Sex workers were some of the earliest adopters of the web.    Sex workers were some of the first to use ecommerce platforms and the first to have personal websites.    The rapid growth of countless tech platforms was reliant on the early adoption of sex workers.    Yet, as soon as those platforms start making a profit, we're the first to get kicked off as we're determined to be too high risk for investors and payment processors.    We saw with most payment processors like PayPal and Stripe.    Now we're seeing it again with cracking down on sex worker accounts.    Some sex workers are denied access to traditional payment processes and are forced to use sites that take a 20% to 40% cut of our earnings.    33% of sex workers with access to the internet report having been kicked off a payment processor.    78% of street‑based workers report not having access to a bank account at all.            In our research posting into the video, we found that those who identified as both a sex worker and an activist faced the most intense forms of platform policing across the board.    This group was significantly more likely to report being shadow banned, deplatformed, kicked off of payment processes, having mutual aid fundraisers shut down.    It shows you how this type of platform policing restricts movement work.    As so much of sex worker organizing is unfunded and underpaid, the work of Hacking//Hustling is largely supported by our own direct labor in the sex trades.    While I'm thrilled and honored to receive this award and put it on my resume, I want to remind folks that monetary support is even more powerful.    It is what keeps this work going.            Hacking//Hustling has put on events at iBEAM, Harvard, and other places.    We had to postpone an event in lieu of in‑person events.    We shifted to virtual organizing and sessions online.    We're taking back and taking up space that is so precious and so fraught for those of us who hustle online.    Sex workers are also used without our knowledge in the creation of facial recognition technologies.    This uncoupled with unknown collaborations with the states results in deportations by I.C.E.    I want to acknowledge that all not sex work takes place online.    Not all sex workers have equitable access to technologies or the internet.            This means that digital freedom for sex workers means equitable access to technologies.    It means a decriminalization of sex work and the decarceration of incarcerated sex workers.    It means cultivating a deeper understanding of how technology is deployed to surveil and restrict movement of sex workers and how this impacts all of us, because it does impact all of us.    It means understanding how the ways that sex work is policed on the streets through racist policing tactics, such as condoms as evidence of prostitution, walking bill trans bans.    Folks are denied access to technologies, deplatformed, and pushed into further vulnerability online.    Sex workers are some of the leading voices in ‑‑ Hacking//Hustling has created tons of organizing and harm reduction resources, new media pieces and reports on the dangerous of FOSTA, the EARN IT Act, and other legislation.    We're conducting community‑based participatory action research studying the impact of legislation and sex worker activists.    We fill in the gap where sex work has been left out of research on how tech policies shape labor.    You can view all these resources on Hacking//Hustling.    We're also collaborating with our incarcerated comrade to create post‑incarceration tech boot camp for formerly incarcerated sex workers.    Time and time again, when people are finally released from prison jail stints, they have no housing or sustained community support.    Basic needs and skill support must be made available to those exposed to violence after incarceration.    We're creating a program that equips those of us on the outside, especially those of us who have been impacted by incarceration to show up for those navigating life after prison, jail, or detention.    Alisha is helping us pilot this program.    We're currently looking for funding to continue our work.            Here is a link where you can donate to Hacking//Hustling directly.    If you work in tech and your company matches larger charitable donations, do get in touch about our fiscal sponsor.    It would be my absolute pleasure to redistribute your money in a tax‑deductible way.    Here is the website I built to look like a former sex worker so I can access opportunities otherwise denied to myself and my peers.    If you want to tip me, feel free to use this platform at definitelynotawhore.com.    I was told to keep this PG‑13, and I think I've done a pretty good job at that, but it would be remiss of me to not tell you to check out my nonPG‑13 content.    Currently, this is being live tweeted by one of my submissives, so please follow @mistressblunt.    If you can't find me, it is because I'm shadow banned.            As I start wrapping up, I would like to thank a few people.    First, I'd like to thank my client who gave us our first $50,000 to redistribute to community when we were unsuccessful at securing traditional funding.    I would like to thank my generous human footstool who pays me for the privilege of being organized while I do research for my fellow sex working comrades.    Just as sex work is coded as high risk by platforms, the very work that my comrades and I do to support our unpaid labor makes us at risk of unpaid fellowships.    Of course, this work is done in community.    I want to call out in gratitude for the labor of my comrades and accomplices.    I want to thank Alyssa.    Daly, while you were introducing me, thank you for reaching out and for providing us with incredible digital security training for our first ever event in 2015.    