September 12, 2024
EFF Awards

>> Good evening, everyone. We'll be beginning our program at 7:30 this evening, so, please grab a last drink and find a seat soon. Again, we'll be starting our program at 7:30 p.m. Thank you.
>> All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. Welcome to our 2024 EFF Awards!
[Applause and cheers].
Yeah. I'm Nathan Sheard, many of you know me as Nash. I'm the Managing Director for Advocacy and I am very excited to be here with all of you tonight, to celebrate our award recipients. Each of the folks here are really remarkable individuals who have made an impactful difference through their dedication, their commitment to empowering users and to advancing technology as a tool for change. Can we hear it for them?
[Applause and cheers].
Thank you. Thank you. And also, thank you, all, for making it here tonight. Really appreciate you. Really appreciate the support you've given EFF over the years. All the staff at EFF, thank Dropbox and Electric Capital for sponsoring tonight's event.
[Applause and cheers].
And if we can give it up one more time for the 30,000 individual members around the world that make EFF's work possible every day!
[Applause and cheers].
That's right. And if you're joining us online, we are livestreaming tonight. They probably know this already, make sure you tell your friends you can join and celebrate our winners with us at the Twitch chat. And, if, for any reason, live captions, if you appreciate them, they're helpful for you, tonight's event will be livecaptioned.
It's really important to us that we create the best opportunity for everyone to enjoy tonight's event comfortably and safely and so that's really the reason behind we've created the event expectations and the Code of Conduct. If you have any needs, we have folks who are designated program monitors. We have Lee Walker, we have Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer, and Allison. If you have any needs 
[Applause].
  please. So, if you have a question about those expectations or if you have a need, please feel free to reach any of them or really any EFF member. We're all happy to help. For the folks who are joining online, you can drop a message into the Twitch chat or email EFF. So, we're  we're here to tonight to celebrate innovative and creative ways of using technology to bring people together. We know it has the capability of disrupt our ability to connect with one another so I'm going to ask everyone to just join me  everyone here, join me in taking one small step to mitigate the risk of technology disrupting our ability to connect tonight.
[Laughter].
So if you could pull out your device...hold your device in your hand. Now all collectively, we're going to make sure they're on silent.
[Laughter].
Let's hear it for collective action.
[Applause and cheers].
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Alexis. She's going to make sure I don't go over time. Who also told me I'm wearing an Obama suit. Appreciate you, Alexis.
The last 34 years, we also know that the web has an unmatched ability to bring us together and betterunderstand the world we live in. And so, that is really underscores why it is so important that we continue to fight for internet freedom and one of the folks that's been a formidable leader, protecting users' freedoms, our Executive Director, Cindy Cohn.
[Applause].
>> All right. Good evening. Thank you, Nash. I am Cindy Cohn, proud to say the Executive Director of the amazing Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'm thrilled to be at the awards with you all and joining us both inperson and online, to honor this year's award winners and to celebrate their accomplishments.
This is a night where the whole EFF community can come together to honor those doing incredible work. And looking through this crowd, I can see we have many current and former staff members, board members, advisory board members, interns, and friends from allied organizations and many, many more joining us online, too. Thank you, all, for choosing to join us tonight.
Yearafteryear, people tell us one of the best things about coming to the EFF Awards is to meet people passionate about digital rights. Say hello to someone you haven't met yet or you don't know very well. If you need an icebreaker, ask them which of our many fights got you off the sidelines that made you decide to join us.
For those online, feel free to put that in the chat, as well. It's always fun to see how people came to EFF. There's a range of work. Some of us are copy fighters. Some of us really hate surveillance. Some of us are for busting the bad patents. By the way, NSA's spying. Just saying.
[Laughter].
As the reach of the internet grows, our reach continues to grow, as well. EFF logged  permit me, this is the part where I brag a bit about the organization.
[Applause and cheers].
