If you haven’t seen this yet, you are in for a treat.
The film features Ed Snowden, Julian Assange, and Sarah Harrison, explaining first hand, how they managed to assist Snowden on his journey from Hong Kong to the Moscow Airport, and, eventually, to safety (obtaining political asylum in Russia).
Come to our celebration of hackers and whistleblowers that make the world a better place, November 7th, 7:30 pm. (Reception 6pm.)
(Tickets $10, $20, Free)
From Lawrence Lessig:
On the morning of January 11, the anniversary of the death of my friend, Aaron Swartz, and at the place where the voting in America’s 2016 presidential election will start, Dixville Notch, we will begin the second of three walks across the state of New Hampshire.
We will also be honoring Doris “Granny D” Haddock who walked from LA to DC at the age of 88 because she understood the biggest obstacle to solving any important issue in America today — regardless of political viewpoint — is the role of money in politics.
Politicians believe America doesn’t get this. We’re walking to prove them wrong: https://walk.nhrebellion.org.
For eleven days — January 11th through 21st — we will walk across New Hampshire with hundreds of citizens demonstrating that New Hampshire and the nation want to know how our elected leaders are going to end the corrupting influence of money in politics. We demand a solution. And we’d like your help.
Please join us in New Hampshire and walk with us: https://walk.nhrebellion.org or volunteer: http://www.nhrebellion.org/volunteer.
If you can’t join the walk, you can still support us other ways:
– Register as a virtual walker: https://walk.nhrebellion.org
– Support my walk: https://walk.nhrebellion.org/lessig
– Donate your Twitter and Facebook accounts: https://donateyouraccount.com/nhrebellion
– Read about last year’s walk and share with your friends:
https://medium.com/backchannel/larry-lessigs-long-walk-b96d80d34972Join us. Support us. And please spread this idea.
Thank you everyone for coming. We have a lot of material to cover tonight, and then a whole movie to watch afterwards, so I will keep my opening remarks brief and to the point.
This year’s event’s theme is “setting the record straight” so that we can move forward. To me, this means providing a better understanding of Aaron’s actions, and how the entire situation became a misunderstanding of epic proportions that pretty much spiraled out of control.
There are a few initiatives underway designed to prevent this from ever happening again, and aimed at protecting innovators, such as Aaron, from relentless prosecution by third parties that don’t understand the nuances of the parties involved. We’ll hear from the EFF’s April Glaser, who will tell us about the upcoming Freedom to Innovate conference, which is designed to protect future student innovators from legal prosecution that victimized Aaron.
Through a combination of learning more about Aaron’s case, which we are going to do tonight, and having access to things like Aaron’s FBI and Secret Service files, which we are beginning to be released to us little by little, thanks to Kevin Poulsen’s Freedom of Information Act requests – can we begin the process of fully understanding what happened to Aaron, so that we can be sure to try to stop it from happening to anyone else.
Cindy Cohn, soon to be the EFF’s new Executive Director, will explain to us why CFAA reform is firmly stalled in both houses. (Probably now more than ever.) Finally, Dan Purcell, from what was Aaron’s new legal team, is here tonight to help us understand what their strategy was going to be for clearing his name at trial.
2013 and 2014 were big year’s for many of Aaron’s projects and ideas. He received a posthumous EFF Pioneer Award in 2013, and was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as well that year, on the same night as Vint Cerf and John Perry Barlow. Aaron surely would have been pleased to be in such distinguished company.
I think he would also be pleased to see his DeadDrop prototype blossom into the SecureDrop whistleblowing submission platform that now has 15 instances in full swing, protecting leakers from our government’s spying eyes, and enabling submissions to prestigious news organizations such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, the New Yorker, and Forbes. I also think he would’ve been proud to see his mentor Lawrence Lessig and his MAYDAY PAC team raise over 10 million dollars to fund congressional candidates committed to fundamental campaign finance reform. Remember, Aaron is the one who challenged Lessig to set out on his new course, way back in 2007.
So join us tonight, along with hackathoners in 12 16 cities around the world, as we celebrate Aaron, set the record straight about not only what he did not do, but about what was done to him, and try to find a way to move forward together, and continue to make the world a better place. Thank you.
‘Inspiration for people, threat to US govt’ – Aaron Swartz film director to RT
November 9, 2014 for RT
Download link to video piece that goes with this article.
From the interview:
RT: Aaron Swartz was basically driven to suicide for standing up to the government for what he believes in. Do you think his fate will put others off following in his footsteps?
Brian Knappenberger: No. I mean I think that treatment of Aaron Swartz was awful and it was outrageous. But I actually think that if it was meant to be a kind of persecution to put people off of this kind of behavior, I think it backfired. If it was meant as deterrence, or it was meant to make an example, as the prosecution said to Aaron’s dad and to Aaron’s council, I think that effort, probably, backfired.
People are inspired, looked at what he did and are inspired by it. I don’t think that the legal efforts against him actually would put off future Aarons. And if anything they’ll inspire them.
Lisa Rein (Coordinator, Aaron Swartz Day) April Glaser (EFF, Freedom to Innovate Summit)
Yan Zhu (Yahoo, SF Hackathon Organizer)
Brewster Kahle (Digital Librarian, Internet Archive)
Cindy Cohn (EFF Legal Director – CFAA Reform)
Kevin Poulsen (Journalist – FOIA case that MIT intervened in)
Garrett Robinson (SecureDrop)
Daniel Purcell (Keker & Van Nest, one of Aaron’s lawyers)
Q and A after the movie: with Brian Knappenberger, Director, “The Internet’s Own Boy,” Trevor Timm (executive director and co-founder, Freedom of the Press Foundation), John Perry Barlow (co-founder, EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation), and Lisa Rein (Coordinator, Aaron Swartz Day).
