 Hi, everyone. I'm Cindy Cohen, and I'm the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I never get tired of saying that. I'm so proud of the work that we do together. And thank you for joining us for the 30th Annual Pioneer Award Ceremony. I can't tell you how excited I am to be here tonight and to be with you all. We have three amazing awardees all deeply involved in different ways, but all working to protect your privacy. And our keynote speakers tonight are really a dream come true for me, former EFFer, Annaly Newitz, and the incomparable Charlie Jane Anders, both of whom I'm happy to say were our friends and EFF supporters long before everybody else figured out how amazing they were. Each year, we gather to celebrate truly groundbreaking leaders in the movement for technology users' rights. We at EFF are pleased to present tonight's honorees and would like and happy to stand with them to defend freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. First, a little housekeeping. I really want to thank our sponsors, Nostarch Press, Ritter Costa and John Stone, and our friend Ron Reed. And of course, the over 37, that's 37,000 EFF members for supporting this program tonight and our work all year long. You can join the Virtual Peanut Gallery and congratulate tonight's honorees via Twitch, that's EFF.org slash Twitch, sorry, that's so wrong, EFF dash org, EFF.org slash live stream, my goodness. If you're using EFF's Privacy Badger, you can give Twitch chat your permission by shifting the slider and reloading the page, so EFF.org slash live stream. You can check out EFF's events guidelines and our code of conduct at EFF.org slash event expectations. And if you have questions or you need any assistance tonight, please feel free to drop a note in the chat or email events at EFF.org, we'll be monitoring that and see if we can address your issues. So here we are again, meeting virtually, and I'm really delighted that we can make this event work for people in so many time zones. Together though, we are really making our way through a time that is like no other. We're navigating both 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's also really made us realize how important technology and technology works in terms of connecting us all and keeping us together, even when we have to be physically apart. Despite our hopes, we're still a bit in the midst of it, things are less locked down than they were, but our pandemic is still with us. And so we still have to really rely on our tools more than in more than ever to keep us connected and to make sure that we can do the things that matter most to us. You know, despite the hardships or maybe a little because of them, the team at EFF kicked into high gear when the pandemic hit, doing what we do best, fighting for you and your rights online. The world may be changing shape and it seems like it's changing quicker than ever, but EFF was built for change. We're here to, you know, rush to the barricades when your rights need protecting. And we've had to do quite a bit of that in the last year. We've had some good successes on on fronts kind of across our issues. Most recently, we, you know, we pushed Apple to hit pause on its plan to install dangerous message and photo scanning features into our 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 our the other organizations that are helping that are pulling together to make this done. We do very little things all on our own. We're part of large groups of people who come together to do this work that we did have a little fun. We flew up 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's fun to see an EFF banner going around one infinite loop down there in Cupertino. And we'll keep fighting until Apple abandons its device scanning plans entirely. You know, regardless of Apple's intentions, we know it's just too dangerous. Apple was right years ago when it told the FBI that it couldn't build a backdoor into its devices that could only be used by good guys and couldn't be used by bad guys. And they're wrong now to think that they can build a backdoor into their devices and limit it so it's only used by good guys and not used by bad guys. We stood with them when they were right and we're first in line when they're 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 we're right there when they do the wrong thing. So that one's hot and it's happening right now and there are plenty of ways for you to get involved. If you aren't already, I suspect if you're watching our livestream, you're one of the people I need to thank for assigning your name to the petition. But watch for further efforts there. 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're going to lead the charge to boost the 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 to make sure and to try to make sure it didn't get there. We're keeping that on track and we're going to be on patrol to make sure that the funding that we need for this work is going to make it to all the people who need broadband access. And we hope California is just the start. EFF worked with the National Lawyers Guild earlier this year to develop video and blog guides to helping people observe visible and invisible surveillance at protests since protest activity has been so important in our last year. And 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 partners request private camera footage of their communities. I think it's fair to say that there's some executives in Ring that are like, we would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those kids. The U.S. Supreme Court firmly rejected an over-broad interpretation of 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 filed briefs in the case encouraging the court to take the case and also encouraging it to make it clear that violating terms of service is not a crime. EFF has raised concerns about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act early and often, of course, it was central to our work after our friend Aaron Schwartz passed away. And we're not giving up until that law gets out of the way of security researchers and ordinary tech users. Criminal law has no place in the kind of ways that it's been used. So those are some of our victories. They're just a short list of them. I could go on forever. As you could probably know, if you know me, I will go on forever about how proud I am of the work that we've done. In moments, sometimes our challenges seem insurmountable. We've had setbacks in several of our challenges around NSA spying lately and about our attempts to try to get Section 1201 declared unconstitutional. So it's worthwhile to stop and remember how much we accomplish because we win and we win a lot. Movements like ours continue to make an impact and we're here to stay. Even when there are setbacks, we find opportunities to do better. And EFF supporters know that there is great joy in EFF knowing, there's great joy in knowing that you are on the right side of history and pushing to make the world better. That's what gets me up in the morning and I know it's what gets most of the team up in the morning. For all we achieve together though, I want to take a moment and recognize two of the digital rights leaders that we have lost in this past year. They managed to touch our community in lasting ways and they left us far too soon. The first I want to mention is our friend, Internet Champion Sherwin C. He was a brilliant advocate and strategist who was dedicated to protecting and preserving the web as a place for creativity and innovation and sharing. He was also a first class geek and a maker of mischief and somebody who fully understood that making change goes hand in hand with having fun. We lost him way too soon and we miss him every day. And the second luminary who we lost this past year is our friend, the computer security researcher, Dan Kaminsky. Kaminsky embodied the raw hacker spirit of curiosity and true seeking. His talent and passion for internet security led him to numerous high profile projects from uncovering critical DNS vulnerabilities to diving into the Sony anti piracy root kit scandal of yore. His work recognized that privacy and security are inextricably linked and it's our responsibility to respect users in the tools that we build. Both Sherwin and Dan represent the best of our movement. We are sad to lose them and we lost them way too soon. But they lied 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 the shrewd minds was a widely known reputation for kindness, for humility, and for friendship. This was 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 knew them. Sherwin and Dan remind us that 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 tonight 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 that we have today. We have much work to do, but the good news is there's more of us than ever. So to start things off, I want to introduce our two special keynote speakers. They have long, as I mentioned, been part of the EFF family. Charlie Jane Anders is a renowned writer whose journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, Teen Vogue, Wired, and so many more. Her accolades include the 2012 Hugo Award for Six Months, Three Days, and the 2017 Nebula Award for her novel, All the Birds in the Sky. Her latest novel, Victories Greater Than Death, is the first book of a forthcoming YA trilogy. And Annalyn Newitz, his work has appeared, I'm going to do another long list, The New York Times, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, just to name a few. They founded