>> Hi, everyone. I am Cindy Cohen and I am the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Thank you for joining us for the ceremony. I can't tell you how -- [Audio cutting out for me] >> Each year we gather to celebrate truly groundbreaking leaders. We at EFF are pleased to present tonight's honorees and are happy to stand with them to defend freedom, justice and innovation for all people of the world. First a housekeeping, I really want to thank our sponsors, No Starch Press, Ridder, Costa & Johnstone and our good friend Ron Reed. That's 37,000 EFF members supporting this program and our work all year long. You can join the virtual peanut gallery and congratulate tonight's Honorees. You can check out EFF's event guidelines and our code of conduct at EFF.org/eventexpectations. If you have questions or need assistance, drop a note in the chat or email events@eff.org. We will be monitoring that. Here we are meeting virtually and I am delighted week make this work for so many in so many time zones. We are navigating heartbreak and triumph. A year apart has given us the opportunity to reflect on what really means the most to so many of us and it is also made us realize how important technology is and how technology works in terms of connecting us all and keeping us together even when we have to be physically apart. You know, despite our hopes, we are still a bit in the midst of it. Things are less lockdown than they were but our pandemic is still with us so we have to rely on our tools more than ever to keep us connected and make sure we can do the things that matter most to us. You know, despite the hardships, there may be a lit, because of them, the team at EFF kicked into high gear doing what we do best fighting for you and your rights online. The world may be changing shape and it seems like it is changing quicker than ever but EFF was built for change. We are here to rush to the barricades when your rights need protecting. We have had good successes on fronts across our issues. We pushed Apple to hit pause on its plan to install dangerous message and photo scanning features into its devices. Just last week, we delivered thousands of your signatures to Apple. On Monday we organized demonstrations at Apple stores across the country along with there other organizations that are pulling together to make this done. We do very little things all on our own. We are part of large groups of people who come together. We flew a banner over Apple's headquarters telling them to stay out of our devices. If you haven't seen the photos from that, take a look. It is fun to see any EFF banner going around an infinite loop down in Cupertino. We will keep fighting. Regardless of Apple's intentions, we know it is too dangerous. Apple was write when told the FBI it couldn't build a backdoor into the devices that could only be used by good guys and not bad guys. They are wrong now. We stood with them when they are right and we are first in line when they are wrong. That's what we do to companies and organizations all around the world. We stand with them when they do the right thing and right there when they do the wrong thing. That one is hot and happening now and plenty of ways to get involved. I suspect if you are watching our livestream you are one of the people I need to thank for signing your name to the petition. EFF's legislative team worked with California residents and lawmakers to pass one of the largest state investments in public fiber broadband in U.S. history. We will leave the charge to boost in fast, future proof internet service options across the state and just last week, our kick ass legislative team and you blocked an effort to derail California's funding and try to make sure it didn't good there. We are keeping that on track and are going to be on patrol to make sure the funding we need for this work is going to make it to all the people who need broadband access. We hope California is just the start. EFF worked with the national lawyers guild to develop video and blog post guides to helping people observe invisible and invisible activity at protests. EFF's unrelenting, and I mean unrelenting pressure on Amazon Ring helped push the home and neighborhood surveillance giant to allow more visibility into how police request footage. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal anti-hacking law to the benefit of security researchers and ordinary tech users across the country. EFF filled briefs in the case encouraging the court to take the case and also making it clear violating terms of service is not a crime. EFF has raised concerns about the computer fraud and abuse act early and often. It was central to our work after our friend Aaron Swartz passed away. Criminal law has no place in the kinds of ways it has been used. Those are some of our victories. Those are just a short list. I could go on forever and I will go on forever if you know me about how proud of the work we have done. In moments sometimes our challenges seem insurmountable. We have had instead backs around NSA spying and getting section -- it is worth stopping and remembering how much we get accomplished. We win and win a lot. Movements like ours continue to make an impact and we are here to stay. EFF supporters know there is great joy in being on the right side of history and pushing to make the world better. That's what gets me and most of the team up in the morning. For all we achieve, I want take a moment and recognize two of the digital right leaders we have lost in the past year. They left far too soon. The first I want to mention is Sherin Siy, a brilliant advocate and administrate strategist to protecting the web as a place of creativity and innovation. We lost him way too soon and miss him every day. The second luminary we lost his past year is our friend Dan Kaminsky, the computer researcher. His passion led to numerous high profiles to uncovering critical DNS vulnerability and diving into the Sony scandal. His work showed work and security are linked and it is our responsibility to respect users in the tools we built. Both Sherwin and Dan represent the best of our movement and we are sad to lose them. We lost them way too soon. But they light the way for me and for so many others who are looking to use their technical skills or their legal skills to make the world a better place. What both of them shared, however, in addition to the skills and this is evident in their personal dedication to rights and freedoms for technology users and it was clear in the relationships they had with all of us who know them. Sherwin and Dan remind us we define technology and that we are not helpless. We help each other. Each one of us has the power to grow, nurture and inspire others in our own ways. That's precisely why we are happy to not only honor Dan and Sherwin but to celebrate our winners tonight. Together we are a community and we are a community that can and must make a better digital world than the one we have today. We have much work to do but the good news is there is more of us than ever. So to start things off, I want to introduce our two special keynote speakers. They have been long part of the EFF family. Charlie Jane Anders is renowned writer whose work has been in the New York Times, slate, Mother Jones, teen Vogue and so many more. Her accolades include Hugo award. Her latest novel victory is greater of death is the first of a trilogy. And Annalee Newitz's work has been in the New Yorker and the Atlantic to just name a few. They founded the science fiction writer website IO9. Served as the editor and chief of Gizmodo. And once upon a time they were an analyst at a little organization called there electronic frontier foundation. They host the podcast our opinions are correct so pay close attention to what they say. It is my pleasure to introduce and welcome our friends, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders. >> So good to be here. >> >> Thank you for having us. >> We love EFF. We