Layla, you continue to teach me so much.    I'd like to thank my co‑researchers.    Thank you to Kendra for answering my random question on Twitter, leading to countless collaborations, and continuing to uplift our work and share institutional power and to the folks at whose corner is it anyway.            Lastly, I want to share a quote from my comrade organizer.    Trans and Black sex workers taught me abolition.    Queer sex workers taught me mutual aid.    Drug using sex workers taught me harm reduction.    Sex working researchers taught me community assessment.    (Reading).    There's so much that can be learned through platforming and funding sex workers, listening to their expertise and lived experiences.    I encourage those of you who are creating technology to keep the following in mind.    If we create a platform that is safer for sex workers, many of whom live at the intersection of marginalized identities, we're creating a platform that's safer for everyone.    Thank you so much for your time and for the honor.    >> CINDY: Wow.    Thank you so much, Blunt.    We learn from you every day.    Thank you so much.    We are so proud to stand up for sex workers in our case.    We're going to take that bad idea down.    >> DANIELLE: Thank you so much.    >> CINDY: Thank you.    Boy, we started with a boom.    The advocacy and fearlessness of Blunt and her colleagues are so critical.    They play such an important role in trying to get us to think about how to center marginalized communities in the work that we do.            Now let's move on to our second award.    Top that, babies.    To present our next award, please welcome EFF director Jillian C. York.    >> JILLIAN: Hello.    Hi, Cindy.    Hi, everyone.    I'm coming in live from Berlin at 3:00 in the morning.    I apologize for my sleepy eyes over here.    I'm so thrilled today.    This is, I think, my third time presenting to Pioneer Awards and my second time virtually.    This one is actually a little earlier, so I'm happy about that, but I'm so happy to be able to present this award to the Open Technology Fund, which will be received today by their executive director, Laura Cunningham.    I've been a part of the OTF community since its very beginnings.    I've gotten to watch it grow from a fairly homogenous community to one of the most global and diverse communities there is in the digital rights space.    Actually, I think that says quite a bit because the fact that it is not the only global and diverse community in the digital rights space anymore just shows how much this field has changed in the past decade, so I'm so proud to be a part of it.            OTF has a serious focus on open‑source technology, which allows people from nearly anywhere in the world to freely and safely access the internet while also knowing people can check the code behind the products.    It's undoubtedly changed millions of lives.    OTF enables through funding to thinker grantees and their annual summit a true sense of community for the people working on these projects.    Without further ado, I want to give the floor to Laura, someone I've known for a long time and I consider dear, to accept this award tonight.    Congratulations to Laura and to the entire OTF community.    >> LAURA: Thank you so much, Jillian, for that sweet introduction, especially for staying up until 3:00 a.m. to do it.    A huge thanks to EFF for honoring the extraordinary OTF community with this award tonight.    It's truly humbling to be accepting this award on behalf of the ETF community.    Not least of all because OTF at its core is simply just an idea.    It's the idea that the face of censorship and repression and authoritarianism that talented people motivated by human rights online will not only be willing to fight back but they can prevail.    OTF is not defined by a single organization, technology, or approach.    Rather, it is a means to facilitate the creativity, commitment, and passion for those fighting for freedom on the internet front lines.    It is all too fitting that it is the OTF community and not OTF the organization that is receiving this honor tonight.            The OTF community is a small network of dedicated individuals working against incredible odds.    We are human rights defenders and hackers, developers, digital security experts, activists, technologists, and journalists all united by a common goal to protect internet freedom.    Whether we're working to combat internet censorship in Iran, repressive surveillance in China, internet shutdowns in Belarus, we are almost always out resourced and outnumbered.    Yet this community continues to prevail.    Because of its creativity, passion, resilience, and most importantly our support for one another.            Over the last seven years, this community has ensured that over 2 billion people worldwide can safely access the internet free from repressive censorship and surveillance.    It is a privilege and an honor that OTF is able to support this incredible community and its important work.    However, as many of you know, over the past several months our community has come under attack like never before.            In June, the Trump administration appointed a new CEO, Michael Pack, to oversee OTF's grantor agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.    He then froze and continues to withhold from OTF nearly $20 million in congressionally appropriated funds.    Result of this unprecedented and unjustified withholding of funds, OTF was forced in July to halt funding to 80% of our ongoing programs and to close all of our funding rounds, including our rapid response fund.    