EFF logged 19,715 media mentions in the first eight months of the years alone. Our How To Fix the Internet podcast won two years and our fifth season had a 21% increase in downloads and our EFFector newsletter is up and of course, our legal work continues. We had a great example of how EFF shows up at the Def Con, before a talk about vulnerability. He got a cease and desist notice. Our Coders' Rights team sprung into action. The researcher was actually able to give his talk on the last day of Def Con. We always have your back.
[Applause and cheers].
Our design team has pulled together some clips from the recent interviews of EFF staff, so if you could, let's play the reel.
[Video:]
>> Privacy, versus public safety.
>> If you make it easy for law enforcement to access, you make it easier for criminals to access, too.
>> A lot of these technologies are untested.
>> Ring camera.
>> Part working for you, but part working for the police department.
>> Especially when you install hundreds of them across a city.
>> The technology is behind where the technology is.
>> Thankfully, there are tools to help maintain your privacy and security online.
>> The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one focused on selfdetermination of users.
>> The public's privacy.
>> For the free flow of information around the world.
>> Fighting back against types of corporate surveillance.
>> If crimes happen in your neighborhood, they could download the, video from your Ring. Advocates call it a 
>> Win for privacy.
>> Dr. Matthew, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believe to regain.
>> Thanks so much.
[End of video].
[Applause and cheers].
>> I tell you, I could watch that all day. And of course, Matthew couldn't have said it better. Ring cameras were hardworking for you but also hardworking for the police department and in fact, we had one Amazon staffer pull us aside and said, do you have a personal vendetta against us? Of course, it's not personal. We just care about peoples' privacy. The tenacity is noticed in corporate halls. So, in addition to the Amazon Ring camera victory.
This is on four million servers, maintaining websites. We encrypted the web, people. The FCC closed loopholes. That is a fight that I'm afraid is not over. EFF helped resist an unlawful warrant issued to an independent news organization. And, we fought back to ensure that police drone footage was not categorically exempt for public records. We can see what the cops are seeing, as well.
We love a good victory at EFF, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Our team is focused on many things in 2024. We're watching the Telegram situation, especially to see if it's a threat to endtoend encryption. We don't know yet. We continue to shout from the rooftops that protestrelated arrests are not sufficient to justify dragnet searches. And our privacyfirst approach, the ideas that privacy protections are a better approach to online harms than censorship, was partially vindicated when the 9th Circuit throughout the California AgeAppropriate Design Code Act likely violated the first amendment. We hate to say we told you so, but we told you so.
It can be truly exhausting and scary to feel the weight of the world's problems on our shoulders. We're not alone. You're not alone. And we're not alone and as a wise [Indiscernible] said to, me courage is contagious.
We've gathered to celebrate three honorees and help us lift us all up. First, 404 Media, who will receive the EFF Award for Fearless Journalism.
[Applause and cheers].
Next, our friend, Carolina Botero, who will win the EFF Award For Fostering Digital Rights in Latin America.
[Applause and cheers].
And finally, Connecting Humanity for Championing Internet Access in Gaza.
[Applause and cheers].
Congratulations to each of our honorees. We're all here to let you know that you're not alone either.
Now I have the honor of introducing our special guest this even, Elizabeth Minkel. Elizabeth is an journalist who focuses on digital technologies and culture. She curates The Rec Center, featuring fan articles, fanart and fan recommendation. Please welcome Elizabeth Minkel.
[Applause and cheers].
ELIZABETH MINKEL: Hi, everyone. So, first of all, I just want to thank the EFF so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here tonight. I've admired your work for so long and it's such an honor to share the stage with honoree, who does so much more work than me. I write XMen. It involves explaining fans and culture across different modes and industries. I think the EFF invited me to act as a sort of ambassador. Though I suspect given the general vibe of the EFF, I think some of you are citizens of my nation, as well.
[Laughter].