have been supporting them for a long time. It is great to her the list of all the stuff the organization is doing which I know is only a tiny slice. We thank you you for making the world a better place and people in the world trying to make it better. >> We are writers that think a lot about the future. >> The EFF is by nature a science fiction organization. >> It is a lot more science fiction than most. I think that's why so many science fiction writers have worked at EFF and our fans of EFF. As we sat down to think about what EFF means to us, we started thinking about where EFF is going to be in the future or some organization that EFF turns into. So, Charlie Jane, where do you think EFF is going to be in 20 years? >> I think it will defending the heroic activists and hackers who came up with workarounds to fight the anti-everyone policies of the 2040s. The 2040s is going to be a rough time in some ways. Like, you know, the government, a large for-profit entities are going to come up these systems of like mandatory identifiers and where you have to have a single identity consistent across all platforms. >> No nicknames. >> No identities that are situational or no hacker names. No drag names. You know? If you can't use a name other than the name you were assigned at birth, you know, so trans people will be required to be associated publicly with their birth name because only a terrorist would want to change their name and remove all traces of identity. We will be relying on the heroism of hackers and commuter computer professionals who find workarounds and methods to get around this mandatory identity continuity system that forces trans people and everyone who doesn't want to be deadnamed or associated with an identity. I am worried today's anti-trans policy will only be worse in the 2040s. We could have laws that pay bounties to private citizens who turn families in who allow their kids have to puberty blockers or other hormonal treatments. I mind like to imagine EFF standing with the people crashing the bounty hunting websites and bringing their systems down and leaking the secret identities, secret agendas behind all of these supposedly security focused policies. These just generally kind of sticking a spoke in the wheel of these dystopian nightmare policies that I am afraid might be coming. There will be so much good case law, you guys. Just so much case law. >> Go case law! >> There will be good case law as far as the eye can see. Tons of case law proving people have a right to privacy, anonymity, a right to live as their real identity and be the people they want to be in whatever content makes sense and we have a right to know about the abuses being done in our name. Annalee, what work do you see EFF doing a thousand years from now? >> Well, I am glad you asked about that because I love thinking in deep time. OK. In a thousand years, you know, civilizations will have come and gone but you know what everyone is still going to be completely obsessed with? Licensing content except now the content you license is your own memories. Remember how Jeff Bezos setup the company to do live extension? They cracked the code for living forever, at least for Jeff, so he is still around. He has turned AWS into AMP -- Amazon Memory Palace which is backup storage for all the things that you simply cannot keep in that tiny amount of storage in your meat brain. We don't use our meat brains any more. But for people who can't afford the cost of this hosting you can get a free count. That's how nice Amazon is. All you have to do is let Amazon license out your memories to, you know, entertainment groups, stock 3D at catalogs, election researchers -- all of the best people with the most ethical nuanced take on what they are doing. You can keep memories locally on an AMP brain implant but it is always sending data back to Amazon and AMP Cloud. Then an intrepid group of nerds open up these devices and figure out how to make it send your memories to open servers run by collectives. Amazon sues. Of course this is a violation of the warranty and you know EFF is there defending the tinkers who want the right to manage their own memories on the device they paid for. Soon EFF is defending academics who are publishing AM P brain implant schematics. They are winning. The decision echoes around the solar system. The panel of judge and robots said people have a right to do with their own memories on devices that they have purchased so thank you, future EFF. >> Thank you! So we never would have been able to tell these stories without the EFF. EFF is just so central to how we think about the future and how we imagine the freedoms we will fight for in the future. EFF isn't just about winning cases and changing policy. It is about teaching new generations how to stand up for justice even when it seems like the odds might be stacked against us. >> Thank you so much to much EFF. Some are my former colleagues. Some are pretend colleagues in my mind. Thank you to all the supporters who make this work possible. It is so incredibly important and not just to us but as Charlie Jean was saying it is important to the future. EFF isn't just kicking ass in court and on the streets but they are allowing us to imagine a future where resistance is always possible. For that, we are always grateful. Thanks very much for having us. >> Oh, my God. That was awesome. You know we are going to win the case about the memories. I hope we inspire people to stand up. I think that's a central part of it. We really, really, appreciate it. Of course, you know, you are our pretend colleagues too quite often. That was great. Thank you very, very much. It is just a love fest and hopefully one that will continue on into the future. All right. I am going to switch gears because it is time to bring on our Pioneer Award winners this year. Let's switch to our very first one to present. Our first award of the evening, please welcome, a former "Washington Post" journalist and an expert in U.S. state technology policy but more importantly the person who just kicked ass to make sure that the broadband money of California gets to you, EFF Legislative Activist Haley Tsukayama. >> Thanks for that lovely introduction. It is hard to summarize anyone in a couple minutes especially someone as accomplished and deserving of praise as Kate Crawford. As EFF's activist focused on state legislation, it has been a pleasure to have a front row as Kate Crawford has emerged as a Vanguard in surveillance. They are known for taking on the tough, seemingly impossible policy fights against the surveillance state, and doing what is all to rare in the policy world actually winning. -- open society and individual rights rather than curtail them. As the director, Kate focuses on protecting those most targeted by surveillance and pushes back with municipal, state and local effort. Kate's passion and drive helped steer a big ship to get the law past and even getting an assist from the Boston Celtics. Passing that earned them a profile in the New York Times as the heart of the effort. The headline? How one state managed to actually write rules on facial recognition. We know how. We got to see it. We know that Kate is not done yet. It is impossible to do privacy advocacy without sharing a conference line without Kate and their colleagues. Every group effort I shared with them benefits from their expertise. That's true in rooms where people are agreeing with each other and in rooms where they are not. Kate is notable not only for their work but their deep knowledge, quick wit, and ability to get to there the heart of any matter. Beyond policy, few are doing as much as Kate to shape the discussion around face surveillance, well all surveillance in this country. A writer, podcaster and outstanding communicator, Kate fights against the privacy nihilism narrative with are reminding people it doesn't have to be this way. To paraphrase from their TED Talk. Privacy is dead? We can't allow Jeff