With their mission under attack and their resources stripped away, it would have been very easy for the OTF community to disperse in the face of this threat.    It would have been easy to get discouraged, to leave for the private sector, to look for funding elsewhere, or to simply just move on.    Over the last four years, we've watched many groups confronted with similar challenges do just that, but the OTF community did the opposite.            From the moment that OTF was threatened, this community has rallied and it has fought to protect this critical work.    Within just a matter of days, over 400 organizations and thousands of individuals from around the world signed a letter to Congress, protesting USAGM's actions and calling on Congress to support OTF.    In over a decade in D.C., I've never seen anything like it.    It was an extraordinary response by a truly extraordinary community of people.    And because of these efforts, the tide is beginning to turn.    Senators and congressional representatives from across party lines have spoken out in defense of OTF and condemned USAGM's actions.    Just yesterday, the D.C. Superior Court ruled unequivocally in OTF's favor in a case brought by the D.C. attorney general.    I'm so pleased that this award recognizes the impact and success of the entire OTF community, and I hope it will be a poignant reminder of what a committed group of passionate individuals can accomplish when they unite around a common goal.    In a time of so much division, I think it is more important than ever that we honor and that we celebrate community.    And I can't think of a more deserving group to be presented with this year's Pioneer Award.    It is a huge privilege to accept this award on behalf of the OTF community, but as I've said, OTF is really only a small piece of the puzzle.            We wanted to take a moment now to hear from a few members of the OTF community about what this community means to them.    Thank you.    (No audio) >> Considering how important their work is for activists and journalists across the world to fight surveillance and censorship.    >> I remember the day almost ten years ago when the idea of the OTF was shared with me.    >> OTF.    >> OTF.    >> OTF.    >> The OTF community.    >> The OTF community.    >> For me, the OTF community is resourceful.    I've never met a community that does so much with so little considering how important their work is for activists and journalists across the world to fight surveillance and censorship.    >> I remember the day almost ten years ago when the idea of the OTF was shared with me on a sunny day in Washington.    Their idea to fund and support small innovative ideas through a transparent process to engage with the global community was a breath of fresh air.    I've had experience with the government and open venture capitalism.    >> The community that has been built by OTF is really, really, really amazing.    You find that you know that got a second home.    You know that you've got a second place where you can actually go and look for resources and look for somewhere to work.    >> I love OTF because apart from providing open‑source technology to marginalized communities, I have found my sisters in struggle and solidarity in this place for a woman of color and find my community within the OTF community.    Being part of the OTF community means I'm not alone in the fight against injustice, inequality, against surveillance and censorship.    >> For me, the OTF community plays an important role in the work that I do because it allows me to be in a space where I see people from different countries around the world working towards a common goal of internet freedom.    >> For example, a person like me, a Latin‑American activist, working in a progressive environment can have the tools, but especially the support of a really strong and healthy community that can enable me to be a researcher, a developer, a technology implementer. All of these for social good.    >> I think it is a bit of an understatement to say these times have been challenging, but I find comfort within the OTF community.    >> When I think of 2020 alone, keeping that hope alive is tough.    This year, we've lost friends and family.    We've lost homes.    We've lost leaders of moments that inspired us.    We lost the chance of human interaction.    We lost a lot.    And yet we also came together, whether through Zoom calls or fundraising campaigns to save our favorite city and help those who are in need.    >> I'm going to tell you a story about villagers in Vietnam.    The year is 2020.    An 84‑year‑old elder of a village shot dead by police while defending his and the villagers' land.    His two sons sentenced to death.    His grandson sentenced to life in prison.    That was the story of three generations of family in a rural area of the Vietnam.    It was the online world that brought the stories to tens of millions of Vietnamese and prompted a series of online actions.    Thanks to our fight against internet censorship, Vietnamese have access to information.    >> Censorship and control over freedom of speech was part of the terror we lived under for 20 years.    Back in the 90s when I first had access to the internet, I understood right away the power it has.    Access to an open internet and to free software empowered me to obtain the knowledge, life experience, and skill sets that I have today.    >> My parents are both immigrants, and they came to New York during an era are New York was the beacon of freedom of expression.    They wanted to give me a world that was free of the oppressive forces that they grew up with.    Because of that, I am so passionate about digital rights.    >> As a Tibetan born in exile, internet freedom means a lot, especially when I think about Tibetans living inside Tibet under the repressive regime of China.    