the Science Fiction Writers website, they founded the Science Fiction Writers website I09, served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, and they were the cultural editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. And once upon a time, they were a policy analyst at a little organization called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. So we have, we are just so proud of our Annaly. These two award-winning authors also host the podcast. Our opinions are correct. So pay close attention to what they say. It's my pleasure to introduce and welcome our friends, Annalyn Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders. Hi. So good to be here. Thank you so much for having us. Yes, we love EFF. And of course, we have been supporting them for a very long time. And we just, it was so great, Cindy, to hear that list of all the stuff that the organization is doing, which I know is only a teeny, teeny little slice of how everyone working there and all of the supporters are just making the world better for people like us and for people who we hang out with online and people in the world who are trying to make things better. Yeah. And, you know, we're writers who think a lot about the future, like for our jobs. And, you know, Adrienne Marie Brown said that activism is science fiction, which means that the EFF is by its nature a very science-fictional organization. I mean, it's a lot more science-fictional than most. And I think that's why so many science fiction writers have worked at EFF and with EFF and our fans of EFF. And as we sat down to think about what EFF meant to us, since both of us do write science fiction and speculate about the future, 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? Yeah, I think that EFF is going to be defending the heroic hackers and activists who have come up with workarounds to defeat all of the anti-queer, anti-trends, anti-everyone policies of the 2040s, which are going to, you know, don't scare you, but the 2040s, it's going to be a rough time in some ways. And like, you know, the government and large for-profit entities are going to come up with these systems of like mandatory identifiers and like, you know, mandatory identity continuity where you have to have a single identity that is consistent across all platforms and at all times in all universes, all places, no nicknames, no pseudonyms, no identities that are, you know, situational or that no hacker names, no drag names, you know, if you can't use a name other than the name you were assigned at birth. And, you know, so trans people in particular, and this is something that's close to my heart, trans people will be required to be associated publicly with their birth name because only a terrorist or a subversive would ever want to change their name and remove all trace of their former identity, right? So we'll all be depending on the heroism of hackers and hacktivists and just heroic computer security professionals who find workarounds and methods to get around these, you know, this mandatory identity continuity system that, you know, that affects trans people and everybody else who doesn't want to be forced to be deadnamed constantly or associated with an identity that is not the identity they want to be using in a particular context, but especially those of us who don't want to be deadnamed all the time. And at the same time, I'm really worried that today's anti-trans policies at the state and national level will only be worse in the 2040s. Like we can have versions of that Texas law where there are laws that like allow, that pay bounties to private citizens who turn in their neighbors for allowing their kids access to puberty blockers or home hormones or other treatments. And I like to imagine EFF standing with all of the people who are crashing the bounty hunter websites and, you know, bringing their systems down and leaking the secret identities, secret agendas, sorry, secret agendas behind all of these supposedly security focused policies and these just generally kind of sticking a spoke in the wheel of these dystopian nightmare policies that I'm afraid might be coming. There will be so much good case law, you guys. Just so much good case law. There will be good case law as far as the eye can see. And, you know, just tons of case law proving that people have a right to privacy, have a right to anonymity, have a right to live as their real identities and be the people that they want to be in whatever context it makes sense. And then we all have a right to know about the abuses that are being done in our names. Okay. So, Annaly, where do you see EFF? What do you, what work do you see EFF doing a thousand years from now? Well, I'm glad you asked about that because I love thinking in deep time. So, okay, 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 that you license is your own memories. So it turns out that remember how Jeff Bezos set up that company to do life extension? Well, they cracked the code for living forever, you know, at least for Jeff. So he's still around. And he's 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, dear. Oh, we don't use our meat brains anymore. But for people who can't afford the cost of this hosting, you can get a free account. That's how nice Amazon is. All you have to do is let Amazon license out your memories to, you know, you know, entertainment groups, stock 3D catalogs, patent holding companies, election researchers, you know, really just all the best people with the most nuanced ethical take on what they're doing. So you can keep your memories locally on an AMP brain implant. But of course, it's, you know, always sending data back to Amazon and to AMP cloud. But then an intrepid group of nerds open up these AMP devices and figure out how to make it send your memories to open servers run by collectives. So Amazon sues, of course, this is a violation of the warranty. And you know, EFF is there, defending those tinkerers who just want the right to manage their own memories on the device that they paid for. So soon EFF is defending academics who are publishing AMP brain implant schematics. And they're winning the 900th circuit on the moon Titan issues a decision that echoes around the solar system. The panel of judges and robots says that people have a right to do what they want 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. Like EFF is just so central to how we think about the future and how we imagine like the freedoms that we're going to fight for in the future. The EFF isn't just about winning legal cases or making policy. It's about teaching new generations how to stand up for justice, even when it seems like the odds might be stacked against us. Yeah, so thank you so much to the EFF. Thanks to all the folks who work there. Some of you are my former colleagues, some of you are just like my pretend colleagues in my mind. Thank you to all the supporters who make this work possible. It's so incredibly important. It's not just important to us here, but as Charlie was saying, it's important to the future. EFF isn't just kicking us in court and in the streets and during the comment periods on federal regulations. They're allowing us to imagine a future where resistance is always possible. And for that, we're always grateful. So thanks very much for having us. Oh my God, that was awesome. That was awesome. I really, people don't share for case law very often. You know we're going to win that case. Totally going to win that case about the memories. Thank you so, so much, you guys. And honestly, I get a little over clump, but I hope we inspire people to stand up. I think that's a central part of it. And we really, really appreciate it. And of course, you know, you're our pretend colleagues too quite often. So that was great. Thank you very, very much. It's just a love fest. And hopefully one that will just continue will continue on into the future. So all right, I'm going to switch gears now because it's time for us to begin to bring on our Pioneer Award winners these days, this year, geez. And 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 Sukiyama. Thanks, Cindy. Thank you for that lovely introduction. So it's hard to summarize anyone in a couple of minutes, especially someone as accomplished and deserving of praise as Kate Crockford, but I will try. So as EFF's activist focused on state legislation, it's been my privilege over my past three years here to have a front row seat as Kate Crockford, director of the technology for liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts has emerged as a vanguard in the fight against surveillance. They're known for taking on the good and tough, sometimes seemingly impossible policy fights against the surveillance state and doing what feels all too rare for those of us in the policy world actually winning. The technology for liberty program aims to ensure that technology enriches open society and individual rights rather than curtail them. As its director, Kate focuses on protecting those most targeted by surveillance and has lent their considerable strength to push back against invasive surveillance with municipal, state and national efforts. They were the driving force behind the first statewide legislation to pump the brakes on broad police face surveillance. Kate's passion and drive helped to steer a big ship to get that law passed, even getting an assist from the Boston Celtics. Passing that policy as part of a larger police reform bill in Massachusetts earned them a profile in the New York Times as the heart of that effort. The incredulous headline, how one state managed to actually write rules on facial recognition. We know how. We got to see it and we know that Kate is not done yet. It's impossible to do policy advocacy in the privacy and surveillance space without sharing a conference line or a Zoom screen with Kate and their colleagues and every group effort I've shared with them benefits from their expertise. That's true in rooms where people are agreeing with each other and in rooms where they aren't. Kate is notable not only for their work, but also because their deep knowledge, quick wit and incisive ability to get to the heart of any matter helps to elevate the work of everyone around them. Beyond policy, as someone who pays a lot of attention to these things, I feel qualified to say that few are doing as much as Kate to shape the discussion around face surveillance, well, all invasive surveillance in this country. A writer, podcaster and outstanding communicator, Kate eloquently and forcefully fights against the privacy nihilism narrative with a true gift for reminding people not only that it doesn't have to be this way, but also that everyday people have the power to change it. To paraphrase from their TED talk, privacy is dead, right? So the narrative goes. Well, I refuse to accept that narrative and you should too. 