But as I thought about the work that EFF does and how it connects to fans, I started to think about my personal fandom history. And I thought about all the ways that the EFF and likeminded technologists help shape the fandom world I grew up, a place where people were able to gather, wholly for free, to express sexuality, without censorship, to argue whether or Mulder and Scully should kiss.
I thought I'd give you a sense of that history. Then I want to talk about where online fandom is today. The work you've done over the decades has helped us so much, even if indirectly.
I started writing fanfiction before I had access to the internet, which is a pretty common experience for people my age and older. But when I did get online around age 14, it coincided with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is Season 3, the best season. It was the era of strippeddown, handcoded websites, organized. Giles, just to name one character. It was on one of these sites, where Giles became a vampire. This was revelatory to me. Other people loved things as much as I did and even more miraculously, they were creating all this stuff, penning whole novels entirely for free.
I had no idea that in other fandoms, sites were being threatened. Paramount, famously, threatened Star Trek sites, which was a big turnaround from their attitudes, where people were writing Kirk and selling it under the table at conventions.
They were seeing fandom  really seeing it, for the first time, and fanfiction, which they didn't understand. And they were, of course, worried about their brands and platforms always capitulated to them, even when the things fans were doing were defensible.
I spent ignorance, I had no idea that stuff was being labeled "adult" and being taken down. When I migrated to Harry Potter, which is where I spent the most of the 2000s. Which, whatever, it was fine.
[Laughter].
I had zero knowledge that people, like my future podcast partner, Flourish Klink, were being threatened by Warner Bros. I think it was alohamora.net and they were 12 years old. People put, I do not own these characters. At the top of their fic, which legally meaningless.
But I don't recall ever hearing the term, fair use. And honestly, I don't remember having any thoughts about the legality of fanworks at all. I wasn't attuned to their conversations about platforms and entertainment corporations.
When I became a journalist, I became to understand the structures. When I met Flourish, who wound up working, explaining to fans to people in Hollywood, we started the Fansplaining, and our widerange of guests, entertainment, tech, media, the law, all helped me see the forces I had been shaping my youthful fan experiences. We talked about development in the Axanar case, from about a decade about. Paramount got upset because some Star Trek fans made a film that was too much professional.
I mentioned at the time that I just didn't find copyright particularly compelling and Flourish liked it because they had been threatened by Warner Bros. When they were 12. But within a few years of doing this podcast and reporting on this stuff and researching it, I found myself saying, copyright is the most interesting thing and maybe I should go to law school, which my lawyer friends and my lawyer father said, please, for the love of god, do not do that.
[Laughter].
But the other rights holder started to fade by the mid2000s. Thousands of deeplyenthusiastically making things about your brand is inspiring. Transformative fandom has grown massively. Fannishness pervades the pop culture.
The Buffy websites feel so distant. How fandoms grow, what kinds of things fans make and share, the metrics of success. Algorithm are widely discussed and they're embraced and collectively manipulating. People sell fanworks, despite copyright law not changing. Where fans once held up a fourth wall, many fan creators directly breach that, showing fanart directly to the actors.
And big entertainment brands do approve of fanarts, boosting them on social media.
Fanfiction remains a holdout. People haven't really done that for the last 20 years, knowledge about it has been a folk wisdom. They talk about fair use all the time, not always accurately. I see it mangled quite frequently, which has left us with a strong, sometimes even rigid antimonetizing stance.
I don't think the law's as black and white as fans make it out to be. I like this stance, the gift economy. I love creating stories for my readers. Fanfiction today often feels like a tiny holdout in the morass. More in tuned with the web. No one tells me to turn my fic into a side hustle. And they don't try to put that in an influencer fandom status. Some of that has been creeping in recently and I hate it.
How does this all connect to the EFF, surveillance, privacy, the work of the honorees and XMen fanfiction, I like to think our creative practices are vitally important. Individual fans, more importantly to the collective and I do think fandom creativity is under threat today.