Bezos or the FBI to determine the boundaries of our freedoms in the 21st century. If we live in a democracy we are in the drivers seat shaping our collective feature. It is a privilege to fight these fights with you, Kade. I look forward to many more bottles and it is my honor to present you with the 201 Pioneer Award Ceremony. Please join me in thanking Kade Crockford for their work. >> Thank you so much, Haley. That's very kind. I am so grateful for EFF for this recognition and for the organization's many years of partnership. I have worked with EFF advocates over the years and it has been a source of inspiration. I have learned so much from so own -- so many of you up close and from 3,000 miles away. It has been a pleasure to partner and we have accomplished so much in the face of so many naysayers and powerful forces. In less than two years our press pause on face surveillance won seven municipal bans on government facial technology in Massachusetts including in Boston and Springfield. We came close to passing the nation's strongest law on face surveillance which would have all but banned the technology in the vast majority of situations. Unfortunately, the governor of Massachusetts threatened to veto it over this narrow section on facial recognition technology so it was weakened and cut back and for a few tens days it looked like maybe nothing would happen. Then we called the Boston Celtics and right away the Celtics jumped in and answered the call. Jaylen Brown led his team members in an OpEd that ran in the Boston globe and was signed by ever member of the roster calling on the governor to address the technology. You probably heard the jokes about how much Bostonians love their sports team. It worked. The governor signed the bills subjecting the technology to court oversight and created a commission to examine whether this state ought to impose tighter rules and I am honored to serve on that commission. Make no mistake. Our campaign is not over. We are very much in the thick of it to ensure this technology is not used to harm people in the Bay State. We can see our work is in inspiring others. I worked with my colleagues in Maine where Massachusetts fell short Maine succeeded passing the nation's strongest most comprehensive law prohibiting face technology in schools, parks, public streets and more and we will not give up until we have done the same in Massachusetts. Our seven bans in Massachusetts are among nearly two dozen that passed nationwide. We dared to have a dream and built a team that achieved it. EFF has been a partner in these coalitions in Massachusetts and across the country and I am so grateful for EFF's partnership on this campaign and so many others. I want to thank my mentors, Nancy Mary and Cari Rose. I am grateful to my parents and my wife Romi who is a colleague and a big part of the reason why we were so successful at the Statehouse. I want to thank my colleagues in company. Nicky and her team at the ACLU of northern California and our former colleague for their vision, courage and tenacity. We came up with the bold idea of banning facial technology together at a meeting in San Francisco and a year later Matt and the coalition in San Francisco passed the world's first municipal ban on the technology. I need to shout-out to my colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts. I am so lucky to be able to wake up every day to fight alongside you brilliant advocates. I want to give a special shout-out to Technology Policy Council Falcon -- they have sent about a thousand public records requests to government agencies throughout Massachusetts during the campaign and his contributions can fought be overstated. -- not. I want to thank Joy Boom, one of the people who won the award last year, and a leader in the movement without them it is safe to say our campaign would not get off the ground. Joy put the issues on the map for so many and it is truly impossible to overstate her influence in this work. In fact, I will never forget a meeting that I had last year with district attorney Rachel Rollins in her Boston office to for her public support for our facial recognition campaign. She should she would be happy to join the campaign and told me about a presentation she attended prior to the conversation. She had an amazing young woman, a computer scientist at MIT, give a talk about racial injustice and bias in the machine systems. She sighted the research in the testimony before the Massachusetts state legislature in support of our bill. I could talk all day about joy's impact on this campaign but suffice to say we probably wouldn't have launched it had it not been for her work on gender shades. I cannot wait to continue causing good trouble with her and the AJL team. Thank you to the organizers at the student immigration movement. Sim organizers are the reason we were able to secure a unanimous 13-0 vote in favor of banning face surveillance in our town setting us up for a no-brainer signature from the mayor. I finally want to extend sincere appreciation to every elected official in Massachusetts and beyond who have taken up the fight to make sure we never allow the government to use remote biometrics to track our movements. This has made me way more optimistic about the future. Our lead sponsor on the facial recognition ban Michelle Woo won the most votes in the preliminary vote to become the next mayor of Boston. Candidates and elected officials nationwide, take note, privacy is popular. I have learned a lot from this campaign and I think two of those things are worth sharing with you tonight. The first is that small plans don't move people's hearts. We could have aimed lower with our initial demands but doing so would not have led to the kind of success that we have seen. Too often, we negotiate with ourselves before bringing our demands to the table. No longer. Let's fight for what we want. Hell, we might even end up getting it. If we are forced to compromise we will be in a much stronger position to do so. The second thing I have learned is that technology, while powerful, does not control us. Technological determinism is not inevitable. The most important problems human beings face with technology, like manipulation, bias, security and so many others are fundamentally political and not technical. They hinge on power and politics as much or more than on code and technical hardware. In order to address the most pressing issues, in order to build the free future we want to leave to our children and theirs, we must build political power and then we must flex it without apology. Our collective success on the face surveillance campaign thus far has taught me when we build broad and deep coalitions, when we have a clear and even radical demand, when we organize smart, and we fight hard, we can win any political battle over the future of our species relationship to digital systems. We want justice. We aim to be free. We are going to fight like hell to make it so. Thank you so much. >> Oh, Kade. Thank you so much. What a call to arms. Thank you. It has been so fun to watch you. I remember when you were a baby advocate at the ACLU and watching you grow into your power has just been delightful. We learn so much from you. You are totally right about shooting big on the face surveillance thing. I enjoy when we get to work alongside you and I get to enjoy when we follow in your wake. Thank you. It is going to be so great to see where you go next and we are delighted to honor you tonight. >> Thank you, Cindy. >> To present our next award, I am pleased to introduce a veteran in privacy free speech and intellect property law. That's true but it is small compared to the role that my colleague has played in building a better internet often quitely and behind the scenes and figuring out the angles before most have awakened in the morning. Please welcome EFF's staff attorney, my colleague and friend, Lee Tian. >> Thank you very much for that, Cindy. That was very nice. It