Edward Snowden will kick off LibrePlanet 2016

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, USA -- Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 -- The
Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced that the opening
keynote for LibrePlanet 2016: Fork the System, will be a conversation
with National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Technologist Daniel Kahn
Gillmor.

The annual free software conference will kick off at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's (MIT) Stata Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts on the morning of Saturday, March 19th with
["The last lighthouse: Free software in dark times"][1], in which
Snowden (who will appear via a free software video call) and
Daniel Kahn Gillmor will discuss free software, surveillance, power,
and control of the future.

[1]: https://libreplanet.org/2016/program/speakers.html

![Edward Snowden](https://static.fsf.org/libreplanet/2016/Edward_Snowden-2.png)
Screenshot of a Citizen Four by Praxis Films
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/>

![Daniel Kahn Gillmor](https://static.fsf.org/libreplanet/2016/dkg.png)
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International License
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/>


"We're thrilled and honored to be hosting this conversation. Edward
Snowden has ignited desperately needed discussion around the world
about the meaning of privacy, the power of governments and large
corporations, and the impact of secretive technology on our freedom. I
can't think of a more powerful way to launch this year's conference,
and I can't wait to see what great things the LibrePlanet community of
activists and developers will do with the energy," said FSF's
executive director John Sullivan.

Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and
cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed the NSA was unconstitutionally
seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not
been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the largest debate
about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. Today, he works on
methods of enforcing human rights through the application and
development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the
Press Foundation in February 2014.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor is a technologist with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy
and Technology Project, and a free software developer. He's a Free
Software Foundation Associate member, a member of Debian, a contributor to a
wide range of free software projects, and a participant in protocol
development standards organizations like the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), with an eye toward preserving and improving civil liberties and civil 
rights through our shared infrastructure.

For the third year in a row, LibrePlanet will be held at MIT's Stata
Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 19th and
20th, 2016. Co-presented by the Free Software Foundation and MIT's
Student Information Processing Board (SIPB), the rest of the
[LibrePlanet program][2] will be announced soon.

[2]: https://libreplanet.org/2016/program

[Registration for LibrePlanet is now open][3]. Admission to the
conference is gratis for [FSF members][4] and students.

[3]: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/event/register?id=29&reset=1
[4]: https://my.fsf.org/join

### About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
<https://donate.fsf.org>. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

More information about the FSF, as well as important information for
journalists and publishers, is at <https://www.fsf.org/press>.

### Media Contacts

Georgia Young
Program Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
<georgia@fsf.org>

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