Just like the web on a whole, the last decade has bought us hallowing out of fandom online. The scale may be massive, but the space for creativity and, the squeeze on users. Restrictive content policies, around adult and queer and trans content. A lack of moderation means fans face harassment with little recourse.
And go in closed spaces like Discord. We've seen huge corporations grow everstronger and I've watched fans embrace this, actively cheering when entertainment corporations buy their character.
And proposed restrictive legislation means that they might be able to be a part of fandom at all.
Your values align with what I think of as the true spirit of fandom, a strong pushback against those strangle holds. You know the definition of "fair use" and their work as just as much work to exist as any creative endeavor.
If was a teen, I imagine  I can't imagine I would live in blissful ignorance, like teenage me. I would watch 60 TikToks explaining fair use.
So, I just want to thank the EFF for all the work you've done for us over the past few decades and for the work you'll do for us in the next few decades. If you need a fanfiction recommendation, just let me know.
Thank you.
[Applause and cheers].
>> Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Your light and energy reminds of the glow that brought us to the web to begin with. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I want to pick up on something Elizabeth shared. I can't tell you how many times I've hold my cousins, there's no meaningful reason for you to write you don't own the rights to this music. They don't listen to me. Maybe if I say it over Twitch, they'll listen. Tyree, no one's confused if you own Whitney Houston.
[Laughter].
I would like introduce Dave Maass. Dave's expertise covers policing, government transparency and border surveillance. In addition to spearheading, Dave leads the surveillance project with the Reynold's School of Journalism. Before joining EFF, Dave was a wellrespected and feared journalist. I'd like to introduce Dave Maass.
[Applause and cheers].
>> Thanks, Nash. Good evening, everyone. Freedom of the Press is one of EFF's most cherished values. We fought for the right of news organizations for court records. We've written digital security guides for reporters and we even train young journalism students on how to investigate technology. I said goodbye to Trevor Timm when they formed the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Journalism is in EFF's DNA. More than 10% of our staff has a background in journalism. That's how many staffers are part of EFF Exjournos.
There was a rare moment of joy when it was announced that some of our investigative journalists, Joseph Cox Sam Cole, Emanuel Maiberg and Jason Koebler, were striking out on their own to form 404 Media, an independent news site that would allow them to continue their fearless reporting of tech abuses. I have never smashed a subscribe button so fast.
[Laughter].
Now at EFF, we spend a lot of time talking to news journalists to make sure the injustices we fight against are exposed to a wider world. We found out from the hardworker investigators who unearth these stories. When you get a message from 404 Media, you open it immediately because you just know they've uncovered something explosively scandalous or absurd.
I went through my archived emails and found the first time 404 Media cofounder, Jason Koebler, reached out to me. He was uncovering Politico. A Mexican spyware seller and a web startup founder had funneled money illegally into an election. They have been involved in unearthing so many big scoops, hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, consumer rights. When the surveillance, Flock Safety, promoted a study that their automated license plates readers were involved in solving 10% of crimes nationwide, a lot of news outlets promoted it unquestioned. 404 Media, instead, dug deep and uncovered records showing it was a little more than a marketing document. They poked so many holes in it, you could use it to strain spaghetti.
Tech reporting isn't easy and it requires people who understand tech, care about it deeply but would rather make enemies in tech. There's Dhruv Mehrotra, at wired, Kashmir Hill, at the New York Times.
404 Media also have shown the courage and sacrifice to fight for their editorial space by forming their own scrappy media company. I am proud to bestow upon them the EFF Award. They were not able to make it, I'll temporarily accept this on their behalf. 404 Media editor, Jason Koebler, has sent in a video to make up for their unexpected absence. So, let's give them a round of applause while we queue up the tape.
[Applause and cheers].
[Video:]
>> I'm Jason Koebler, I'm a cofounder of 404 Media. I have COVID. I wanted to first congratulate Connecting Humanity, who is doing work in impossible situations. And Carolina Botero, for her work. We're humbled to be honored alongside you.