is really my privilege today to introduce my true friend Pam Dixon as one of this year's Pioneer Award Ceremony. Pam's short bio is on the site and a longer and much more impressive one is on there world privacy forum site but suffice to say she has done much for computer privacy over the years. I don't actually need to go into all the things she has done because it would take too long. I just want to highlight a few things about Pam and her work. First, she is not a lawyer and she is not a technologist. But that has not stopped her from incredible work in some of the most challenging privacy areas around. She has been active on bio metrics and facial recognition long before others and has connections into industry biometric forums as well as to there federal government and to other nations implementing biometric surveillance. In the past year, she has been super active on COVID and health data privacy policy. The second thing I would say about Pam is she's done all this incredible work without being part of a big organization that can do fundraising for her. I have not had a fundraiser in my life. I am very lucky to be working at a place like EFF. Pam has to do everything. It is mind-boggling how much she she has been able to accomplish and a lot that is she is very good at working with other people, she has done it. Now that Pam is based in Oregon she has become one of the key privacy advocates in the state and EFF wants to work with her there. I want to give a quick shout-out to one of Pam's not so secret weapon. Our friend, Bob Gellman, a private consultant and expert on the privacy act has worked closely with Pam on many ideas, reports and white papers and we have both learned a lot from him. Without further ado, let's welcome Pam Dixon, our 2021 Pioneer Award winner number two. >> Oh, thank you. You are indeed a good friend. You are one of the first calls I make when I have something to chew over. You have helped me think through so many things over the years and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you forever. I look forward to many, many more years of creating mischief with you. I want to follow along with what Lee just talked about in terms of Bob Gellman. He has been with me through the smallest and largest projects and certainly the most difficult projects. I remember making midnight calls to Bob from India trying talk through a difficult, thorny issue. There have been a lot of those calls. Bob has been extraordinary mentor and friend and a giant intellect to work with, so, thank you, Bob. There is many, many other people to thank too. I am definitely going to get to all of them. Or as many as I can. You know, instead of just talking incessantly, which I am very capable of doing, but I wanted to help you see not what I have changed through my work, but I wanted to help you experience what's changed me, the people who have changed me and how and why. Can we actually -- OK. So this picture right here, this is, you are looking at me. I am laughing but inside I am going wait -- what have I been doing my whole life? These girls were one of the first groups I interviewed in India. I went to India in 2010 because I heard about a little project called the Aadhaar Biometric ID system and I was very concerned about it. I talked to the board and I am like I think something is not cool here. There is no one working on this. I would like to go check it out. I went and I had a whole methodology and I was going to interview people about privacy and look at the enrollment and I did all of those things. But these girls changed my life. There is the Pam before this interview and then there is the Pam after this interview. If we can play the video, please. >> Hi, I am Pam Dixon with the world privacy forum. Here in India and everywhere, I think kids really need to be able to be kids and to be able to learn using tools like technology without any kind of concern for privacy issues. Here in this space, with these kids learning English, these kids are unconcerned with privacy and focused on their education, on learning English, learning math and science and social studies and that's a terrific thing. I think that's a gift that we, as adults, can give to children both here, in the U.S., and in other countries by protecting kids' privacy online and off wherever we can. Thanks. >> [Reading off words in foreign language] >> So those girls at the end of the video were the ones who told me they didn't have enough money to have privacy. And you know what? That was an arrow that sunk really deep into the my heart as a person born in the global North, I of course, knew about privilege and poverty and social justice but when it hits you in the face in the moment it is a lucky thing. These girls you just saw are girls that have no chance of marriage or having a life there but they were happy and they still had hope. They taught me to be a better person and I am so grateful. Next image, please. OK. So this image is actually of a webinar, one of the best webinars I have every seen. It was put on my ID for Africa. The person woo who did it is Joseph Atick. He is up in the corner. I met Joseph at an FTC workshop on facial recognition many years ago. At the end of the workshop, he said to me, why aren't you working on identity systems? And he paused and he waited. I looked at him and couldn't think of a good reason. I had done work on medical identity theft and identity around the edges but it was Joseph who many years ago told me that I was really making a mistake because I did not understand that identity acts as a key to most ecosystems, data ecosystems. I heard him, investigated it and he is right. Joseph taught me that. I owe my early work in biometrics and in digital identity systems to Joseph's mentorship and leadership. I have to tell you, Joseph is another one of those people where I have called him and WhatsApped him. He works in Paris and Africa and he is rarely in my time zone. He has been enormously gracious answering my many questions about not just facial recognition systems but many of the biometric systems and how they are being utilized across the world. Next image, please. This is a little far away but what it says in the image is ROAD -- the roundtable of African data protection authorities. This is a moment that changed my life. There is a saying. I bet a lot of you have heard it. There is law on the books and there is law on the ground. I too had heard that saying and of course intellectually I knew this to be true. So the person standing with me, her name is Techie falconer and she is the found of the Africa digital rights hub and she is extraordinary woman. I was the repertoire and like a mouse on the wall. What happened in the meeting is all of the African DPAs were there. It with an -- it was a Chatham house meeting. You can read the report and see what happened there. But what I learned from them is this: These data protection authorities are working in the most hostile environments you can imagine. It is not champagne, roses and dim lights and beautiful environments. Very tough. People ignore the law on the books. Even if there is good, solid data protection laws on the books, it is not operating on the ground. These DPAs had to find ways of persuading their colleagues and ministries and elsewhere to do the right thing for privacy. They taught me about that. They taught me about how to you work with a cooperation, with an ability to work with people instead of just against them when you don't agree with them. We are always going to find people who we disagree and who disagree with us but what matters is what you do with that. Are you going to find place where you can agree or just push each other and harden the boundaries and not make progress? They really taught me that. They do it with great love. It is a work of love for them in very, very challenging circumstances. Next image, please. OK. So the person to my right in this image, his name is Yon key and the person