SeaGL speaker Q&A: Noah Swartz

SeaGL speaker Noah Swartz answers a few questions from SeaGL staff:

Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?

A: Noah is a Staff Technologist on the Tech Projects team. He works on the various software the EFF produces and maintains, including but not limited to Privacy Badger.

Before joining EFF Noah was a researcher at the MIT Media Lab as well as a technomancer and free software/culture advocate.

Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?

A: This talk will go over the state of tracking on the web, how advertisers cause this, how browsers allow this, how EFF’s Privacy Badger aims to stop this, and what you can do to help.

Q: How can attendees help the EFF with their efforts to end web tracking?

A: EFF maintains a tracker blocker called Privacy Badger. Due to the size of the EFF it’s hard for us to develop and maintain large software projects at the same speed as commercial alternatives. We’d love to see more outside contributions from the wider Free Software community. I’ll be available throughout the conference to help people get acquainted with EFF’s software projects, and help new contributors make their first contributions.

Q: Is this your first visit to SeaGL? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?

A: I attended SeaGL last year, it was a lot of fun. Many great Free Software advocates all giving really enlightening talks.