A little over a year ago, my colleague, Sam Cole, Emanuel Maiberg, Joseph Cox and I started 404 Media. We had the idea that a small team of journalists can do impactful work. We're journalists, we know what we're doing. When we launched, here's what we wrote, we hope our stories will take over the internet, impact public policy and expose bad actors. We'll point out the absurd. We'll be irreverent and have fun and do very serious work. We hope that you'll read these stories and want to send them to your group chat or bring them up as conversation starters at parties.
Since then, we've exposed flaws that allowed people to be tracked on the New York City Subway, a flaw that has been fixed. We have an app that tracks nonconsensual from the internet.
That reporting has led directly to lawsuits. And somehow, along the way, after much bashing my head against the wall, I figured out who has been making those bizarre Shrimp Jesus that keep going viral on Facebook. We've only been able to do this because our readers have shown they want this type of work to exist in this world and they've shown they're willing to financially support it. There's a huge demand for journalism that is written by humans for humans and people don't want to read AIgenerated news stories written for algorithms and then jammed down our throats.
[Applause and cheers].
We believe that media companies should succeed because they're doing work, not because they have a cool office or a propped up by venture capitalists. We're thankful to be one of a journalistowned, independent companies that have shown there's another way to do this, that are succeeding and that are doing important, fun work for other people. And we're really thankful that the EFF believes this work is important.
I became a tech journalist a long time ago, mostly on accident and at the time, I didn't know anything about anything. I got really lucky and I stumbled upon the EFF very early in my career. And, at the beginning, I called them about domestic drone surveillance, then I called them about Section 230. Then Right to Repair and FOIA and on and on and on and all of those conversations, with so many incredible staffers, I've learned a thing or two and I'm so thankful for it. You do such incredible work and thank you for the work you do. I know Sam, Emanuel and Joseph feel the same.
Thank you so much.
[End of video].
[Applause].
>> Has anyone written fanfiction about a garage? I've never had so much garage envy before.
[Laughter].
Thank you. I knew someone  thank you, Elizabeth. Democracy depends on independent journalism and there's so much gratitude to 404 Media for the work they've done.
Our next award will be presented by Jillian York. The author of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism. And Jillian has written for Motherboard, MIT Technology Review and Wired. Jillian leads fighting state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture, particularly marginalized communities.
Please welcome Jillian York.
[Applause and cheers].
>> Good evening. So, as I'm sure pretty much everyone in this room knows, EFF's mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice and innovation for all people of the world. That mission has led us to many corners of this big earth and covers a range of issues, working with allies on the ground or conducting research on border surveillance.
The internet is an essential service. It enables people to build and create community, acquire knowledge and shed light on injustice. People in crisis zones rely upon the free flow of information to survive and restoring internet access where other communications infrastructure has been destroyed helps with the dissemination of lifesaving information, distribution of humanitarian aid, enables educational and cultural contact and ensures that people's stories can be shared with the rest of the world.
That's why I'm really proud to present an award to Connecting Humanity, based mostly in Cairo, in Egypt, that helps Palestinians in Gaza and provides them with eSIMs.
EFF has been working alongside many allies across the Middle East and North Africa and have seen the struggle faced by Palestinians in the West Bank and as well in Gaza to access the free and open internet, which is in near total control from the Israeli government.
And that's what makes Connecting Humanity's work so important. The organization, led by Egyptian journalist, Mirna El Helbawi, has provided 400,00 eSIMs to Gaza since October.
[Applause and cheers].
>> And they're continuing to collect donations of eSIMs. Mirna's here to receive the award and we'll congratulate her up to the stage in just a minute. Before I welcome her, let's watch a short video about their work.
[Playing video with closed captioning].
[End of video].
[Applause and cheers].
>> In case you couldn't read that URL, it was gazaesim.com.
