Friday “would have been his 38th birthday,” writes the EFF, remembering Aaron Swartz as “a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open…” And they add that today the official web site for Aaron Swartz Day honored his memory with a special podcast “featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart,” including an appearance by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.
The first speaker is Ryan Shapiro, FOIA expert and co-founder of the national security transparency non-profit Property of the People. The Aaron Swartz Day site calls him “the researcher who discovered why the FBI had such an interest in Aaron in the years right before the JSTOR fiasco.” (That web page calls it an “Al Qaeda phishing expedition that left Aaron with an ‘International Terrorism Investigation’ code in his FBI database file forever,” as reported by Gizmodo.)
Other speakers on the podcast include:
- Tracey Jaquith, Founding Coder and TV Architect at the Internet Archive, discussing “Microservices, Monoliths, and Operational Security — The Internet Archive in 2024.”
- Tracy Rosenberg, co-founder of the Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project and Oakland Privacy, with “an update on the latest crop of surveillance battles.”
- Ryan Sternlicht, VR developer, educator, researcher, advisor, and maker, on “The Next Layer of Reality: Social Identity and the New Creator Economy.”
- Grant Smith Ellis, Chairperson of the Board, MassCann and Legal Intern at the Parabola Center, on “Jury Trials in the Age of Social Media.”
- Michael “Mek” Karpeles, Open Library, Internet Archive, on “When it Rains at the Archive, Build an Ark — Book bans, Lawsuits, & Breaches.”
The site also seeks to showcase SecureDrop and Open Library, projects started by Aaron before his death, as well as new projects “directly inspired by Aaron and his work.”