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 driver's seat shaping our collective future. It's a privilege to fight these fights with you, Kate. I look forward to many more battles to come and it's my honor to present you with a 2021 Pioneer Award. Please join me in congratulating Kate Crockford for this much deserved recognition of their work to create a better future for us all. Thank you so much, Haley. That's very kind. I am so grateful to 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 many of you both up close and from 3,000 miles away. It's been an absolute pleasure to partner on the Face Reveillance Campaign here in Massachusetts. Together, as you said, we have accomplished so much in the face of so many naysayers and so many powerful forces. In less than two years, our press pause on Face Reveillance Campaign endorsed by a coalition of about 50 organizations won seven municipal bans on government use of facial recognition technology in Massachusetts, including in two of the three largest cities in the state, Boston and Springfield. We came extremely close to passing the nation's strongest state law on face surveillance, which would have all but banned the government's use of the technology in the vast majority of circumstances and subjected the very limited authorized uses to tight regulation, oversight and transparency. Unfortunately, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker threatened to veto that omnibus police reform legislation over this narrow section on facial recognition technology and so it was substantially weakened and cut back and for a few tense days there, it looked like maybe nothing would happen. But as you said then we called the Boston Celtics and right away the Celtics jumped in and answered the call. Jaylen Brown led his team members in penning an op-ed that ran in the Boston Globe. That op-ed was signed by every single member of the roster calling on the governor to address this technology in the police reform bill. You've probably heard the jokes about how much Bostonians love their sports teams and it worked. The governor late last year signed a police reform bill that for the first time ever subjected Massachusetts police use of facial recognition technology to court oversight and created a legislative commission to examine whether the state ought to impose even tighter rules and I'm honored to serve on that commission. Make no mistake, our campaign is not over. We are very much in the thick of it as we continue to fight to ensure this technology is never used to harm people in the Bay state. But we can already see that our work is inspiring others. I was lucky to be able to participate in the legislative process in our neighboring state of Maine working with my colleagues at the ACLU there. Where Massachusetts fell short, Maine succeeded passing the nation's strongest, most comprehensive law prohibiting government use of face surveillance technology in schools, parks, libraries, public streets, and more. And we will not give up until we have done the same here in Massachusetts. We have been able to win so many victories. Our seven vans in Massachusetts are now among nearly two dozen that have passed nationwide because we dared to have an audacious dream and we built coalitions and power that enabled us to achieve it step by step, city by city, town by town. EFF has been a partner in these coalitions in Massachusetts and across the country. And again, I am so grateful for EFF's partnership on this campaign and so many others. So I want to thank my mentors first, Nancy Murray and Carol Rose. Without these two visionary women, I would not be here today. I'm also so grateful to my parents and my wife, Omi, who is a colleague actually at the ACLU of Massachusetts and whose strategic ecumen is a big part of the reason why we were so successful at the state house last year. I also want to thank my colleagues in California, Nikki Osier and her team at the ACLU of Northern California and our former colleague, Shankar Narayan, for their vision, their courage and their tenacity. We collectively first came up with the idea, the bold idea of banning government use of facial recognition technology together at a meeting in Nikki San Francisco office. And just a year later, Matt Cagle and the coalition in San Francisco passed the world's first municipal ban on the technology. I also need to shout out my brilliant colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts. It has been such a pleasure to learn from you and to build with you over the decade plus that I've called this organization home. I'm so lucky to be able to wake up every day to fight alongside you brilliant advocates. And I want to give a special shout out to Technology Policy Council, Emiliano Falcone-Morano, whose tireless labor on our facial recognition campaign served as the foundation for our success thus far. Emiliano has sent about a thousand public records requests so far to government agencies throughout Massachusetts during this campaign and his contributions cannot be overstated. I also want to thank Joy Blumwini, one of the people who won this award last year and a leader in the movement without whom I think it is safe to say our campaign would not have even gotten off the ground. Joy's work put algorithmic auditing and justice issues on the map for so many people across this country and the world and it is truly impossible to overstate her influence in this work. In fact, I'll never forget a meeting that I had last year with district attorney Rachel Rollins in her Boston office to ask for her public support for our facial recognition campaign. DA Rollins said yes, she would be happy to join our campaign and she told me about a presentation she had attended at a conference shortly prior to that conversation. She said she'd heard an amazing young woman, a computer scientist at MIT, give a talk and deliver a poem about racial justice and bias in machine learning systems. DA Rollins later cited Joy's research in her 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 it to say we probably wouldn't have launched it had it not been for her work on gender shades. I continue to be inspired by Joy's efforts at the algorithmic justice league and I cannot wait to continue causing good trouble with her and the AJL team. Thank you also to the organizers at the student immigrant movement, a Boston-based youth-led organization dedicated to fighting for freedom and liberation for immigrant youth. SIM organizers are the reason we were able to secure a unanimous 13-0 vote at the Boston city council in favor of banning face surveillance in our town, setting us up for a no-brainer signature from the mayor. And finally, I want to extend my sincere appreciation to every single elected official in Massachusetts and beyond who has taken up the fight to ensure we never allow government to use remote biometric technologies to track our movements, our habits, and our associations in public space. Fighting alongside so many brilliant elected officials in our state has made me way more optimistic about the future than I ever thought I could be. Just Tuesday, actually, a few days ago, our lead sponsor on the face surveillance ban in Boston, city councilor Michelle Wu, won the most votes in the preliminary election to become Boston's next mayor. Over the past year, she proudly campaigned on her leadership in banning face surveillance in Boston. So candidates, 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've 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. And if we're forced to compromise, we will be in a much stronger position to do so. The second thing I've learned is that technology, while powerful, does not control us. Technological determinism is not inevitable. The most important problems human beings face today related to technology, problems like privacy, surveillance, manipulation, bias, control, centralization, security, and so many others, are fundamentally political, not technical problems. They are problems that hinge on power and politics as much or more than on code or technical hardware. In order to address the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and civil liberties, in order to build the free future we so desperately 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 that 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. And we're going to fight like hell to make it so. Thank you so much. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. What a call to arms. I feel energized. Thank you. And, you know, it's been so fun to watch you. I remember when you were a baby advocate, and watching you grow into your power has just been delightful. So, and, you know, we learned so much from you. And you were totally right about shooting big on the face surveillance thing. So, I enjoy when we get to work alongside you. And I also enjoy sometimes when we got a following your wake. So, thank you. It's going to be so great to see where you go next. And we're just delighted to honor you tonight. Thank you, Cindy. To present our next award, I'm pleased to introduce a veteran in privacy free speech and intellectual property law. That's true, but it's pretty small compared to the role that my colleague Lee Tien has played in building a better internet, often quietly, often in behind the scenes and often figuring out all the angles before most people have even awakened in the morning. Please welcome EFF senior staff attorney and the Adams chair for internet rights at the electronic frontier foundation, my colleague and friend Lee Tien. Wow. Thank you very much for that, Cindy. That was very nice. It is really my privilege today to introduce my dear friend Pam Dixon as one of this year's pioneer award winners. Pam's short bios on our site and her longer, much more impressive bio is on the world privacy forum site. But suffice to say she has done much for consumer privacy over the years. I don't actually need to go into all the things she's done because it would take too long. So I just want to highlight a few things about Pam and her work. First, she's not a lawyer and she's not a technologist, but that has not stopped her from incredible work in some of the most challenging privacy areas around. She's been active on biometrics and facial recognition long before many other people work. And she's got connections into industry biometrics forms, as well as to the federal government and to other nations implementing biometrics surveillance. In this past year, she's been super active on COVID and health data privacy policy. The second thing that I would say about Pam is that she's done all of this incredible work without being part of a big organization that has well that can do fundraising for her. I mean, I've not had fundraise at all around my life. I'm very lucky to be working at a place like EFF. Pam has to do everything. It's mind boggling me how much she's been able to accomplish. And a lot of that is due to the fact that she's incredibly good at working with other people and in leading disparate teams, herding cats, you name it. She has done it. Now that Pam is based in Oregon, she's become one of the key, if not the key, privacy advocate in the state. And believe me, EFF wants to work with her there, too. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to one of Pam's not-so-secret weapons. Over the years, our friend Bob Gelman, a former longtime Hill staffer, privacy consultant, an expert on HIPAA and the Privacy Act, has worked closely with Pam on many ideas, reports, and white papers. And we've both learned a lot from him. So without further ado, let's please welcome Pam Dixon, our 2021 Pioneer Award winner, number two. Thanks. Oh, Lee, thank you so much. That was a really kind introduction. And you are indeed a good friend. You're one of my first calls I always make when I have something to chew over. I think you know that. You've helped me think through so many things over the years. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you forever. And I look forward to many, many more years of creating Ms. Jeff with you. I want to follow along with what Lee just talked about in terms of Bob Gelman. It is not possible for me to express how much Bob has been a mentor and friend and close confidant. And he's been with me through the smallest projects and some of the largest projects and certainly the most difficult projects. I remember making midnight calls to Bob from India trying to talk through a really difficult thorny issue. Oh, there have been a lot of those calls, but Bob has been an extraordinary mentor and friend and a giant intellect to work with. So thank you, Bob. And there's many, many other people to thank too. And I'm definitely going to get to all of them as many as I can. You know, instead of just talking incessantly, which I'm very capable of doing, but I wanted to help you with some, I wanted to help you see not what I've changed through my work, I wanted to help you experience what's changed me, the people who've changed me and how and why. So can we actually, okay, so this picture right here, this is, this is, you are looking at me, I'm laughing, but inside I'm 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 Aadhar biometric ID system, and I was very concerned about it. So I talked to the board and I'm like, Hey, I think something is not cool here. There's no one working on this. I'd like to go at least check it out. So I went and I had a whole methodology. I was going to interview people about privacy and Aadhar, and I was going to look at the Aadhar enrollment. I did all of those things. But these girls changed my life. There's the PAM before this interview, and then there's the PAM after this interview. So if we can play the video, please. 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. They're 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. So those girls at the end of the video were the ones who told me that they didn't have enough money to have privacy. And you know what? It really, that was an arrow that sunk really deep into my heart as a person born in the global North. I of course knew about privilege. Of course I knew about poverty. Of course I knew about social justice, but when it really hits you in the face in a moment, it's a lucky thing. And these girls that you just saw are dollot girls in India. They have no chance of marriage or of having a life there, but they were happy and they still had hope. So they taught me to be a better person and I'm so grateful. Next image please. Okay. So this image is actually of a webinar. It's one of the best webinars I've ever seen. It was put on by ID for Africa and the person who did it is Joseph Addick. He, if you're looking at the screen, he's up in the corner. He's extraordinary. I met Joseph Addick many years ago at an FTC workshop on facial recognition. And at the end of the workshop, he said to me, he said, why aren't you working on identity systems? And he paused and he waited and I looked at him and I couldn't think of a good reason. I had already done some work on medical identity theft and, you know, 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. And I heard him and I investigated it and he's right. And Joseph taught me that. And I owe my early work in biometrics and in digital identity systems to Joseph's mentorship and leadership. And I have to tell you, Joseph is another one of those people where I've called him and what stopped him. He works in Paris and he works in Africa. And he's very rarely in my time zone. He's been enormously gracious answering my many questions about not just facial recognition systems, but all of the many biometric systems and how they're being utilized across the world. Next image, please. All right. So this is a little bit far away, but what that says in the image is RADPA. It's the Round Table of African Data Protection Authorities. This is a moment that, again, changed my life. And, you know, there is a saying and I bet a lot of you have heard it. There's law on the books and there's law on the ground. I too had heard that saying and, of course, intellectually, I knew this to be true. But so the person standing with me, her name is Techie Falconer. She is the founder of the Africa Digital Rights Hub. She's an extraordinary, extraordinary woman. She was the chair of this meeting and I was the rapporteur. So I didn't have to actually do any work. I had to take great notes and then write the report. So I was like a mouse on the wall. But what happened in the meeting is all of the African DPAs were there. And it was a Chatham House meeting. You can actually read the report. It's on our website and it's also on the ID for Africa website. And you can see what happened there. But what I learned from them is this. These data protection authorities are working in the most hostile environments. One can imagine. It is not champagne and roses and dim lights and beautiful environments. Very tough. People ignore the law on the books. And even if there is data protection, good solid data protection law on the books, it's not operating on the ground. And these DPAs had to find ways of persuading their colleagues in ministries and elsewhere to do the right thing for privacy. And they taught me about that. About how do 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're always going to find people who we disagree with and who disagree with us. What matters is what you do with that. Are you going to find a place where you can agree or are you just going to push at each other, hardening the boundaries and not making any progress? So they really taught me about that. And they do it with great love and it's a work of love for them. And in very, very challenging circumstances. Next image please. Okay. So the person to my