Indian tech activist honoured in US
By Ria Sharma

America’s most respected independent digital rights body is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has some of the best lawyers in the country who volunteer their legal expertise to protect the digital rights of citizens.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even corrected Wikipedia when it made the mistake of monopolizing some data. 

Like Greenpeace, EFF has a moral authority widely respected by the public. Sometimes just an email or a public statement by EFF is enough for large corporations to do the right thing by the public. 

On Aug 23, 2010, Techgoss had reported on the unfair arrest of Hyderabad based tech activist Hari Prasad for exposing the flaws in the Indian electronic voting machine (EVM).  In our article we had asked “India is a democracy.  How can anyone justify such an arrest?”

America’s EFF has just announced that Hari Prasad is one of the winners of its Pioneer Awards

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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.

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."
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