{"id":304128,"date":"2010-02-10T14:35:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T19:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"9525 at http:\/\/www.eff.org"},"modified":"2010-02-10T14:35:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T19:35:40","slug":"10-year-term-of-eff-chairman-winds-down-with-effs-20th-anniversary-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/304128","title":{"rendered":"10 Year Term of EFF Chairman Winds Down with EFF&#8217;s 20th Anniversary Tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">i.author{display:none}<\/style>\n<p><i style=\"color:#7A7B62;font-size:.9em\"><span class=\"cat\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eff.org\/blog-categories\/announcements\">Announcement<\/a><\/span> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eff.org\/about\/board#templeton\">Brad Templeton<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>In early 2000, after a tumultuous period in the EFF&#8217;s history, and<br \/>\nthe staff down to just a handful, I was elected chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.<br \/>\nI had been on the board for just a few years, but had been close to the<br \/>\norganization since it was founded, including participating with it as<br \/>\na plaintiff in the landmark supreme court case which struck down the<br \/>\nCommunications Decency Act in 1996.<\/p>\n<p>Having now served 10 years as chairman, it is time to rotate out, and I<br \/>\nam happy to report the election of John Buckman, founder of Magnitune<br \/>\nand Bookmooch (among other ventures) as our new chair.   As a part-time<br \/>\nresident of Europe, John will, like me, offer an international perspective<br \/>\nto the EFF&#8217;s efforts.   Pam Samuelson, a law-professor of stunning<br \/>\nreputation and credentials, will act as vice-chair during the coming<br \/>\n5-year term, replacing John Perry Barlow.<\/p>\n<p>I would love to claim credit for the EFF&#8217;s tremendous growth and success<br \/>\nduring my tenure, but the truth is that our active and star-studded board<br \/>\nis a board of equals.  We all take an active role in setting policy<br \/>\nand attempting to guide the organization in its mission to protect<br \/>\nimportant freedoms in the online world.   While it would shock most of<br \/>\nmy previous employees, my board management has been very laissez-faire.<br \/>\nI and the other board members try to let our great team do their stuff.<\/p>\n<p>After I became chairman, one of the best things we on the board<br \/>\nprobably did was to re-recruit Shari Steele, our former legal director,<br \/>\nto become the new executive director.  Shari had been with the EFF for<br \/>\nmany years but had left to work on a new venture.  We brought her back<br \/>\nand it&#8217;s been positive ever since.    We also recruited Cindy Cohn<br \/>\nto be our legal director.  Cindy had a long history of friendship with<br \/>\nthe organization, having worked tirelessly with our help on the fight<br \/>\nto stop export controls on encryption.  WIth these two appointments, I<br \/>\nand my fellow board members started the course for an incredible decade.<br \/>\nIn spite of a chaotic global economy, during this period, our fundraising,<br \/>\nbudget and staff size have more than tripled.   (That may seem minor<br \/>\nfor a dot-com but it&#8217;s great news for a non-profit.)   We&#8217;ve boosted<br \/>\nmembership and membership dontations, increased funding from foundations,<br \/>\nand created an endowment to assure the EFF&#8217;s future.<\/p>\n<p>The EFF is now 20, so I&#8217;ve been privileged to chair it for half of<br \/>\nits lifetime.  In that period we&#8217;ve seen dramatic victories for free<br \/>\nspeech, privacy and freedom to program.   We&#8217;ve stopped e-voting abuse<br \/>\nand rootkits in your music CDs.  We&#8217;ve protected bloggers as journalists<br \/>\nand preserved anonymous speech online.  We&#8217;ve stopped encryption software<br \/>\nfrom being controlled like a munition and had so many other triumphs, big<br \/>\nand small.  We&#8217;ve also seen an expanded technical and activism program,<br \/>\nas our technologists have led the way in unveiling things like secret<br \/>\ndots generated by colour laser printers that track your printouts back<br \/>\nto you and network interference with filesharing by cable ISPs.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve also had our failures, but even those have spoken loudly about the<br \/>\nquality of our team.  When we took Grokster\/Streamcast to the supreme<br \/>\ncourt, our client lost, but the court laid down a fairly narrow standard<br \/>\nthat allows software developers building new generations of publishing<br \/>\nproducts to know how to stay clear of liability.   Our cases against the<br \/>\nWhite House&#8217;s warrantless wiretapping program have hit major hurdles,<br \/>\none of which was an act of congress created specifically to nullify our<br \/>\nattempts to have a court examine this program &#8212; granting a retroactive<br \/>\nimmunity to the phone companies that did it.    Bad as that was, I figure<br \/>\nif they have to get an act of congress to stop you, you know you&#8217;ve hit<br \/>\na nerve.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve also hit many nerves with our great FOIA team that has uncovered<br \/>\nall sorts of attacks on your rights, and continues to do so, and our<br \/>\nteam of activists and our new international team are working hard to<br \/>\npromote our doctrine of free speech and freedom to develop technology<br \/>\naround the world.   With all our team does, many are shocked to find it is<br \/>\nonly around 30 people.   Still, we could do much more and your donations<br \/>\nare still what makes it all happen.  I hope that if you believe in the<br \/>\nduty to protect fundamental freedoms online, you will work towards it,<br \/>\nor consider outsourcing that work with a donation to us.<\/p>\n<p>I am not leaving the EFF &#8212; far from it.  I will continue to be<br \/>\nan active boardmember.   In addition, I will begin to re-explore<br \/>\ncommercial ventures, seek new opportunities, and continue on my quest<br \/>\nto become a leading evangelist for one of the world&#8217;s most exciting<br \/>\nnew technologies &#8212; robotic transportation.  At <a href=\"http:\/\/robocars.net\">my robocars site<\/a> you<br \/>\ncan see my beginnings of a book on the subject, and why it may have the<br \/>\nlargest positive effect on the world that computer technology delivers<br \/>\nin the medium term.  Of course with my EFF hat on you will find growing<br \/>\nsections on the freedom and privacy issues of the technology.<\/p>\n<p>During my tenure, I have served with a tremendous group of<br \/>\nfellow board members, as you can see from the biographies at<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eff.org\/about\/board\">the EFF board page<\/a>.    I will continue to work with them to<br \/>\nprotect your rights as the world becomes digital, and I hope you will all<br \/>\njoin with me in supporting the EFF with your thoughts and your dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Announcement by Brad Templeton In early 2000, after a tumultuous period in the EFF&#8217;s history, and the staff down to just a handful, I was elected chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I had been on the board for just a few years, but had been close to the organization since it was founded, including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}