Tag Archives: Aaron Swartz

Back to the old blog

It’s been over a year technically – and many many years, since I have really blogged on this thing on a regular basis.

I guess at some point that projects I was working on consumed so much time there was no room for blogging, and now it’s like a whole decade of my life that I’ve lost. Or at least don’t have as well indexed as the six years before that. (I started blogging in 2001.)

Well, no time like the present to go back and catch up! My life has become beautiful and surreal in unexpected ways this last year. Aaron Swartz Day has blossomed into a historical occasion (video and transcripts here) that I’ll be writing about for months to come. I’m lecturing at San Francisco State University and finding it to be one of the most gratifying experiences of my life, and I’ve launched also a new career as an independent film maker, with a Kickstarter campaign that’s currently in mid-swing.

My first movie is entitled “From DeadDrop to SecureDrop,” and focuses on the open source anonymous whistleblower submission platform SecureDrop (originally protyped as “DeadDrop” by Kevin Poulsen and Aaron Swartz.)

SecureDrop is alive and well over at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. There are now over 19 news and non-profit organizations that have SecureDrop implementations. You’ll be hearing a lot more about SecureDrop over the next few weeks and months, as it’s one of my current obsessions, not only as I make this film, but as I teach my classes and write articles and blogposts about how I truly believe that SecureDrop is an important tool to help make the world a better place.

 

Reference Links for My TakePart.com Article on the CFAA

Reference Links for My TakePart.com Article on the CFAA:

1. The EFF’s Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform                                                                                        https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

2. Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an Extraordinary Hacker and Activist
By Peter Eckersley
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

3. Rebooting Computer Crime Law Part 1: No Prison Time For Violating Terms of Service
By Marcia Hoffman and Rainey Reitman
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/rebooting-computer-crime-law-part-1-no-prison-time-for-violating-terms-of-service

4. Aaron Swartz’s Father: My Son Was ‘Killed by the Government’
By Matthew Fleischer for TakePart.com
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/16/aaron-swartzs-father-government-killed-my-son

5. The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime” By Alex Stamos
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

6. This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz
By Kevin Poulsen for Wired
http://www.wired.com/2013/12/swartz-video/

7. Booking Video: Aaron Swartz Jokes, Jousts With Cops After MIT Bust
By Kevin Poulsen for Wired
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/aaron-swartz-booking-video/

8. Until Today, If You Were 17, It Could Have Been Illegal To Read Seventeen.com Under the CFAA
By Dave Maass and Kurt Opsahl and Trevor Timm
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/until-today-if-you-were-17-it-could-have-been-illegal-read-seventeencom-under-cfaa

9. Today, we save the Internet (again): fix the CFAA!
by Cory Doctorow for BoingBoing
http://boingboing.net/2013/04/08/today-we-save-the-internet-a.html

10. Swartz didn’t face prison until feds took over case, report says
By Declan McCullagh for CNET
http://www.cnet.com/news/swartz-didnt-face-prison-until-feds-took-over-case-report-says/

Knappenberger On The Path That Led To Making “The Internet’s Own Son”

Hot Docs ’14: Personal loss drove Brian Knappenberger’s Aaron Swartz doc
April 25, 2014, by Manori Ravindran

From the article:

…a friend’s suicide and a meeting with Swartz’s father prompted him to pursue the documentary, which may not have happened otherwise…

…he had lost a friend to suicide four months before Swartz’s own suicide, and had recently become a father himself. Coupled with a meeting with Swartz’s dad, Knappenberger said the doc soon began to take shape.

 

Brian-Knappenberger