[dannyobrien]

As would I!

Mostly, I'm EFF's International Director, but as of yesterday, I've taken a temporary secondment to work for six months with our development (read: fundraising) team.

We're facing a number of challenges on many fronts, and like many of our colleagues in the non-profit world right now, we're having to ramp up quickly to face them.

We get a huge amount of expert advice and moral support from technologists here on Hacker News, but we only really ever chip in with the occasional technical comment.

For the next six months at least I'd be delighted to talk with anyone who is as interested in supporting us financially, or understanding better how that works. You can mail me on [e-mail] or comment here.

This is a bit of an experiment for me (I'm more comfortable talking about global censorship and surveillance than asking people for a few bitcoins), as well as for EFF. To keep with the mod rules here, it's probably worth trying to keep on-topic to this post, but happy to chat offline or arrange or more general conversation.

[chasb]

Hi, I'd be happy to chat. We (Aptible) have donated as a company in the past and will in the future. Chas at aptible.com

[dannyobrien]

Hey chasb, email sent!

[culturestate]

One thing that has always kept me from donating to the EFF is the apparent lack of on-the-ground lobbying operations; I contribute to Public Knowledge instead, because they (seem to be) much more involved in the policy process.

Am I reading the situation correctly? If so, do you guys have plans to shift strategy given the direction of Congress today?

[dannyobrien]

PK are great people, and definitely a good port of call.

For our strategy shift, I'd read our 100 day plan here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/our-100-day-plan , especially point 7, which is about our D.C. ground game.

We have a domestic legislative team (led by Ernesto Falcon, PK's former VP of government affairs https://www.eff.org/about/staff/ernesto-omar-falcon ). It's not something that we talk about a lot, because the work tends to be in the weeds, doing line-by-line critiques of new laws, or talking to dedicated staffers. We try and do deep dives about our legislative work in EFFector when we can, but mostly people here about our big activism or tech pushes.

One of the aspects of how Congress is directed at the moment is that direct lobbying for civil liberties within Congress may be a bit of a limited strategy (something we're familiar with from previous times in our existence). In those situations, we think it's equally important to equally emphasize the alternative strategies -- fight executive overreach and unconstitutional law in the courts, create technology to protect users, and work on legal protections at the state and international level. D.C. lobbying is part of that (and we've been thinking more seriously about other ways to build that up which I'd be happy to brainstorm with you), but we think these days it works best if you integrate it with other strategies. The power of being a D.C. insider isn't as great as it has been these days, and the strength of advocacy, court challenges, and tech is showing itself right now. - d.