New Jersey, Oct 19, 2010: Hari Prasad selected as Pioneer of the Year award by prestigious Electronic Frontier Foundation
It is testimony to India’s current political climate that while the son of our soil takes a great risk to expose the flaws in a system that has serious threat to its democracy is being punished and harassed at great cost to him and his family, emotionally and financially, human rights and activist organizations of the world recognize the value of his work for the country and chose to award him highest honors.
It is time Election Commission of India cease to be subservient to political bosses and recognize their sacred duty is to electorate of India and its democracy. While the small steps ECI taking to improve are welcome, ECI need to show independence and refuse to cooperate with the political masters in continuing to harass Hari Prasad and efforts to muzzle the voices of activists. It is time ECI serve Indians and their interests.
India needs to recognize that stand alone EVMs have no place in a democratic world. There is urgent need to reconstitute the technical committee with those who are well versed with developments in this area, partner with activists such as Hari Prasad and with a open mind evolve a system that can serve as a role model to the world. There is urgent need to establish a well defined timeline with set objectives.
Save Indian Democracy would like to suggest India to consider giving highest honor to Hari Prasad for his efforts.
EFF Press release is given below. For additional information, contact Satya Dosapati at +1 732 939 2060.
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 19, 2010Contact:Katina Bishop
Development Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
katina@eff.org
+1 415 436-9333 x101
Transparency Activist, Public Domain Scholar, Legal
Blogger, and Imprisoned E-Voting Researcher Win Pioneer
Awards
EFF to Honor Stephen Aftergood, James Boyle, Pamela Jones
and Groklaw, and Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru at San
Francisco Ceremony
San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is
pleased to announce four winners of its 2010 Pioneer
Awards: transparency activist Stephen Aftergood; public
domain scholar James Boyle; legal blogger Pamela Jones and
the website Groklaw; and e-voting researcher Hari Krishna
Prasad Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after
being imprisoned for his security work in India.
The award ceremony will be held at 7:30 p.m., November 8,
at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Author,
blogger, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow will
host. A VIP event with Cory and the Pioneer winners — as
well as EFF founders, board members, and other luminaries
— will begin at 6:30 p.m.
Steven Aftergood directs the Federation of American
Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy, which works
to reduce the scope of official secrecy and to promote
public access to government information. He writes and
edits Secrecy News, an email newsletter and blog that
reports on new developments in secrecy and disclosure
policy. Secrecy News also provides direct public access to
various official records that have been suppressed,
withdrawn, or that are simply hard to find. In 1997, Mr.
Aftergood was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency that
successfully led to the declassification and publication of
the total intelligence budget for the first time in 50
years.
James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and
co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain
at Duke Law School. Professor Boyle is recognized for his
exceptional scholarship on the “second enclosure movement”
— the worldwide expansion of intellectual property rights
— and its threat to the rich public domain of cultural and
scientific materials that the Internet might otherwise make
available. An original board member of Creative Commons
and co-founder of Science Commons, Professor Boyle has
worked for over 20 years as both an academic and
institution builder to celebrate and protect the values of
cultural and scientific openness.
When Pamela Jones created Groklaw in 2003, she envisioned a
new kind of participatory journalism and distributed
discovery — a place where programmers and engineers could
educate lawyers on technology relevant to legal cases of
significance to the Free and Open Source community, and
where technologists could learn about how the legal system
works. Groklaw quickly became an essential resource for
understanding such important legal debates as the SCO-Linux
lawsuits, the European Union antitrust case against
Microsoft, and whether software should qualify for patent
protection.
Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru is a security researcher in
India who recently revealed security flaws in India’s
paperless electronic voting machines. He has endured jail
time, repeated interrogations, and ongoing political
harassment to protect an anonymous source that enabled him
to conduct the first independent security review of India’s
electronic voting system. Prasad spent a year trying to
convince election officials to complete such a review, but
they insisted that the government-made machines were
“perfect” and “tamperproof.” Instead of blindly accepting
the government’s claims, Prasad’s international team
discovered serious flaws that could alter national election
results. Months of hot debate have produced a growing
consensus that India’s electronic voting machines should be
scrapped, and Prasad hopes to help his country build a
transparent and verifiable voting system.
“These winners have all worked tirelessly to give critical
insight and context to the tough questions that arise in
our evolving digital world,” said EFF Executive Director
Shari Steele. “We need strong advocates, educators, and
researchers like these to protect our digital rights, and
we’re proud to honor these four Pioneer Award winners for
their important contributions.”
Tickets to the Pioneer Awards ceremony are $35 if purchased
in advance or $40 at the door. Tickets are available
online at http://www.eff.org/pioneerfundraiser. Sponsors
of the 2010 Pioneer Awards ceremony include the Computer
Electronics Association (CEA), JibJab, and Junk Email
Filter.
Awarded every year since 1992, EFF’s Pioneer Awards
recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation
on the electronic frontier. Past honorees include World
Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, security expert Bruce
Schneier, and the Mozilla Foundation and its chairman
Mitchell Baker, among many others.
Pioneer Award candidates are nominated by the public. The
winners were chosen by a panel of judges including Kim
Alexander (president and founder, California Voter
Foundation), Jim Buckmaster (CEO, craigslist), Cory
Doctorow (award-winning author and activist), Mitch Kapor
(Kapor Capital; co-founder and former chairman EFF), Drazen
Pantic (co-director, Location One), Barbara Simons
(computer scientist, IBM Research [retired] and former
president ACM), and James Tyre (co-founder, The Censorware
Project and EFF policy fellow).
For more information about the Pioneer Awards:
https://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer
For this release:
https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/10/19
About EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at https://www.eff.org/
Save Indian Democracy 