to the left is Ann. This is discussions on the OECD guidelines on AI and machine learning. I worked on these for two years with OECD and was part of the AI expert group. There was so much disagreement in this room. What both of these people taught me is this. Even when there are many strongly held positions that are all backed by really great data there may be no consensus. What do you do when that happens and you have very high level soft law principles on the line? Well, these two showed me what you do when you do that and you literally have to work one idea at a time, one thought at a time. You win one heart at a time. If you can have the patience to do that and to truly hear other people you can literally come to a good conclusion. I will say I dug by heels on two areas with the guidelines and Mark was involved with these and will tell you there was a point where I was like I am done. I wanted fairness to be included in the guidelines. The word didn't even appear in them. I thought it is time to dig in. I dug in, I informed everyone I was digging in and I am like OK, if these guidelines come out without any word of fairness in there I will do everything in my power to make sure they never go anywhere. I don't know that that would would have happened but I was going to do everything I could. The other thing I really put my foot down on with this and was very, very pleased that many, many people was that when there is a guidelines, it needs to apply to all of the jurisdictions and we need to help everyone and all the jurisdictions not just in the global north. We have to move way from that of thinking. It is incredibly important. Next slide, please. OK. So for those of you who knew him, this is giovanni, the former European data protections supervisor. He introduced a time when we will talk about people who are not with us and it is so hard. Joel hardenburg we lost in 2020. He was a lovely human being and so, so sharp. I miss him. He was an amazing mentor to me in the area of student privacy and just in the area of thinking through thorny legal issues in privacy. He was a glorious human being. I just, yeah, just want to state that. The other person we lost this year. So it is still close for me but that's Beno from Tanzania. In his last year he was a professor at oxford. He was my Co-Chair in the center for global development Working Group for data governance in low and middle income countries. He was extraordinary because even though he was a lofty gene he only wanted to talk about people, and the common people and the every day person living in poverty. He wanted to talk about people without degrees and without shiny bank accounts and what people thought about privacy. What do people think about this on the ground? What do the people who are working in the shops think about this? He was always bringing us back to people and Beno was fantastic. And then Giovanni Buterli. This picture was taken when he and I had our last conversation and he knew it was and I knew it. This was in Brussels a few years ago. He said Pam, I want you to continue my work because I can't. I really hope I am doing that for lim -- him. I hope all of us can understand the people who have come before us have really done so, so much for us. We can't forget them. We have to remember. This is my remembering them. There is a few other people I want to mention. Jane and Peter Win they are one of my sounding boards. Jane Lynn and all my dream team. Thank you all of you. You have been amazing to me. I want to also thank Tim Sparepony who is another person I call frequently. Many people don't remember this but he was the brain behind the real ID movement which was very, very successful for many years. I really -- that was the beginning of your friendship and really respect that work. I want to thank you John imerson our data visual person here at WPF. He makes everything make sense visually and says it all in an image worth ten thousand words. I want to thank Mike Pizza at the center for global development for giving me a chance. Here is this data privacy expert moving into an area and the things I said. I think I offended at least half the audiences I spoke to when I said you guys need to get with the ball. We can't just have multi-lateral organizations not working on privacy. In the time I have worked with Mike things have changed for the better. We have a lot of new information and new work on privacy throughout many different jurisdictions. I also would like to mention [Foreign name] And she is another example of courage and has done extroid nar things for privacy that people have probably never heard of. I will go back to this and going back to the dallet girls orphaned in India. When you are born in the global North privilege is a blind spot. I feel fortunate that privilege was ripped away from my eyes in a very extensive way from my year living in India and doing work on Adhar. I am really grateful for that because, yes, I definitely did accomplish what I wanted to accomplish in terms of getting a lot of very significant changes to Adhar. But what happened, I think, that was most important was one North America girl understanding that everyone deserves freedom and autonomy and it doesn't depend on how much money we make or any shiny anything. It is our human birth right. Privacy is a very important part of that. We have to remember it can't just be for privileged people. EFF, you have been really champions in privacy and I know that these are things you really care about too. I am really, really honored by this award and I want to thank you for all the work that you have done over the years and I expect you to do this work for many more to come. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Pam. You know, we have worked hand and hand for so many years but you really are an amazing force on the global stage around raising these issues and I completely agree with you. You know? I love the slogan from some Indian colleagues we don't poor privacy for poor people. That's not right. We continue to combat things at the national, state and even the global level that assume it is OK to make that something that you pay for and you have been a strong voice for ordinary people and the poorest among us and in standing up for their human rights which includes the human right to privacy so thank you so, so much. It is a joy to get to honor you. You have labored in this field for so long. We are all not done yet. Thank you so much. >> I am going to switch to our final award. This has been so fun because we really have three awardees who have taken on privacy at different levels and in different ways but all standing up for you and for people around the world. To present our final award for the evening, I want to welcome our EFF colleague who is an expert on digital freedom and consumer technology and really articulate advocate for tech equity. We are so proud to have EFF's director of engineering Alexis Hancock. >> Hello. Hello. Man, this is a pleasure. You have no idea. It is my pleasure and honor to present Matt Mitchell with a Pioneer Award. In 2015, I attended a crypto party held by the CryptoHarlem initiative and for those that don't know CryptoHarlem is created to education and protection of Black folks and work to find ways technology can be used to empower instead of oppressed. Matt holds a critical lens on technology platforms that hold immense power. Power to made law enforcement, surveillance communities of color and the Prison Industrial Complex. I came to the crypto party for that lens and left with hope. A light off in me and that particular light was off for a while considering we came off the heels of Trayvon Martin's murder. I didn't find a lot to be hopeful about until I went to these crypto parties. Maybe it was the hacker in me. Maybe it was renewed curiosity. CryptoHarlem represents that much needed voice and education to those who are tired of technology happening to our communities and want to begin