EFF to Honor Mitch Kapor, Edward Felten, and Patrick Ball at the 14th Annual Pioneer Awards Ceremony
Seattle, WA - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will hold its 14th Annual Pioneer Awards presentation at 7:00 p.m. on April 13th at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington, in conjunction with the 2005 Computers, Freedom & Privacy (CFP) conference. This year's winners, nominated by the public and selected by a panel of independent judges, are entrepreneur and EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor, Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten, and human rights activist Patrick Ball.
Since 1991, the EFF Pioneer Awards have recognized individuals who have made significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-mediated communications or to the empowerment of individuals in using computers and the Internet.
The winners of this year's awards have contributed to their fields by advancing the causes of human rights and civil liberties in the area of high technology.
Dr. Patrick Ball is a leading innovator in applying scientific measurement to human rights. He directs the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) at Benetech (www.benetech.org), a nonprofit organization that combines the impact of technological solutions with the social entrepreneurship business model to help disadvantaged communities. He served as the catalyst behind two open source software tools for the human rights community, "Martus" and "Analyzer," which aid in the secure storage and analysis of data on human rights violations. He will be accepting his award from East Timor.
Edward Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton University whose research interests include computer security and technology law and policy. He brings these scholarly interests to his work as an activist. In 2001, Felten and EFF sued the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Felten is also author of "Freedom to Tinker" (www.freedom-to-tinker.com), a highly regarded weblog exploring the ways government and industry attempt to limit technological innovation and what activists can do about it.
Mitch Kapor is President and Chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation (www.osafoundation.org), a nonprofit organization he founded in 2001 to promote the development and acceptance of high-quality application software developed and distributed using open source methods and licenses. He is widely known as founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer app" that made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980's. In 1990 he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and served as its chairman until 1994.
"I am thrilled to be able to honor Mitch, Ed, and Patrick for their incredible work," said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. "Each of them has made a significant, unique contribution to protecting civil liberties in this digital age, and they are all deserving of our respect and admiration."
The judges for this year's EFF Pioneer Awards were: Kim Alexander (President and Founder, California Voter Foundation) Herb Brody (Deputy Editor, Technology Review) Esther Dyson (Editor, Release 1.0, CNET Networks) Moira Gunn (Host, "Tech Nation," National Public Radio) Donna L. Hoffman (Professor of Management and Co-Director, eLab, Vanderbilt University) Peter G. Neumann (Principal Scientist, SRI Intl. Moderator, ACM Risks Forum) Drazen Pantic (Media and Tech Director, NYU Center for War, Peach and the News Media) Barbara Simons (Founder and Co-Chair, ACM's US Public Policy Committee and Consulting Professor, Stanford) and Karen G. Schneider (Coordinator of Librarians' Index to the Internet).
Previous Pioneer Award recipients include Avi Rubin, Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, and Vinton Cerf, among many others.
Contact:
Katina Bishop
Projects Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
katina@eff.org
