Electronic Frontier Foundation to Present Annual EFF Awards to Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, and 404 Media

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, and 404 Media will receive the 2024 EFF Awards for their vital work in ensuring that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people.  

The EFF Awards recognize specific and substantial technical, social, economic, or cultural contributions in diverse fields including journalism, art, digital access, legislation, tech development, and law. 

The EFF Awards ceremony will start at 6:30 pm PT on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024 at the Golden Gate Club, 135 Fisher Loop in San Francisco’s Presidio. Guests can register at https://www.eff.org/event/eff-awards-2024. The ceremony will be livestreamed and recorded. 

For the past 30 years, the EFF Awards—previously known as the Pioneer Awards—have recognized and honored key leaders in the fight for freedom and innovation online. Started when the internet was new, the Awards now reflect the fact that the online world has become both a necessity in modern life and a continually evolving set of tools for communication, organizing, creativity, and increasing human potential. 

“Maintaining internet access in a conflict zone, conducting fearless investigative reporting on how tech impacts our lives, and bringing the fight for digital rights and social justice to significant portions of Latin America are all ways of ensuring technology advances us all,” EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said. “This year’s EFF Award winners embody the internet’s highest ideals, building a better-connected and better-informed world that brings freedom, justice, and innovation for everyone. We hope that by recognizing them in this small way, we can shine a spotlight that helps them continue and even expand their important work.” 

Carolina Botero: Fostering Digital Human Rights in Latin America 

Carolina Botero is a researcher, lecturer, writer, and consultant who is among the foremost leaders in the fight for digital rights in Latin America. In more than a decade as executive director of the Colombia-based Karisma Foundation — founded in 2003 to ensure that digital technologies protect and advance fundamental human rights and promote social justice — she transformed the organization into an outspoken voice fostering freedom of expression, privacy, access to knowledge, justice, and self-determination in our digital world, with regional and international impact. She left that position this year, opening the door for a new generation while leaving a strong and inspiring legacy for those in Latin America and beyond who advocate for a digital world that enhances rights and empowers the powerless. Botero holds a master’s degree in international law and cooperation from Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a master’s degree in commercial and contracting law from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She frequently authors op-eds for Colombia’s El Espectador and La Silla Vacía, and serves on the advisory board of The Regional Center for Studies for the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), monitoring the adoption of information and communication technologies in Brazil. She previously served on the board of Creative Commons and as a member of the UNESCO Advisory Committee on Open Science.  

Connecting Humanity: Championing Internet Access in Gaza 

Connecting Humanity is a Cairo-based nonprofit organization that helps Palestinians in Gaza regain access to the internet – a crucial avenue for free speech and the free press. Founded in late 2023 by Egyptian journalist, writer, podcaster, and activist Mirna El Helbawi, Connecting Humanity collects and distributes embedded SIMs (eSIMs), a software version of the physical chip used to connect a phone to cellular networks and the internet. Connecting Humanity has collected hundreds of thousands of eSims from around the world and distributed them to people in Gaza, providing a lifeline for many caught up in Israel’s war on Hamas. People in crisis zones rely upon the free flow of information to survive, and restoring internet access in places where other communications infrastructure has been destroyed helps with dissemination of life-saving information and distribution of humanitarian aid, ensures that everyone’s stories can be heard, and enables continued educational and cultural contact. El Helbawi previously worked as an editor at 7 Ayam Magazine and as a radio host at Egypt’s NRJ Group; she was shortlisted for the Arab Journalism Award in 2016, and she created the podcast Helbing. 

404 Media: Fearless Journalism 

As the media landscape in general and tech media in particular keeps shrinking, 404 Media — launched in August 2023 — has tirelessly forged ahead with incisive investigative reports, deep-dive features, blogs, and scoops about topics such as hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, sex, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, government and law enforcement surveillance, privacy, and the democratization of the internet. Co-founders Jason Koebler, Sam Cole, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg all worked together at Vice Media’s Motherboard, but after that site’s parent company filed for bankruptcy in May 2023, the four journalists resolved to go out on their own and build what Maiberg has called “very much a website by humans, for humans about technology. It’s not about the business of technology — it’s about how it impacts real people in the real world.” Among many examples, 404 Media has uncovered a privacy issue in the New York subway system that let stalkers track peoples’ movements, causing the MTA to shut down the feature; investigated a platform being used to generate non-consensual pornography with AI, causing the platform to make changes limiting abuse; and reported on dangerously inaccurate AI-generated books that Amazon then removed from sale. 

 To register for this event: https://www.eff.org/event/eff-awards-2024 

For past honorees: https://www.eff.org/awards/past-winners