to shape technology for our communities. A lot of technologists are able to talk about what they know but Matt talks about and gets people to understand what he knows and that's a much different skill. It is a critical skill and I find that to be a very rare skill. And crypto isn't just for nerds. It is were there people in the Bronx who had to witness a robotic dog get deployed by the NYPD. It is for the Black people who need to reach out and contact adults they trust whether authorities aren't their main source of help. Matt genuinely cares and that enthusiasm and brilliance comes through everything he does. So with an opportunity and a rare placement to big up my friend, with that said, I introduce to you, Matt Mitchell. >> Hey. What is up? Yo, thanks for the big up, Alexis. Caribbean islander to the Caribbean islander. Let's do it. I am honored to receive this award, The Pioneer Award. I appreciate all of y'all and thanks. Thank you, Pam, thank you, Kade, thank you for the work you do. It is great to be receiving an award with both of you. I have slides, right? I don't know if this is going to work but we are going to try to do these slides. And then yeah. I will just kind of walk through it. OK? >> I am going to talk about the work I do at CryptoHarlem. To me this work is like I do so many things but this is a 100% CryptoHarlem award and that means so much to me. I have been doing this work for 10 years supporting marginalized communities and folks in the inner cities. Let's go. Next slide. Next slide. OK. I want to let you know this is an open bar event. Walk over to the fridge and anything you see is on us. -- open bar. Kick back and relax. Next slide. All right. So, all jokes aside I am dedicating this award to Jelani Henry and the Henry family. If you don't know the story shame on you, right? His story is the story of so many Black and Brown youth who are getting entrapped in multi-levels of surveillance and Jelani spent 14 months in probably one of the worst prisons on the planet earth called Rickers island for no reason. Over some social media like, right? I mean so I want to see Jelani's name on every website that cares about internet freedom. I talked to Jelani and he said thank you and had a quick message and wanted you all to know -- next slide. If you want to read about this story probably the best source you could find is this article on The Verge which is strange they had to drop this but honestly you can't find the story anywhere else. It is such a beautiful piece of journalism. It is how the NYPD is using social media to put Harlem youth basically in jail. This is not -- I would love to tell you this is a one-off case but his is just the perfect example of a completely innocent person being, you know, arrested, imprisoned and not signing anything or agreeing to anything and just sitting there every day waiting for this day in court for over a year which is wild. This happens to folks in my community all of the time and the stories don't get told. This is great piece you should definitely follow. Next slide. Jelani wanted to let you know he is a dad now because that story about an arrest that happened in 2012. He has got three kids. Two boys and a girl. You know? He is a manager at Jiffy Lube. He is holding down a job and making his life better. He is a DJ and the official DJ for CryptoHarlem. When he had in-person events he was there. We are all about finding the folks that maybe become an urban legend and raising them up and following up with how can we support you and what do you need? How can we take you outside this tragic thing that happened to move on? He was like I am a DJ. I was like you are our DJ now. Next slide. What is a cryptoparty? A lot of people know us as the Harlem Cryptoparty? It is something that started because of the Snowden revelation. A friend in Australia was like I want to learn more about these things and the internet was like shut up n00b. That happens too much. There is too much gate keeping in this privacy tech freedom world. Let's just have community events where people learn together and they go through these docs and learn how to protect themselves. Now when you go to cryptoparty.in those events are everywhere in the global. Up in Harlem, we decided to have our own and that's what it started as. What is CryptoHarlem exactly? Next slide. Trayvon Martin, you know, Trayvon Martin, when he died I was working my regular job. I remember feeling this sense of loss. It was so deep and profound it stays with me. It is like the loss of all Black folks. You know what I am saying? I thought yo, George Zimmerman will not be acquitted or something will happen but nothing really happened. That death of that young man sparked something in all of us and like the rest of my colleagues were like listen. This is a sad day and wow that shouldn't have happened but it reaction wasn't the same. This is just too many bodies and too many names to list. CryptoHarlem started on that day. Next slide. You know, and again, you know what I am saying, another -- Michael Brown, Big Mike. I was out in Ferguson. I think like with the energy from this death I was like I must do something. I can't just continue to just nights and weekends. It Ned's needs to be for every single person, every average person, you know what I'm saying? Next slide. I started walking around and my feet took me to this community center, the Harlem business alliance. It was on the perfect spot and on the cross streets of Martin Luther King boulevard and this is a perfect place to talk about privacy and surveillance and how it affects you and why things are so different for us as marginalized folks, as Black and Brown folks and queer folks, and Arab folks and Muslim folks. And why we don't see our communities being lifted up and protected the same way, right? Next slide. This is what, you know, this is what HPA looks like on the inside. The first event was packed. You couldn't see the floors or walls. I would love to tell you it was empty and we started with a small group but people were ready for it. In our communities, this is a generational issue. This is an issue that we have been dealing with for a long time. We could school y'all on so many of these things. For someone to just say let's talk about answers, let's talk about history, let's talk about ways you can protect yourself, people were ready for it. It has almost been 10 years and we haven't looked back. Next slide. You will see a welcoming face always. That's what we do in Harlem and that's what it is about. COVID has hit Harlem so hard. Next slide. And you know, it is really affected our ability to have events in the community. We used to make it out to Miami and LA and you know what I am saying and Oakland and Chicago sequence -- once a year and have events in Harlem every month. We are going to start back again. We talked to the folks at the community center and they are going to have precautions and we will have a livestream also on Twitch. Look up CryptoHarlem and if you live uptown and in Harlem soon you will see seeing us. Let's talk about real quick why in Harlem. Next slide. If you come up to Harlem, the heart of Harlem is 125th street. This is what you will see. Next slide. You are probably taking the subway and so you will surface and then you will hear like, you know, guitars and trumpets and jazz, and tap dancing and hip-hop and you will see like, you know, if you think this outfit is boring and subtle you will see things many levels hire than this. I would blend in and be like whatever. When I took this picture, which was just this afternoon, if you pan to the right this is what you see on the subway platform. Mad cops. Just an army of cops standing around with like their books out ready to write a ticket, handcuffs in their hands, and this is normal. This is just a normal day in Harlem. You don't see this in Brooklyn. You know what I am saying? You don't see this in other neighborhoods in New York. This is just one