right in this image, his name is Wonky Kim from South Korea. The person to my left is Ann Karblunk. This was in the very deep negotiations on the OECD guidelines on AI and machine learning. I worked on these for about two years with OECD and I was part of the AI experts group. And there was so much disagreement in this room. It was unbelievable. And what both Wonky and Ann Karblunk 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've got some 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. And if you can have the patience to do that, and if you can have the patience to truly hear other people, you can literally come to a good conclusion. I will say I dug my heels in on two areas with these guidelines. And Mark Rotenberg was also involved with these and will tell you there was a point where I was just like, okay, I'm done. And I wanted fairness to be included in these guidelines. The word didn't even appear in them. And I just I thought, you know what, it's time to dig in. And I dug in. And I informed everyone I was digging in. And I'm like, okay, if this if this 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 think that was probably, I don't know that that 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 came was that when there's a guideline, it needs to apply to all the jurisdictions. And we need to help everyone in all the jurisdictions, not just in the global north. We've got to move away from that that way of thinking it's it's incredibly important. Next slide, please. Okay. So for those of you who who knew him, this is Giovanni Buttarelli. He's the former European data protection supervisor. And he introduces for me a time when I want to talk about the people who aren't with us anymore. And it's so hard. Let me start with Joel Reidenberg from Fordham. We lost him in 2020. He was a lovely human being and so so sharp. I miss him. And 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. And I just, yeah, I just want to state that. The other person we lost, we lost this year. So it's still close for me. But that's Ben Onidulo. He was from Tanzania. And he's a former central bank governor of Tanzania. In his last years, he was a professor at Oxford. He was my co-chair in the Center for Global Development's working group for data governance in low and middle income countries. He was extraordinary because even though he was a lofty genius, he only wanted to talk about people and the common person, the everyday person, the person living in poverty. He wanted to talk about people without degrees, without shiny bank accounts. He wanted to talk about 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 Ben was fantastic. And then Giovanni Buttarelli, he and I had, this picture was taken when he and I had our last conversation. He knew it was and he told me it was. And I knew it too. This was at the Global Privacy Assembly in Brussels a couple of years ago. And he said, Pam, he said, I want you to continue my work because I can't. And so I really hope that I'm doing that for him. And I hope all of us can really understand that the people who have come before us have really done so, so much for us. And we can't forget them. We have to remember. So this is my remembering them. So there's a few other people I want to mention. Jane and Peter Nguyen, they are one of my sounding boards. Lee Tien and Bob Galvin and Jane Nguyen. I mean, oh my heavens, it's such a dream team. So thank you, all of you. You have been amazing to me. And then I want to also thank Tim Sparapani, who is another person I call very frequently. He, many people don't remember this, but he was the brain behind the real ID movement, which was very, very successful for many years. That was the beginning of our friendship and really respect that work. I also want to thank John Emerson, who is our data visualization person here at WPF. He makes everything make sense visually and says it all in an image worth 10,000 words. And he's been a real partner. And then I also want to thank Mike Pisa at the Center for Global Development for really giving me a chance. Here's this data privacy expert moving into an area where I mean, oh my heavens, the things I said, I think I offended at least half of half of the audiences I spoke to. And I was like, hey, you know, guys, you need to get with the ball. We can't just have multilateral organizations that aren't working on privacy. And in the time I've worked with with Mike, things have really changed for the better. We have a lot of new information and new work on privacy throughout many different jurisdictions. And I also would like to mention Judi Shumadub of Mauritius. She is another example in bravery and courage. And I just, I just think the world of her. And she's, she has done extraordinary things for privacy that probably no one has heard of. And I'm just going to end with this, going back to those, those Dalit girls orphaned in India. You know, as I said before, when, when you're born in the global North privilege is a blind spot. And I feel very fortunate that 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'm really grateful for that because, yes, I definitely did 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 American girl understanding that everyone deserves freedom and autonomy, everyone. And it doesn't, doesn't depend on how much money we make or any shiny anything. It's, it is our human birthright. And privacy is a very important part of that. But we have to remember that it can't just be for privileged people. So EFF, you have been real champions in privacy. And I know that this is these are things you really care about too. But I am really, really honored by this award. And I want to thank you for all the work that you've 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 in 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 the, from some Indian colleagues that we worked with, you know, we don't want poor privacy for poor people, right? That's, that's not right. And we continue to combat things at the national state and even the global level that just assume that that it's okay 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 rights to privacy. So thank you so, so much. It's a joy to get to honor you. You know, you, you've labored in this field for so long. And, and, and we're all not done yet. So thank you so much. I'm going to switch now to our final award. This is, this has been so fun because we really, we really have three people who have taken three awardees who have taken on privacy at very different levels in a very different way, but all standing up for you and for people around the, around the world. So to present our final award for the evening, I want to welcome our EFF colleague who's an expert on digital freedom and consumer technology and really articulate advocate for tech equity. That doesn't do her justice either. We are so proud to have EFF director of engineering in CERPOT, Alexis Hancock. Hello, hello. Man, this is, this is a pleasure. You don't 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 Crypto Harlem initiative and crypto Harlem, for those who don't know, is committed to the education protection and advancement of Black folks. They work in solidarity with all marginalized people to find ways that technology can be used to empower instead of impress. Matt holds a critical lens on technology platforms that hold immense power, power to aid law enforcement and surveillance of communities of color and a prison industrial complex. I came to a crypto party for that critical lens and left with much hope, strangely enough. A light turned off me that day and that particular light was off for a while, considering just 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 a hacker in me. Maybe, you know, it was renewed curiosity. Either way, crypto Harlem represents that much needed voice and education to those who are tired of just 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 actually talks about and gets people to understand what he knows, and that's a much different skill. And it's a critical skill and I find that to be a very rare skill. And encryption isn't just for us nerds and it shouldn't be. It's for the people in the Bronx who had to witness a robotic dog get deployed in their neighborhood by NYPD. It's for the black kids who needs to be able to reach out and safely contact adults they trust when authorities aren't their main source of help. Matt genuinely cares, you know, 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. I appreciate you so much, you know, Caribbean Islander to Caribbean Islander, you know what I'm saying. So, yeah, let's do it. So, I'm honored to receive this award, the Pioneer award. I appreciate all y'all and thanks. Thank you, Pam. Thank you, Kate. Thank you for the work you do. And it's great to be receiving an award with both of you. And I have slides, right? So, I don't know if this is going to work, but we're going to try to do these slides. And then, yeah, I'll just kind of like walk through it. Okay. All right, let's see. Boom. Okay. So, yeah, I'm just going to talk about the work I do at Crypto Harlem. To me, this award, it's like, I do so many different things, but this is a 100% Crypto Harlem award. And that means so much to me. You know, I've been doing this work for almost 10 years now, supporting marginalized communities and folks in the inner city. So, yeah, let's go. Next slide. Next slide. Okay. So, I just want to let you know this is an open bar event. We are buying the bar. Drinks are free. Walk over to your fridge and