> Join EFF to Celebrate the Life of Aaron Swartz

Join us to celebrate the legacy of Aaron Swartz on Nov. 8, 2026. With the organizers of Aaron Swartz Day, we’re honoring his life with an in-person and remote hackathon. This event is supported by several organizations that carry on his work, including the Internet Archive—which is hosting the in-person event—the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Creative Commons and the Free Law Project. Aaron Swartz was a digital rights champion who believed in the need for an open internet. His life was cut short in 2013, after federal prosecutors charged him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for systematically downloading academic journal articles from the online database JSTOR. Facing the prospect of a long and unjust sentence, Aaron died by suicide at the age of 26. EFF was proud to call Aaron a friend and ally. We continue to stand with programmers and developers engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology through our Coders' Rights Project. Hackathon participants can contribute code, documentation, and design to several open-source and public-interest projects. These include Secure Drop, Open Library, Quantifying the Commons, Onion Press, and our own Atlas of Surveillance.  EFF Director of State Affairs Hayley Tsukayama will also join hackathon participants at the Internet Archive at 11 a.m. for an Atlas of Surveillance on-boarding session. Contributors across experience levels are welcome. The Aaron Swartz Day organizers are also open to adding new projects and workshops, so please contact them at [email protected] if you’d like to suggest a workshop or project—particularly open-source projects on Github that participants can continue to work on after the event. For more details on how to participate in-person or remotely, please visit the Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon page at www.aaronswartzday.org. Event Details Date: Sunday, November 8, 2026 Time: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM PST Social Lunch: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM PST In-person Location: Internet Archive Headquarters, 300 Funston Ave, San Francisco, CA 94118 Admission: Free, but please RSVP here