OTF promotes and supports technology development and the work that goes into making sure Tibetans inside Tibet can access information.    >> It is important to remember that every battle we take can have an impact on some of the most unlikely beneficiaries, like the villagers in Vietnam.    That keeps me going and going.    >> What keeps me going on is when communities around me made these spaces safer for them with the use of open‑source tools that my community at OTF is making in limited resources.    It gives me hope when I see the fight for open internet has become global and when I see young people standing up against oppression online and offline.    >> There are different challenges that we really face, you know, because we're working with people at risk and human defenders, but I think what keeps us going is that the hope for change, the hope for a better community, and the hope for a better world. >> This recognition is super important for us, especially at these times because it's a way to acknowledge the role that OTF has.    Giving underrepresented people a voice, not just as activists but also as is technologists and internet users.    >> Another quality of the OTF is we don't give up.    We can't give up and we won't give up not only for the war we're living in today, but because we honor those who fought before us.    Most important, we owe it to those who futures are still being built.    >> The community for me is also better because each individual represents a spark of light that in the darkest moments, in the darkest moments of humanity, when oppression is coming down, these are the individuals that give you hope in the future.    >> We are one community fighting together for internet freedom, a precondition today to enjoy fundamental rights.    >> It is the OTF community that fosters growth, learning, and resiliency.    It is the OTF people that provide me with the hope for the future and for humanity.    >> I'm usually not very good with speeches.    While right about now, I should be cranking up a joke.    I'm not sure I actually have an appropriate one to tell, so I'm just going to wrap it up with yet another quote.    The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.    And I can only imagine what other great things the human hearts beating in this community can do.    Thank you.    (Music playing) >> CINDY: Oh, my God.    That was awesome.    That was just terrific.    Thank you, Laura, for accepting this award on behalf of the OTF community and for bringing a piece of that community to us tonight.    Together you guys have had a tremendous impact on privacy and freedom of expression around the world, and EFF is happy to have played a small role in that.    Please accept this award as not only the recognition of what this community has accomplished but also as our pledge to keep supporting you in whatever comes next.    We know you've been in the fight of your lives.    While we're delighted with the decision today, we know this fight probably isn't quite over yet, so we're here.    We're in it with you.    We're just delighted to be in community with you.            To present our next award, please welcome EFF associate director of community organizing, Nathan Sheard.    Welcome, nash.    >> NATHAN: Thank you so much, Cindy.    I could not be more excited to recognize our next Pioneer Award recipient.    Before joining EFF, I spent several years supporting Black‑led groups addressing disparities and violence in our criminal justice system.    When I joined the EFF, one of the questions I received a lot was how I felt about making the transition from social justice organizing to human rights.    Technology affects us all, and EFF's mission gives us a responsibility to make sure the internet is shared equitably across society.    Joy and Dr. Timnit and Inioluwa are groundbreaking researchers.    Their papers made it inarguable we have entered the age of automation over confidence yet under prepared.    If we fail to include inclusivity ‑‑ their work has shown us how critical it is that we face the coded gaze, like white gaze reflects the prejudices of those who have the power to shape technology.    Over the last year and a half, EFF, our members, and our supporters have helped introduce federal legislation and pass local bans on face surveillance in close to a dozen communities across the United States.    I cannot imagine any of this having been possible without the trail blazing academic research on race and gender bias and facial analysis technology by these three inspiring researchers.    Their research revealed alarming disparities in the way facial recognition technology worked in people that were not young adult white men.    Since publishing this work, they have continued their internal and external advocacy at Stanford, Black and AI, and the Algorithmic Justice League.    Please join me in expressing our gratitude and appreciation for our final 2020 Pioneer Award winners, Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji.    >> DEBORAH: Thank you so much for this incredible opportunity in recognizing our work in ‑‑ companies need to be held to the limitations of their technology.    The technology needs to be adequately judged by those impacted the most for its appropriateness for real world use.    Technology is often not built for minority groups.    A man was falsely accused through facial recognition match.    Every immigrant surveilled on social media deployed by I.C.E. knows this.    The Gender Shapes Project is a challenge to every country that chose to omit us in their definition of performance.    