of many levels of this like layers of surveillance that you see. You will have like whenever school is going on you will have truancy police who will chase after any young person who supposed to be in school. According to the United States you are supposed to be in school if you are a certain age and if you are not the cops come and arrest you. After that you will see a large number of cops hanging out and clocking everyone who walks by. Next slide. You will see surveillance cameras. Like here I take all these pictures and research all this stuff myself and then I speak to folks in the community. This is what this is. Let's X-ray and take apart the tech. On here you will see CC TV cameras. You also see a microphone which is connected to a shot spotter system which is a series of microphones to try to detect gunshots and whether it is a car backfiring or firework or firearm they will dispatch police to that location automatically. You know, when a van full of police officers are told a firearm is being fired in a location, they show up ready for war. What we have seen is a lot of police brutality created by this AI robots that will call the police. Next slide. Yeah, we have cameras, we have vehicles. Just kind of like circling around. Just kind of driving around. Crime is down in this country but you would think it is at dangerous levels. You know, in our city, in Harlem, what I have learned is surveillance technology when put in place is never removed. It only gets upgraded. Next slide. You will see these Towers, right? They are like little police booths on robot legs positioned all around the neighborhood. Whether you are in N-wood or central Harlem. They have heat detectors and cameras and sensors. You will see electronic vehicles and it is almost like Harlem is the testing ground for the surveillance tech. Next slide. And these are flood lights. If you live in certain neighborhood, you had gas generated flood lights just on blasting light into the corners of your neighborhood even if it is into your window. Now we are seeing these larger battery operated flood lights. Next slide. Like I said the surveillance tech doesn't go away? There might be a slight public safety or another reason that doesn't statistically add up and once it is in place it gets better, harder to hack and harder to hide from. We talked about in the keynote of 2040 but that future is now for many of us. In Harlem you will see someone paying, and in other part of the inner city, they are paying for the privilege to put themselves under house arrest. They are paying for their ankle shackles. They are paying for their electronic monitors but they are technically, you know, near you on the street or in their homes. What does CryptoHarlem actually do? I will not read all that. We educate folks first of all. We don't just show up. We know what to tell you. We show up because we want to learn from you as well. So many of the stuff I end up researching and digging into comes from our audience who will tell me listen, I am in school and someone told me a cop car showed up sirens blaring, if I could give me my phone for five minutes. They dumped my pocket and bag out. I gave them my phone and they took it into the police officer and told me to keep going. What was that box they plugged it into? Those are what kickoff our investigations that lead to more information. Other things we do is we work the community the realize there are not enough of us who understand this tech. It is harder for invisible things to see AI bias and you must be trained in how to write the code so you know how to read it and protect the community. We take it upon ourselves to do that. This past year during COVID, we had a whole camp of folks learning to get certified in cybersecurity. If you didn't, make sure you still studying because that 601 test is yours. Next slide. And what are issues we are focusing on today? Go to the next slide. I am going to try to not touch on all this because it is quite a lot. What we focus on are the things that affect average BIPOC folks, queer folks, sex workers and trans folks. Issues on their identity and they don't have good answers. I try to look at what out there and no disrespect. It doesn't speak to the community and it doesn't serve the communities, right? It is more -- if it does exist, and oftentimes it doesn't, it is just research. It is not actionable. We build guides, one-pagers, simple checklists to help people, regular folks, get out of situations they are in. Next slide. And you can just see some of the more things that we focus on. But again, whether it is shotspotters, different surveillance tech, the encroachment and COVID-19 return to work and contact tracing apps. We try to listen to what's affecting people and empowering them with the skills they need to pushback and circumvent. Why is CryptoHarlem so needed? Just because you work in the space of privacy or civil liberties, it doesn't give you an automatic -- you are not absolved of being trans phobic or being a racist or -- and oftentimes the very organizations working to pushback against harmful technologies I don't see Black and Brown and queer intern and I definitely don't see them in the staff. What we need to do is just do better. You know. What we need to do is make sure we can speak to the communities. Oftentimes I will hear in the United States these are the communities being affected. In the United States these communities are being monitored and surveilled. So why are these communities not affected in the non-profits doing this work? That's what we are about. Continuing to make noise about those issues. Next slide. In the movie Boys In the Hood the character dough boy there is a quote and this is John singleton who recently passed away. The point of this quote is this happens every day here. Why is no one coming? This person is found. They are not getting back up. Why is no one calling the ambulance? That's what CryptoHarlem addresses. We are trying to answer that question and trying to answer that question by being positive and constructive and laying out our own solutions and empowering the communities. Right now there are people who are living in this like terminator 2 future. They are living in this kafka world and living in everybody's cyberpunk nightmare but nobody is coming to save them. If we don't pushback for marginalized communities who are being attacked in all these different directions it will be too late when it reaches the dominant, you know, culture. When it reaches the suburbs and your average, you know, straight, white cis man chilling in his office. It will be too late. Now is the time to come to, go to these communities, you know what I am saying? And lend a helping hand because everybody is happy to see you when you are writing these issues. One of things I saw walking around Harlem where was like why are all these people with their bikes sleeping hungover the bikes? I saw these homies just chilling on the corner. I was like if you don't mind me asking. I notice you and your friend have these bikes here. I have to use my broken Spanish to have this conversation. They were like, you, we are delivery people. We are the frontline workers. We survive connected to apps. We just stay here on different blocks trying to trick this app because we learned -- they reversed engineered this algorithm and learned like where to stand so they are the first bike call. Where to stand so they're the first delivery person called. They are putting themselves at so much risk of volunteer -- COVID and other things. Many of us that's the world we live in. We don't live a world of ride shares and remote work. We are forced to live in the most dangerous versions of this post-pandemic United States. Yeah. Like, just like respect these folks and reach out to these folks. Next slide. Another thing I saw were these like Wi-Fi Towers that we have all over Harlem. Giant Wi-Fi network link. NYC wireless. You will see phones plugged in with cables