open it. And anything you see there is on us. Okay. So, kick back and relax. Next slide. All right. So, all jokes aside, I'm dedicating this award to Jelani Henry and the Henry family. If you don't know Jelani's story, then shame on you, right? Because 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 Rikers Island. And for no reason over some social media like, right? I mean, so I want to see Jelani's name on every single website that cares about internet freedom. And, you know, I talked to Jelani and he said thank you. He also has a quick message where he just kind of wanted you all to know that 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 that, you know, The Verge had to drop this. But honestly, you can't find the story anywhere else. And it's such a beautiful piece of journalism. And so it's like how the NYPD is using social media to put Harlem youth basically in jail. And this is not, I would love to tell you this is like a one-off case, but his is just the perfect example of a completely innocent person being, you know, arrested and imprisoned, not signing anything, not fleeing to any strange deals. And, you know, just and sitting there every day waiting for his day in court for over a year, which is wild, right? And this happens to folks in my community all the time and the stories don't get told. So this is a great piece. You should definitely follow the next slide. Yeah. So, you know, Jelani just wanted to let you know that, you know, he's a dad now because that story is about arrested up in 2012, right? So, you know, he's got he's got three kids, two boys and a girl, you know, you know, he's a manager at Jiffy Loop. He's holding down a job, making his life better. He's a DJ. He's the official DJ for, he's DJ blackout for crypto Harlem. So when we had, when we had in person events, he was there like doing our sound doing our music, because we're all about finding the folks who's maybe they become like an urban legend or a story, but their names get forgotten and raising them up, but also like following up like, what do you need right now? How can we support you? What are you doing? How do we, how do we get down to take you to the, you know, outside of this tragic thing that happened to you to move on to the next thing? And he was like, yeah, I'm a DJ. So he was like, you're, you're our DJ now, right? Next slide. So what is a crypto party? Because, you know, a lot of people know us as the Harlem crypto party. And a crypto party is something that started because of the Snowden revelations really. When this friend of mine, Asher Wolf, in Australia was just like, yo, I want to learn more about these things. And of course, the internet being the internet was just like shut up new, no, don't worry about it. We're experts or whatever. And that happens too much is too much gatekeeping in this privacy tech privacy, internet freedom world. And so Asher just came up with this like, yo, let's just have community events or people learn together. And they go through these docs and they learn how to protect themselves. And now when you go to crypto party.in those events are everywhere in the world, everywhere in the globe. And, you know, up in Harlem, we decided to have our own. And that's what crypto Harlem started at. Next slide. Well, what is crypto Harlem exactly? All right. So next slide. Trayvon Martin, you know, Trayvon Martin, when he died, I was working like my, you know, regular job. And I just remember just feeling this sense of loss, like it was so deep and profound. It stays with me. And it's like the loss of like, all black folks, you know what I'm saying? And, you know, I just thought like, yo, George Zimmerman will not be acquitted or something will happen. But nothing really happened. And that death of that young man, it sparked something in all of us. And like the rest of my colleagues, you know, they, they were like, listen, this is a sad day. And wow, that shouldn't have happened. But it wasn't, the reaction wasn't the same. Because I think this is just too many bodies and too many, too many names to list. So crypto Harlem started on that day. Next slide. You know, and again, you know, I'm saying like another, you know, Michael Brown, big Mike, you know, I was out in Ferguson. And I think like with the energy from this death, I was like, I must do something. You know, like, I can't just continue to just work nights and weekends helping activists and organizers. Like it needs to be something for like every single person, you know, like every average person, I'm saying. So next slide. So I started, you know, walking around. And next thing I knew my feet took me to this community center, the Harlem Venice Alliance. And it was the perfect spot. It was on the, I kid you not, some of the cross streets between Malcolm X Boulevard and Martin Luther King Boulevard. And it's probably one of the most busiest streets in Manhattan. And it's so easy to get to. And everyone in the community goes there. This is a perfect place for me to talk about privacy and surveillance and how it affects you. And, you know, why things are so different for us as marginalized folks, right? As black and brown folks, as trans folks, as queer folks, right? As Arab folks and Muslim folks. And why we don't see our communities being lifted up and protected the same way, right? Next slide. And this is what, you know, this is what the HPA looks like on the inside. And the very first event, it was packed. You couldn't see the floor. You couldn't see the walls. Like, I would love to tell you that it was empty. And we started with a small group. But people were ready for it because, you know, in our communities, this is a generational issue. This is an issue that we've been dealing with for a long time. We could school y'all on so many of these things. And for someone to just say, look, let's talk about answers. Let's talk about history. Let's talk about ways you can protect yourself. People were ready for it. And, you know, it's almost been 10 years now. And, you know, we haven't looked back. Next slide. Okay. And, you know, you'll see a welcoming face always. You'll see a positive message always, because we do in Harlem. And, you know, that's what HPA is about. And, you know, COVID has hit Harlem so hard. Next slide. And, you know, it's really affected our ability to have events in the community. We used to make it out to Miami and LA and I'm saying Oakland and Chicago once a year. And we used to have events in Harlem like almost every month. But, you know, we're going to start back again. We just talked to the folks at Community Center just today. And they were like, yeah, we're going to have precautions. And we're going to, you know, we have a live stream now, which is also on Twitch. So since you're on Twitch or if you're watching this through EFF's website, look up Crypto Harlem. And if you live uptown, if you live in Harlem, soon you'll be seeing us. So let's talk about real quick like why in Harlem. Next slide. If you come up to Harlem and Central Harlem, a heart of Harlem is 125th Street, right? This is what you'll see. Next slide. You're probably taking the subway. And so you'll surface and then you'll hear like, you know, guitars and trumpets and jazz and tap dancing and hip hop. And you'll see like, like, you know, if you think this outfit is boring and subtle, you'll see things that are just like many levels higher than this. You know what I'm saying? I would just blend in. I'll just be like whatever here. Right. But if when I took this picture, by the way, which was just this afternoon, if you pan to the right just a little bit. Next slide. This is what you see on that subway platform. Mad cops, just an army of cops standing around with like their books are ready to write a ticket handcuffs like 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'm saying? You don't see this in other neighborhoods in New York, right? And this is just one of many levels of this like layers of surveillance that you see, right? So you'll have like whenever school's going on, you'll have truancy police who will, you know, chase after any young person who's supposed to be in school, according to the United States, you're uncertain age supposed to be in school. If you're not, the cops will come and arrest you, right? And then after that wave of police, you'll just see this or just a large number of cops just hanging out and just, you know, clocking everyone walks by. Next slide. Okay. You'll see surveillance cameras like here, you know, like I take all these pictures and I research all this stuff myself. And then I speak to folks in the community like this is what this is. Let's x-ray it and take apart the tech. You know, so on here you'll see CCTV cameras, but you also see a microphone. This is flat box, which is connected to a shot spotter system, which is a, you know, a series of microphones to try to detect gunshots. And, you know, whether it's a car backfire or a firework or a firearm being discharged, they will automatically go just dispatch police to that location. And, you know, when a van full of police officers are told they have a firearm that's being fired in a location, they show up ready for war. And what we've seen is a lot of police brutality created by these like AI robots that we'll call the police. Next slide. Yeah. I mean, we have cameras, we have vehicles, just kind of like circling around, just kind of, you know, driving around. Crime is down in this country, but you would think it's at like dangerous levels. You know, in our city, in Harlem, what I've