Digital Rights Organizations
In 1990, Mitch Kapor (creator of Lotus 1-2-3, the first successful spreadsheet software) and John Barlow (a journalist specializing in technology-related stories) got together to discuss recent events on the "electronic frontier" of the Internet. Their meeting came in the wake of Operation Sun Devil, in which FBI and Secret Service agents entered people's homes and confiscated their computers and computer-related materials while searching for code that had been stolen from Apple Computer—the equivalent of seizing a large filing cabinet on the off-chance it might contain a stolen file. These and other governmental actions indicated to Kapor and Barlow that when it came to computing and the Internet, the civil rights guaranteed to people by the U.S. Constitution were under threat.
As a result of this meeting, Kapor and Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan group whose aim is to protect fundamental civil liberties, including privacy and freedom of expression, in the arena of computers and the Internet. Their thinking was to ensure that people's civil rights were not violated as government agencies moved to "civilize" the "electronic frontier" of the Internet, where laws and regulation were, at best, ill-defined. Since 1990, the EFF has championed a wide assortment of civil rights causes, challenging governmental regulations on distribution of cryptographic software, overly broad anti-spamming laws, Internet censorship, intellectual property issues, software as protected speech, and other issues. The EFF also maintains an impressive library of opinion papers focusing on online civil rights issues.
The Center for Democracy and Technology is a similar organization that "works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age." Their site also has a variety of interesting resources related to civil rights and information technology.
This page was written by
Joel Adams.
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