I'd like to welcome Mirna El Helbawi to accept the EFF Award on behalf of Connecting Humanity.
[Applause and cheers].
MIRNA EL HELBAWI: Should I keep, like, holding it?
[Laughter].
Thank you so much.
It's such an honor to receive this award by EFF, a prestigious foundation. And this award is multiplied for me, on a personal level, as a woman from the Arab world and a writer who had no technology background.
But I know many will see this as an ironic moment, to be standing here in the country, who is number one supporter and partner in committing these war crimes in Gaza. One of them, and there are many, is isolating millions of people and stripping away their light for internet access and telecommunication services. And after that, intentional targeting, the gathering points of journalists and civilians using the eSIMs, but me, being here despite that is exactly the core of Connecting Humanity.
On October 27th, the day before the first blackout of internet and telecommunications in Gaza, I shared the desperate, yet hopeful video on my Instagram, consisting all of the supportive messages from people around the world. For Palestine and Gaza and I wrote a caption, people are not their governments. Because they are not. And we, here, in this place, are not.
Connecting Humanity started from the people, to the people, because asking today's leaders and governments for our right for a free and untouchable internet access is like asking your kidnapper to give you their phone so you can call the police.
[Applause and cheers].
Connecting Humanity is this lady, sitting on her couch, in her safe house in United States, living on paychecktopaycheck, struggling, yet she willingly decided to oppose our government horrifying and donate a eSIM. Some people used it to save and resume their online jobs, to resume their online education and to connect again all the hospitals, from the north to the south and of course, to all the journalists, exposing what's happening on the ground and innocent civilians sharing what they are going through. In 11 months, Connecting Humanity has attended 400,00 eSIMs, from all around the world, to Gaza.
[Applause].
Which is equivalent to $10 million U.S. Dollars and we're still connecting people and we're still asking for eSIM donations every day. Just this morning, we were asking for donations. This is why Connecting Humanity matters because at the end, humanity will still be there, at the end of a very scary and dark tunnel called governments 
[Applause].
  this award is for all the donors from all over the world, who took some of their time, effort and money to donate eSIMs, you have not only saved lives, but you helped writing history the right way by giving Palestinians a voice. People in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan had no tools to document and share what's happening to them.
This award is for Ahmed El Madhoun and Hind Khoudary, the two brave journalists who were the first two people to use our eSIMs in Gaza Strip, both are still trapped in Gaza, facing death, every day and every minute, along with millions of Palestinians.
This award is for Connecting Humanity's small team of volunteers who work day and night to connect people in Gaza for the past 11 months. Not a single day has passed without this team doing their best. This award is for all the souls we lost over the past year and 76 years. This award is for Free Palestine. And donate an eSIM to Gaza!
[Applause and cheers].
>> Wow. I have no words. Just, thank you for being the fuel for that candle at the end of the tunnel. So, really appreciate it.
Jillian, gazasims.com. Thank you so much and congratulations to Connecting Humanity.
Our next is presented by Katitza Rodriguez. Among the many areas of digital rights knowledge that Katitza really controls, she's an expert in security. I have to say, CNET was on point when they named her one of the most influential. Please join me in welcoming Katitza Rodriguez.
[Applause and cheers].
>> Okay. Good evening, everyone. It's a great honor to introduce EFF award winner Carolina Botero for Fostering Digital Rights in Latin America. For over a decade, as Executive Director of the Karisma Foundation, Carolina formed it into a leading voice for privacy, and social justice. Under her leadership, Carolina makes sure technology protects human rights with an impact felt both locally, regionally, but also, sometimes globally. Her work goes beyond advocacy. It's about standing up for peoples' rights and sometimes dangerous context, like Colombia, where defending human rights takes real risks.
In 2001, Carolina played a key role in stopping, that would have brought in copyright act in Colombia, threatening oppression.