We've shown the failure of the models to perform on certain minority populations was not so much an inherent technical limitation as it was a reflection of how much certain groups were completely neglected in the initial understanding of machine‑learning engineers and other technologists of what it would mean for this technology to be accurate in the first place.            Technology requiring the privacy violation of numerous individuals doesn't work.    Technology hijacked to be weaponized and target and harass vulnerable communities doesn't work.    Technology that fails to live up to its claims to some subgroups over other subgroups certainly doesn't work at all.    The project has included challenging evaluation norms in computer vision, machine learning and AI more broadly, putting research into action in remarkable ways through the AI Anti‑woman Project, multiple art shows, op‑eds, influencing policy and legislation at the local, state, and federal level, pushing for bans on surveillance at the local, state, and federal level as well, influencing company practices at IBM and Microsoft, leading these companies to make explicit statements declaring their concern and understanding of the risk of face surveillance technology used by the police, pushing for Google to no longer offer gender API results.    Most importantly, challenging the narratives of superiority as Black women really asserting ourselves in our experience and understanding to declare this kind of work is worthy of attention and is the definition of what it means for computer science research to be impactful in the field.    Most importantly, we've demonstrated a wide range of collaborations.    Through the Algorithmic Justice League, we've been working across institutional boundaries connecting with companies on bias disclosures and working with the ACLU and successful face surveillance bans and advocacy campaigns and then also connecting with those communities themselves and making sure that everyone from the tenants at a Brooklyn building in which the landlord is attempting to deploy facial recognition to citizens of a city such as Detroit that are going through police use of face surveillance and providing them an avenue to understand their voices are heard and their voices are important.            I'm so privileged to have been joined by Joy and Timnit to share this message that we understood from the very first time we tried to use facial recognition or any other open‑source tools or the first time that we tried to build our first models.    I'm proud to stand with them against systems that continue to oppress us.    I remember the first time I met Joy, sending an eager email after my own experiences working with data that completely omitted me.    I remember the first time I met Timnit after she flagged me down at my first machine‑learning conference.    I'm so proud of how far I've come, and I'm so thrilled as to how far we will go together moving forward.            I'm going to pass it to Timnit to sort of speak more to the experience we've shared together throughout this journey.    >> DR. TIMNIT: Thanks, Deb, for all these contributions and putting them in context.    My contribution is going to be to talk about how we met.    Deborah always remembers how she first saw my big afro in 2017 at a conference.    There was very few Black people.    I flagged her down because that was a time when I saw a single Black person, hey, hey, have you heard of Black AI, can you guys come over.    The first time I reached out to Joy ‑‑ my advice to everyone is it is always good to inject a little bit of randomness in your life because you never know which conversation with which person is going to lead to what. Jess, who is a South African student at Stanford was also a scholar.    I was telling her about things I was interested in.    She realized I was interested in various things and concerns about various things.    Then Joy sent this email in 2016 to the Rhodes scholar list, asking if anybody else has been thinking about issues with bias and algorithms.    She's been thinking about computer vision, et cetera.    I was like, oh, my God.    Then Jess forwarded it to me.    Oh, my God.    Thank you so much.    It is very interesting and relevant.    Hi, Joy.    My name is Timnit.    I'm a Ph.D. student working on the computer and the internet.    I'm very interested in your work in this area.    I go to Boston quite a bit to visit my family.    Maybe we can grab coffee some time and discuss some things.    That's how she was working on these issues and that's how we started collaborating.            I want to say I am so happy to have Joy and Deb by my side.    We've had to stick together.    There's a lot behind the scenes.    We've had to stick together through so many things.    There have been many times where I've said, I quit.    I'm done.    They talk me back.    There's many times where we've had to look out for each other.    Joy actually got this award and she wanted to share it with us.    All of us want to see each other rise, and all of the organizations we've founded ‑‑ Joy founded the Algorithmic Justice League.    Deb founded the Project Include.    I co‑founded with my colleague Black in AI.    We try to have all these organizations support each other.    With that, I just want to hand it over to Joy to close us off.    >> JOY: Thank you for that.    Just hearing both you, Timnit, and Deb speak to our journey, the contributions, and the most important thing to me, our sisterhood, is definitely inspiring.    You've heard a little bit about our journey together, and you've also seen the impact of the performance metrics that we showed with the Gender Shades Project.    As a poet of code, I want to switch from performance metrics to performance art.            