learned is surveillance technology, when it's put in place, it never gets removed. It just gets upgraded. Next slide. You know, you'll see these towers, right? And they're like little police booths on robot legs positioned all around our neighborhoods, whether you live in Inwood, whether you live in Central Harlem. And they have like heat detectors and cameras and sensors. You'll see these little electronic vehicles. And it's almost like Harlem is, and you know, any real inner city neighborhood is like the testing ground for surveillance tech. Next slide. And these are floodlights. So if you live in certain neighborhoods, you know, you used to have these gas-generated floodlights, and they're just on blasting light into the corners of your neighborhood, even if it's into your window. And now we're seeing these larger battery-operated floodlights, right? Next slide. You know, like I said, like the surveillance tech doesn't go away, there might be like a slight public safety or some other reasoning which doesn't statistically add up. And once the thing's in place, it just gets better, right? It just gets harder to hack. It just gets harder to hide from. You know, we talked about in the keynote, like this future of 2040, but that future is now for so many of us. You know what I'm saying? Like in Harlem, you'll see someone who's paying for, you know, and in other parts of the inner city, they're paying for the privilege to put themselves under house arrest, right? They're paying for their ankle shackles. They're paying for their electronic monitors, but they're technically, you know, you know, near you on the street or, you know, in their homes. Next slide. So what does Crypto Harlem actually do? I'm not going to go through all this. I'm just going to like put the slide up and hopefully you'll be able to see that. Okay. Next slide. All right. So, you know, we educate folks, first of all, and we don't just show up because, you know, we know what to tell you, right? We show up because we want to learn from you as well. So many of the stuff that I end up researching and digging into comes from our audience who will tell me like, hey, listen, I'm in school and someone told me, you know, a cop car showed up with sirens blaring, if I can just give them my phone for five minutes. And so they dumped all my pockets in my bag out, I gave them my phone, and they took it into the police car and then they gave it back to me, told me to just keep going. Well, like what was that box they plugged it into or how did it work exactly, right? So those are what kicks off our investigations that help us lead, you know, into like a lot more information, right? Other things that we do are we work with the community to just realize that they're not enough of us who understand this tech. And, you know, it gets harder for things that are invisible to see, like AI bias, well, then you must be trained in how to write this code, so you know how to read it, so you know how to protect your community. And so we take it upon ourselves to do that as well. And, you know, this past year during COVID, we had a whole camp of folks learning to, you know, get certified in cybersecurity, and they all got their CompTIA security plus. And if you didn't, you know, make sure you're still studying because, you know, that 601 test is yours, right? Next slide. And what are issues that we're focusing on today? Go to the next slide. I'm going to try to, like, not touch on all of this because it's quite a lot, right? But what we focus on are the things that affect average BIPOC folks, right? Average queer folks, average sex workers, average trans folks, issues that are based on their identities and issues that are often invisible to the dominant culture, and they don't really have good answers for it, right? Like, you know, I try to look at what's out there and no disrespect, but it's just, it doesn't speak to the communities, and it doesn't serve the communities, right? It's more, if it does exist, and oftentimes it doesn't, it's just research, right? So it's not actionable. So we build guides, we build one pagers, we build, like, simple checklists to help people, regular folks, you know what I'm saying? Get out of situations they're at. Next slide. And you can just see some of the more, you know, things that we focus on. But again, you know, whether it's shop spotters, whether it's different surveillance tech, whether it's the encroachment of, in the name of safety, public safety, COVID-19 return to work apps, and COVID-19 contact tracing apps, you know, we really try to listen to what's directly affecting people and giving them, empowering them with the skills they need to tackle them and push back and circumvent. Next slide. So why is Crypto Harlem so needed? Next slide. Well, you know, just because you work in the space of privacy or civil liberties, it doesn't give you an automatic, you know, you're not absolved of being, you know, transphobic or homophobic, you're not absolved of being racist, you know what I'm saying? You're not absolved of being eslamophobic, right? And oftentimes, the very organizations that are working to push back against, you know, harmful technologies, I don't see any Black or Brown or BIPOC or queer interns, you know what I'm saying? Or folks living on intersection of multiple identities, right? And I definitely don't see them in the staff. And so, you know, what we need to do is just do better. And, you know, what we need to do is make sure that we can speak to the communities. Because oftentimes, I hear, right, like I'll hear, well, in the United States, these are the communities being affected, the United States, these communities being monitored and surveilled. So why are those communities not reflected in the nonprofits doing this work, right? So that's what we're about. It's just kind of like, continue to make noise about those issues. Next slide. You know, there's in the movie Boys in the Hood, right? The character Doe Boy, right? He is a quote where he's just talking about Listen. And this is John Singleton who recently passed away. So Rest in Power, John Singleton, who created that movie, you know, and the point of his, his quote is basically, this happens every day here. Why is no one coming, right? Like this person's fell and they're not getting back up. Why is no one calling the ambulance? Why is there no, you know, and that's what Crypto Harlem addresses. We're trying to answer that question. And we're trying to answer that question by, you know, being positive and constructive and laying out our own solutions and empowering the communities. Because, you know, right now, next slide, there are people who are living in this like Terminator 2 future, right? They're living in this like Kafka-esque Orwellian world. And they're living in everybody's kind of like cyberpunk nightmare, but nobody's coming to save them, right? And if we don't push back for marginalized communities who are being attacked in all these different directions, it'll be too late when it reaches the dominant, you know, culture, when it reaches the suburbs, when it reaches, you know, your average, you know, straight white cis man chilling in his office, it'll be too late. So like now's the time to come to go to these communities, you know what I'm saying? And lend a helping hand because everybody's happy to see you when you're fighting these issues. Next slide. So one of the things that I saw, you know, walk around Harlem just today, I was like, yo, why are all these people with their bikes just like sleeping over these bikes, right? You know, I saw these homies just chilling on the corner. I talked to them. I was like, hey, if you don't mind me asking, I noticed that you and your friend here, you all have these bikes here, right? And so I had to use my broken Spanish to have this conversation. And they were like, yeah, we're delivery people, right? Because we're the frontline workers. We survive connected to apps. And we just stay here on different blocks, trying to trick this, this app because we learned they basically reverse engineer this algorithm. And they learn like where to stand. So they're the first bike called, right? Where to stand for the first delivery person called. So but they're putting themselves at so much risk of COVID and other things. So, you know, like, many of us, that's the world that we live in, right? Where we don't live a world of ride shares and remote work, where we're forced to live in the most dangerous versions of this pen post pandemic United States, right? So yeah, like, please, you know, just like respect these folks and reach out to these folks. Next slide. Another thing I saw were these like, we have these Wi-Fi towers all over Harlem, right? It's like this giant Wi-Fi network link NYC wireless. And you'll just see phones plugged in with cables connected to them because they have a charger on this tower. But there's no apparently no person nearby. You walk towards that phone, the person will turn visible from invisible. They'll be like, Hey, wait for my phone. That person also, but they don't have a bike even yet. They're a manual, you know, pedestrian food delivery or service delivery person. And they have to just keep the phone charge. And that's what this is, right? You'll just see it. So like in Harlem now today, other than the rapid testing for COVID and the strange, you know, wireless companies setting up signing contracts for folks, you'll just see people on bikes standing around or connected to these boxes, right? Next slide. So this is the end. You know