Because of her strong opposition to the law, her communications were prevailed by the government. But even under intense pressure from government, she refused to back down. Instead, it only strengthened her to fight.
So much of the work that Carolina has done in the last decade, Carolina has always been ahead of the curve. She just did digital rights in the vacuum and connected to real, everyday life. Her work, during the Colombian Peace showed it in a time of widespread abuses surveillance practices. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling exposed how illegal surveillance was used to track down human rights defenders. Proving just how crucial her work was.
Now, reflecting on Carolina's incredible journey, it's worth noting the organization has grown just from three people into 30 today, in the context that is really hard in Latin America, where funding is almost not something you can get easily. Now they're covering a wide range of topics and it's just in 12 years and with a pandemic front in the mix.
But Carolina impact extends just beyond policy, she has a rare ability to bring a deeplyhuman touch to her work. She listens, she empowers and she leads with intellect and empathy. Her colleagues describe her as someone who allows others to explore new ideas, take risks and grow under her guidance. In a space, often dominated by a man, especially in Latin America, she is a powerful voice of justice.
I had the privilege of witnessing her remarkable work, firsthand. She managed to be a mother, a wife, a writer, a leader and still have time for hobby and finds time for everything. With the support of her husband, she navigates across countries and time zones and meetings and when she needs a moment to recharge, she escapes to the farm, in the countryside and the beautiful river.
These moments of peace share with her family, are what fuel the energy and commitment to her cause. As Carolina steps into this chapter, having left her position at Karisma, let it known that she just build not just an organization, but have help build a rights movement in the region.
A moment for digital rights that is more inclusive, more empowered and more visible, thanks to her leadership. Her legacy is one of [Indiscernible], vision and deep commitment to justice. Those of us who have the privilege of working with her know that she has inspired countless of people and others to continue the fight she so passionately led.
Please, let me show you, first, a video of Carolina, before we  I welcome her here.
[Playing video with closed captioning].
[End of video].
[Applause and cheers].
>> Please join me 
[Applause and cheers].
>> Please join me in welcoming EFF Award winner, Carolina Botero, a defender of rights. Thank you, Carolina.
[Applause and cheers].
>> I'm the little one here, so...it is wonderful to hear this. Of course, it goes without saying that these are clearly not individual achievements, again. Let me tell you that for every public win, there have been as many failures and a good number of silent successes, many of which I can't even talk about.
Many people don't know that something Karisma has done, in recent years, is to work under the radar to raise awareness in the Colombian government. We have worked hard to make sure it is not received by the government as a threat to National Security or as a punishable and grave crime. Littlebylittle, we have helped build capacity and trust in a country which in addition to the usual tensions around these issues, complexity increases many fold because of decades of our conflict.
This kind of work, the kind we do quietly, also made it possible, a few years ago, to prevent large amounts of data pertaining  I'm sorry, but my eyes are very bad and the light here is...so, the kind of work we do quietly also made it possible, a few years ago, to prevent large amounts of data of victims of conflict. Many users of the health system from circulating on the internet. This quiet work requires building capacity and bridges between multiple stakeholders, government, media, politicians, society, companies, the tech community.
Both of which are key to making progress in the defense and promotion of digital rights. Quiet work is a particularly thankless aspect of our mission in countries like Colombia, where these issues are not on the public agenda. We almost always feel like we're swimming upstream.
Our efforts have been ignored many times, for different reasons. One of them is that external validation remains a requirement for our work defending digital rights to be taken seriously.
An award is particularly valuable to me and by extension to organizations, such as Karisma. We were in context when these issues need more attention. This recognition helped bring this to our work and as a welcome collateral effect, they strengthen the quiet part, that part that is less  that is less obvious. It takes a village to raise a child, they say, in Africa. Well, it takes a community to rise up to the challenge, posed by the roller coasters of technologies, change that just won't stop, it has to be collective only then, we can be forwardlooking.