To close this session, we have a poem I wrote after having the privilege of working with the Brooklyn tenants, who were showing that we do in fact have a voice and a choice when it comes to the kinds of technologies that are used in our communities.    If you have a face, you have a place in this conversation.    To them and freedom fighters around the world, I want to leave you with this poem.            To the Brooklyn tenants resisting and revealing the lie that we must accept the surrender of our faces, the harvesting of our data, the plunder of our traces, we celebrate your courage.    No silence.    No consent.    You show the path to algorithmic justice requires a league, a sisterhood, a neighborhood, hallway gathering, Sharpies and posters, coalitions, petitions, testimonies, letters, research, and potlucks, livestreams and twitches, dancing and music.    Everyone playing a role to orchestrate change.    To the Brooklyn tenants and freedom fighters around the world and the EFF family going strong, persisting and prevailing against algorithms of oppression, automating inequality through weapons of math destruction, we stand with you in gratitude.    You demonstrate the people have a voice and a choice.    When defiant melodies harmonize to elevate human life, dignity, and rights, the victory is ours.    Thank you.    Thanks, mom.    >> CINDY: I am speechless.    That was amazing.    All three of you just so inspiring.    Yeah, I think your mom is really proud.    Believe me, no one is going to get in your way.    No way.    Thank you‑all very, very much.    We have long known at EFF that ubiquitous surveillance doesn't equal ubiquitous safety.    Thank you for driving conversations about technological bias, especially against women of color, but also just inspiring people they can stand up, they can use their knowledge, and they can be at the cutting edge of their area and still stand up for justice.    And I want to especially thank Joy for insisting this award be shared by the three of you.    We all know no big change happens because of a single person.    How important the bonds of community can be when we're up against such great odds.    I was just delighted when you suggested adding Timnit and Deborah to this.    I hope that we can continue to do that.    Societal changes works because of the webs that we weave with each other.    I will be really excited when we get better at recognizing that as a society.            Thanks, everybody.    I hope you are as inspired as I am.    All three of those presentations and all the groups that we've honored tonight make us think, make us dance, make us smile, and make us feel like we can really make change.            You know, one of the hopes for the early internet was that this new technology could help ordinary people rebalance the scales of power.    That potential still exists, and we see it in everything.    From the rise of social movements mobilized online to the use of digital cameras and user‑generated content websites to bring needed light to uncomfortable truths about law enforcement's treatment of Black lives to the promise of encryption to allow people to associate and just go about their daily lives free of governmental prying eyes.    But we know the promise of the internet is not automatic.    It takes active work to both protect what we've got and to change our hopes into reality and then to share that reality all around the world.    We must continue to resist building or exceeding to an internet that reinforces the existing dominant structures that oppress, silence, and exploit.    We must continue to fight back against both the old powers that are increasingly reasserting themselves online as well as the powerful forces that simply want to replace the old bosses with the new bosses.    The internet can give us the tools, and it can help us create others to allow us to connect and fight for a better world, but really what it takes is us.    It takes us joining together and exerting our will and our intelligence and our grit to make it happen.    But when we get it right, EFF, I hope, can help lead those fights, but also we can help support others who are leading them and always, always help light the way to a better future.            As always, I want to thank the EFF members around the world who make our work possible.    You can support the cause today by going to EFF.org/join.    I also want to give a shout‑out to the people we honored today.    Many of them also work for nonprofits that need your support.    I really want to underline Blunt's call to support those marginalized people.    We know these are scary times and you have many people asking you for support.    Most with very good reason.    If you've listened to us so far, I hope you'll agree EFF works hard to earn your trust, your loyalty, and hopefully earn your financial support.    EFF's annual budget is over 80% salaries.    EFF is people, nearly 100 dedicated staffers who wake up every day to try to stand up for what's right.    I think we all know that we are already pretty deep into dangerous and scary waters right now.    With your support, we're going to stand together.    We're going to keep our light lit, and hopefully we'll all still be here together to usher in a brighter day.            Thanks again to Dropbox, No Starch Press, Ridder, Costa & Johnstone, and Ron Reed for supporting this year's ceremony.    Big thanks to Hannah Diaz and Erin and others on Twitter and elsewhere who are making this event happen and making it go so, so smoothly despite all the obstacles that have been thrown in our way.    Until next time, from all of the EFF staff, our board of directors, our advisory board and everybody from our clients to our staffers today, please stay safe.    Keep supporting each other and keep fighting for a brighter digital future.    The only way we can do this is together, so good night.