what I'm saying? I tried to be respectful with the time. So I just want to give some shout outs real quick. Thank you. So I want to give a shout out to my family. You know, thanks for watching and checking out this live stream. And my cousin, you know, I'm saying my auntie's son, MF Doom, who is no longer with us who passed away at the end of last year and, you know, rest in power Doom. I miss you. I miss your voice. I miss your advice. I miss your creativity, fam. Next slide. Respect to MF Doom. I just want to say, you know, saying like I had a friend who used to fight for this privacy thing and taught me a lot about data brokers and how to clean people's information off the internet. And, you know, we talk about these protest movements and the marches, but I know the folks who organize those movements. I know the folks in those markets, you know what I'm saying? Respect to y'all who are watching this stream. And, you know, privacy duck, which was run by this guy right here, Will McAdam, you know, was one of the best companies to just sit there and have like a person who would just, an analyst would just work with you and not an automated computer scrubbing stuff and just make sure that you didn't get God, you know, and the haters didn't come for you and ops didn't come for you, you know, you didn't get doxxed. And we'll pass away just a few months ago. You know what I'm saying from complications from COVID-19. Next slide. So respect to you, William Nash McAdam. Respect to you, August, you know what I'm saying? It's Will's husband. And I miss you, Will. I miss your friendship. I miss all the stuff you taught me. And August, I got your back always, you know what I'm saying? If y'all follow me on Twitter, you can, you know, you can see that Will go fund me is up there. And we're just trying to raise some money to make sure like all his bills are taken care of. All right. He died very suddenly. Next slide. Okay. Who's this queen right here? Okay. This is Regina Smith who runs the Harlem business alliance. That's the place where Crypto Harlem was born because had it not been for her letting us use the community center, we wouldn't have a place to meet. There was nowhere where nobody would have us. And later on, when we were big and we blew up, you know what I'm saying? We got like Mr. Robot was giving us love and everybody was like, oh, come do your event here. But we stay there, you know, we'll never forget those day one people who had our backs. So next slide. I just want to thank you, Ms. Regina from Harlem business alliance, a respect to 75 Nakamex Boulevard always looking out for empowering black folks and black businesses and looking out for everyone in Harlem to your nonprofit. So next slide. Okay. You can't forget the people who make you look good. All right. So this is to Charmaine. Next slide. Right. And MQ trading is a new business that's just started in February up in Harlem. And so much basket gear, like so much ill fashion and it's very hard to have a normal brick and mortar business, but Charmaine is trying to do it. So if you ever come up to Harlem, visit Charmaine and, you know, tell them that sent you from crypto Harlem, you know what I'm saying? Because if anybody knows me, they know I'm always dripping and, you know, you got to have your stylist looking out for you. Next slide. And who is this man? All right. A lot of people say they have a black friend. But if you have a black friend and you know someone like this, and that is the one of the most important people in their contacts, people who do their hair. And this is my barber piece. Next slide. Yeah. So peace is always, you know, like when you have an event in a black community, people can't trust you if your lineup isn't good. You know, I'm saying if your shape up isn't right, how can I know what you're saying is right. So peace off. Make sure that's taken care of. And next slide. No lie. Peace the barber. 165 West 127th in Harlem. Like just go out there. He's always there, right? Holding things down and rest knows everything. He's the mesh network of the neighborhood. He knows everything. Next slide. Okay, this picture came out really tiny. So I'm just going to go to the next slide. Okay. That one's for the gang coalition. And gang stands for grassroots advocates of neighborhood groups, right? And if you go to gangs coalition.org, they're just like Crypto Harlem doing this work every day that matters with no thanks. You know, say no. And what they're fighting for is the removal of gang databases everywhere, starting right 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 even know if you're on it. You don't get a notification if you don't get a letter in the mail. If you get arrested, if you have any contact with law enforcement, your names in this thing, everything goes sideways. Your life becomes something from, you know, 1984 or something, right? And look, these things that are impossible to find if you're on, and they're even harder to get off of. So read about the work that they do. It's a community grassroots organization, gangs coalition.org. Next slide. Respect to y'all. And you know, I'm saying I got to, you know, go to the park once in a while and like just get my mind right. So this is one of my favorite spots in Harlem. Crackers whack playground. It's a beautiful place in the daytime. It's like right off of an underpass that mad people live under. So they also live there in the playground. But you know, I'm saying like just beautiful art 1986 just brings you that energy of hip hop and that flavor, right? So next slide. Thank you. Crackers whack. And my second favorite spot to be is the drum circles on Adam Clayton power Boulevard by the statue of Adam Clayton powered junior, right? And on the statue, it says keep the faith. And this is the kind of work where the work you do every day is literally saving lives. It's literally creating freedoms. So yeah, that's that next slide. Cool. And that's it. Next slide. You know what I'm saying? Next slide uptown grand central.org. Please visit it. We have our own grand central on 125th street. It's at the Metro North train station. It's a section of art and murals by amazing artists. So keep the slides and keep the website. It has it's insecure, but I'm about to fix it for them with some lensing grip magic. Next slide. And this is this like I saw this on the street. I think it was in Brooklyn. You never know nowadays, you know, I'm saying this might be this might be just like an ad for some kind of soda or something. But it just really hit me. And it really, you know, just reminds me that, you know, dreams come true. This pioneer awards a dream come true. Thank you for recognizing me uptown in Harlem. And, you know, just like stay focused, y'all. Right. All right. Peace. That's it. Respect. Oh, Matt, that's so great. Thank you for taking us through your world. You know, you really demonstrate, you know, who watches the watchers. I think crypto Harlem watches the watchers and we need more people like that more than ever. And, you know, you're totally right. You know, we always know that surveillance disproportionately affects black and brown people marginalized people around the world. And your bridge to those communities is it's invaluable. And and you're totally right. And you're also right to school us a little bit the big NGOs like EFF that we need more people from the communities and we need better bridges to the communities that we have now. We're so delighted when we get to work with you, but we ought to have a hundred of you. And then finally, of course, when you got the award, my immediate reaction to everyone in the staff is well, he's going to up the fashion game at the pioneer awards. And you did a little, just a little, just a little bit of hammer rocking that thing was good. Yeah, everybody's doing great. Everybody's doing great. But I'm like, we're going to have Matt. We're going to have some color. It's going to be great. So congratulations. We're delighted to honor you and hopefully give you some support for this work because it's so vital. And we really appreciate when we get to partner with you and watching what you do from afar. Yeah, yeah. Just real quick, Crypto Harlem dot com. Just come through and the biggest donation is just your time and energy and just learning about these issues. Right. So thank you. Appreciate you all. No, no, no, thank you. So I want to thank all of our honorees. As you can see from Pam to Matt to Cade, we've got people who've got your back on privacy and who see deeply into the problem, but also point the way to solutions at multiple levels. Your work is inspiring to us at EFF and it's inspiring to people all around the world. And I want to thank all of you for spending your time with us here at the pioneer awards and do some final housekeeping. 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 as well or EFF dot org slash 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 world, give us the power to do that. And of course, we have great swag. You saw Charlie Jane wearing a t-shirt the other night. I got one of the hoodies on. We definitely try to make sure that you're dressed. Maybe not a city you know, maybe not at Matt's level, but certainly 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 and cheers from San Francisco. Although right now I kind of wish I was in Harlem. But thank you all for joining us. And thanks to our sponsors again, no starch press, the law firm of Ritter, Costa and Johnstone LLP and our good friend Ron Reed for making this event possible. Thanks.