Nerd Gear: Freedom Box

I read an interesting story today from The New York Times about Eben Moglen, a real nerd, he was writing code for pay at age 14, but he is also a hard core legal expert.

Moglen wants to improve access to the internet in ways to protect personal privacy.


Moglen recently started http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/, in their mission in their own words,

We're building software for smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people, safely and securely, beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate. They can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls.

Not only is Moglen a Computer Nerd, and a lawyer, he is not your average lawyer, any more than he is your average nerd.

He clerked for Thurgood Marshall, a Supreme Court Justice, if your not familiar with law it is hard to explain exactly what that means in practical terms, other than the obvious that he worked for the a Supreme Court Justice.

But it is a close relationship, and a clerk can have a lot of indirect influence on cases.

Probably the best way to think of a clerk, is it is like a post doc position, your considered to know your field, but you have no experience so you do a lot of menial or grunt work, like being an apprentice, or journeyman, and you learn a lot from the person you clerk for, and generally they become a true mentor.

So unlike a lot people interested in computer security, or data privacy, he knows a lot about the legal system.

Not just the actual laws, and what type of legal arguments might work, but what kind of computer hardware or software solutions would be stronger to defend in court.

He should also, from his time clerking for a Supreme Court Justice, know a lot about the politics and related issues that would affect data privacy.

 I suggest reading the New York Times story, and if your a computer nerd, the Freedom Box Foundation link.

You may also be interested in Post SOPA, EU vs USA Internet Freedom & Rights.

To see more of my blog posts on related topics click Data Bill of Rights, that link can also be found in the Label Cloud at left side of blog, though it will be hard to find currently, since I don't have a lot of posts on that specific topic yet.