Pioneer Award Ceremony 2020: A Celebration of Communities

Last week, we celebrated the 29th Annual—and first ever online—Pioneer Award Ceremony, which EFF convenes for our digital heroes and the folks that help make the online world a better, safer, stronger, and more fun place. Like the many Pioneer Award Ceremonies before it, the all-online event was both an intimate party with friends, and a reminder of the critical digital rights work that’s being done by so many groups and individuals, some of whom are not as well-known as they should be.    

Perhaps it was a feature of the pandemic — not a bug — that anyone could attend this year’s celebration, and anyone can now watch it online. You can also read the full transcript. More than ever before, this year’s Pioneer Award Ceremony was a celebration of online communities— specifically, the Open Technology Fund community working to create better tech globally; the community of Black activists pushing for racial justice in how technology works and is used; and the sex worker community that’s building digital tools to protect one another, both online and offline. 

But it was, after all, a celebration. So we kicked off the night by just vibing to DJ Redstickman, who brought his characteristic mix of fun, funky music, as well as some virtual visuals. 

DJ Redstickman

EFF’s Executive Director, Cindy Cohn, began her opening remarks with a reminder that this is EFF’s 30th year, and though we’ve been at it a long time, we’ve never been busier: 

EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn

We’re busy in the courts -- including a new lawsuit last week against the City of San Francisco for allowing the cops to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters and the Pride Parade in violation of an ordinance that we helped pass. We’re busy building technologies - including continuing our role in encrypting the web. We’re busy in the California legislature -- continuing to push for Broadband for All, which is so desperately needed for the millions of Californians now required to work and go to school from home. We’re busy across the nation and around the world standing up for your right to have a private conversation using encryption and for your right to build interoperable tools. And we’re blogging, tweeting and posting on all sorts of social media to keeping you aware of what’s going on and hopefully, occasionally amused.   

Cindy was followed by our keynote speaker, longtime friend of EFF, author, and one of the top reporters researching all things tech, Cyrus Farivar. Cyrus’s recent book, Habeus Data, covers 50 years of surveillance law in America, and his previous book The Internet of Elsewhere, focuses on the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world. 

Keynote speaker, Cyrus Farivar

Cyrus detailed his journey to becoming a tech reporter, from his time on IRC chats in his teenage years to his realization, in Germany in 2010, about “what it means to be private and what it means to have surveillance.” At the time, German politicians were concerned with the privacy implications of Google Streetview. In Germany, Cyrus explained, specifically in every German state, there is a data protection agency: “In a way, I kind of think about EFF as one of the best next things.  We don't really have a data protection agency or authority in this country.  Sure, we have the FCC.  We have other government agencies that are responsible for taking care of us, but we don't have something like that.  I feel like one of the things the EFF does probably better than most other organizations is really try to figure out what makes sense in this new reality.”

Cyrus, of course, is one of the many people helping us all make sense of this new reality, through his reporting—and we’re glad that he’s been fighting the good fight ever since encountering EFF during the Blue Ribbon Campaign. 

Following Cyrus was EFF Staff Technol