connected because they have a charger. There is no person nearby and you walk near the phone and they will turn from invisible to visible and be like get away from my phone. They don't have a bike yet. They are a manual pedestrian and have to keep the phone charged. In Harlem now today other than the rapid testing for COVID and the strange wireless companies signing contracts you will see people on bikes standing around or connected to these boxes. Next slide. This is the end. You know what I am saying? I tried to be respectful with the time. I want to give some shout-outs real quick. Thank you. I want to give a shout-out to my family. You know, thanks for watching and checking out this livestream. And my cousin, you know what I am saying and my auntie who is no longer with us at the end of last year -- auntie's son doom. Rest in power. I miss you, miss your voice, creativity and advice. Respect to MF Doom. I just want to say, you know, what I am saying, I had a friend who used to fight for this privacy thing. Taught me a lot about data brokers and how to clean people's information off the internet. We talk about these protest movements and the marches but I know the folks who organize these movements. I know the folks in those marches. Respect to you all watching the stream. Privacy Duck which was run by this guy, Will McAdams, was one of the best companies to sit there who had an analyst work with you and make sure the haters didn't come for you and you didn't get doxed. Will passed away a few months ago from complications from COVID-19. Next slide. Respect to you, William Nash-McAdams and respect to you August that's Will's husband. I miss you Will, your friendship and all the stuff you taught me and August, I got your back always. If you all follow me on Twitter, you can see that Will's GoFundMe is up there. We are just trying to raise money to make sure all his bills are taken care of. He died very suddenly. Who is this queen right here? This is Regina Smith who runs the Harlem business alliance. Had it not been for her letting us use there community center there was no place to me. Later on when we were big and Mr. Robot was giving us love and everybody was like come do your event here but we stayed there. We never forget the people from day one who had our back. I want to thank you, Ms. Regina. Always looking out for empowering Black folks and Black businesses and looking out for everyone in Harlem through your nonprofit. OK. You can't forget the people who make you look good. This is Charmaine. Infiltrating is the new business that just started in February. So much ill fashion and it is very hard to have a normal brick and motor business but Charmaine is trying to do it. If you ever come up to Harlem, visit Charmaine and tell them Matt sent you from CryptoHarlem. If anybody knows me, they know I am always dripping and you got to have your stylist looking out for you. And who is this man? A lot of people say they have a Black friend but if you have a Black friend you know someone like this and that's one of the most important people and their contact. People who do their hair. This is my barber Peace. When you have an event in the Black community people can't trust you if your line up isn't good. If your shape up isn't right, how can I what you are saying is right? Peace always makes sure that's taken care of. 165 West 127th in Harlem. Just go out there. He is always there holding things down. He knows everything. He is the mesh network of the neighborhood. He knows everything. Next slide. OK. This picture came out really tiny so I am going to go the next slide. OK. That one is for the GANG coalition, grassroots advocates for neighborhood groups and solutions. They are just like CryptoHarlem and doing there work every day with no thanks. What they are fighting for is the removal of GANG databases everywhere starting here in New York City where we have this thing called the criminal group database. We call it the GANG database and you don't know if you are on it. You don't get a letter in the mail. If you get arrested or have any contact with law enforcement your name is in this thing everything goes sideways and your life becomes something from "1984". These things that are impossible to find out if you are on and even harder to get off of. Read about the work they do. It is a community grassroots organization. Gangscoalition.org. Respect to you all. You know what I am saying I have to go the park and get my mind right. This is my favorite spot in Harlem. Crack is wack playground. It is a beautiful day and right off an underpass that mad people live in and they live there in the playground. Just beautiful art. 1986. Brings you that energy of hip-hop and that flavor. Next slide. Thank you crack is wack. My second spot is the drum circles on Adam Clayton boulevard by the statue that says keep the faith and this is the kind of work where the work you do every day is literally saving lives, literally creating freedoms so that's that. Next slide. Cool. And that's it. Next slide. You know what I am saying? Next slide. Uptowngrandcentral.org. Please visit it. It is a section of art and murals by amazing artists. Keep there slides and there website. It is insecure but I am about to fix it for them. This is just something I saw on it street in Brooklyn. You never know nowadays. This might be like an ad for some kind of coda but it really hit me. It just reminds me that, you know, dreams come true, this Pioneer Award is a dream come true. Thank you for recognizing me uptown and Harlem. Stay focused, y'all. Peace. That's it. Respect. >> Oh, Matt. That so great. Thank you for taking us through your world. You know, you really demonstrate who watches the watchers. I think CryptoHarlem watches there watchers and we need more people like that than ever. You are totally right. We know surveillance disproportionately affects Black and Brown people and your bridge to those communities is invaluable. You are totally right. And you are also right to school us a little bit. The big NGOs like EFF and that we need more from the community and better from the bridges. We are so delighted why get to work with you but we ought to have a 100 of you. And finally, whether you got the award my immediate reaction was he is going to up the fashion game and you did. >> Just a little. I liked what Pam was rocking. That was good. >> Everybody is doing good but I was like we will have Matt and we will have some colors. We really appreciate when we get to partner with you. >> CryptoHarlem.com. The biggest donation is your time and learning about these. Appreciate you. >> Thank you. I want to thank all of our honorees. From Pam to Matt to Kade we have people that see the problems and point to solutions. Your work is inspiring to us at EFF and inspiring to people all around the world. I want to thank you all of you for spending your time here with us at Pioneer Award Ceremony. Do some final housekeeping. You know, if you think what we do is good, and you want to see EFF supported, the groups here tonight are all worthy of your support. But EFF stands on the shoulders of the people who support us. EFF.org/join. You make all of our work possible and the ability for us to stand with people around the world on privacy is because of people like you who give us the power to do that. And of course, we have great swag. I got one of the hoodies on. We definitely try to make sure you are dressed -- maybe not at Matt's level but certainly makes you look cool in any situation. But once again, thank you so much for spending your time with us tonight and for supporting and helping us honor these three amazing individuals who are helping make the world a better place. Thanks, again. Cheers from San Francisco although right now I kind of wish I was in Harlem. Thank you all for joining us and thanks to our sponsors again. No Starch Press, Ridder, Costa & Johnstone and our good friend Ron Reed for making this event possible. Thanks.