Since my work, and therefore, this recognition, has been possible thanks to a collective effort, it is also important to say thank you. Please be patient as I gratefully acknowledge my village.
Thanks to Karisma, the foundation that I joined in 2009, began leading in 2014 which is currently moved forward under another leadership.
Thanks to those who sit in the Karisma Board. Those who participate, to the current codirectors and to each and every person who has worked with us over the years.
Since it's impossible to list all the people at organizations to whom I owe so much, perhaps it is better to talk about groups. The Creative Commons folks, free software, hackers, open source, open science, freedom of expression, privacy communities. All of them have, at different times, welcomed me and have been sites for ongoing learning and thinking about digital rights and also, spaces to imagine digital activism, as well as build trust and strategies.
Special thanks to those who lead peer organizations in Latin America and Colombia. I have found the [Indiscernible] to push ahead.
Thanks to the founding agencies who help, because it's very hard and to many people from the public and private sectors who have challenged me and with whom we have learned to collaborate.
Thanks to my close circle of friends, who listen to fear of leaving someone out, I will only mention Pilar. Thank you. I cannot get off the stage without thanking my family. My father introduced me to the importance of tech and guided me. I'm grateful for my mom's and daughter's generosity, for the constant support of my sisters and wonderful extended family that have always been present and attentive. Karisma was born as a family for education, in which members of the family left their mark and have been a source of silent, but permanent support.
Of course, thanks to my husband, not only because together, we learn to share household burdens, but also, because his companionship encouraged me to step outside of private law, to thing about the public interest and public institution alone. Thank you, EFF, I am truly honored to receive an award from an organization that pioneered the defense of human rights in the digital environment and remains a key reference point. This journey has not always been easy, but one thing I am sure is I have never felt alone.
Thank you for the recognition, which I receive along with 404 Media and Connecting Humanity. I cannot leave this stage also without saying that Mirna just remind me that best activists initiatives and organizations are born from rage. We act 
[Applause].
As activists 
[Applause].
We, as activists, have  use that feeling to do  to do stuff, to achieve change. She remind me that I use the rage from being called "terrorist" for stepping against copyright to do change. Of course, thank you, again, to Katitza, to Babette, for putting up my name.
Thank you.
[Applause and cheers].
>> Thank you so much, Carolina. A lot of folks  folks me might know, before EFF, I spent a lot of time as a frontline organizer. I would often hear that digital rights was a privilege when you needed to fight for all of the other things that we need to fight for. But the work Carolina's done with Karisma and beyond really have shown us there is less and less light between digital rights and human rights. More and more, the fight for digital rights is a human rights fight so thank you so much for, like, really spearheading that.
[Applause and cheers].
Can we get a hand for all of our award recipients tonight?
[Applause and cheers].
Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, 404 Media. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us, for sharing your work with the world. We are so grateful.
You know, the digital rights community is really vast and supporting it, there's a role that all of us can play in supporting it and creating better futures for ourselves and for technology and for humanity, whether you're an activist or coder, anyone, you can support the fight for digital rights. How can you do that today? I know a lot of folks in the room are members of EFF. EFF is another way you can support rights. You can join EFF at eff.org/celebrate. You can see Christian in the back of the room. So, thank you. So, thank you for all of the 30,000 members around the country and for all the folks around the world for supporting our work, we are grateful.
I also want to say thank you, again, to Dropbox and Electric Capital for sponsoring tonight's event. We are grateful for their work, as well. And for the support that all of you have given us to be able to continue this work. I want to recognize our organizational members, like No Starch Press and File Foundation, who joined us in a pledge to create a future for people around the world. Thank you.
So for everyone in the room tonight, stick around, raise a glass and get to know each other. We care about digital rights, we care about supporting online freedom and we care about connecting humanity. So let's take advantage of that time together tonight.
[Applause and cheers].
Awesome. Thank you. And for the folks that joined us online, thank you so much for joining us and to everyone, have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
[Applause and cheers].