The mission of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is to provide software for the public good. We do this by providing services and support for many like-minded software project communities consisting of individuals who choose to participate in ASF activities.

WHAT IS THE ASF?
Established in 1999, the ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors. Our all-volunteer board oversees more than 350 leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world’s most popular Web server software.

The ASF provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits potential legal exposure for our project committers. Through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as “The Apache Way,” more than 730 individual Members and 7,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation’s official user conference, trainings, and expo.

HOW DID THE ASF AND APACHE® PROJECTS GROW?¶
Formerly known as the Apache Group, the ASF was incorporated in 1999 as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers. Individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software development, through sustained participation and contributions within the Foundation’s projects, are eligible for membership in the ASF. An individual is awarded membership after nomination and approval by a majority of the existing ASF members. Thus, the ASF is governed by the community it most directly serves — the people collaborating within its projects.

HOW ARE THE ASF AND APACHE PROJECTS GOVERNED?
The ASF members periodically elect a Board of Directors to manage the organizational affairs of the Foundation, as accorded by the ASF Bylaws. The Board, in turn, appoints a number of officers to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Foundation. A number of public records of our operation are made available to the community. A more detailed explanation of How the ASF works in terms of day to day operations is available, and the Apache Community Development project’s goal is to help newcomers learn more about the Apache Software Foundation.

Individual Apache projects are in turn governed directly by Project Management Committees (PMC) made up of individuals who have shown merit and leadership within those projects. There are detailed descriptions of ASF and project governance models.

More info: http://www.apache.org/

Who Is Edward Snowden?
Edward Snowden is a 31 year old US citizen, former Intelligence Community officer and whistleblower. The documents he revealed provided a vital public window into the NSA and its international intelligence partners’ secret mass surveillance programs and capabilities. These revelations generated unprecedented attention around the world on privacy intrusions and digital security, leading to a global debate on the issue.

Snowden worked in various roles within the US Intelligence Community, including serving undercover for the CIA overseas. He most recently worked as an infrastructure analyst at the NSA, through a Booz Allen Hamilton contract, when he left his home and family in Hawaii to blow the whistle in May 2013. After travelling to Hong Kong, Snowden revealed documents to the American public on the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, which were shown to be operating without any public oversight and outside the limits of the US Constitution. The US government has charged Snowden with theft of government property, and two further charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. Each charge carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

With the US pursuing his extradition, Snowden is now in Russia, where he was formally granted three years’ residency from 1 August 2014, after a year of temporary asylum in Russia ended on 31st July 2014. Journalists continue to publish documents from Snowden that reveal the secret and unaccountable systems of modern global surveillance.

Edward Snowden: Sam Adams Award
Snowden talks at the Sam Adams Award award ceremony in October 2013 about the secret surveillance he revealed and its dangers to democracy.

One of the tasks of the trustees is to oversee the functioning of Courage, which has been set up to raise money for journalistic sources’ legal defence campaigns. Edward Snowden is its first recipient, but he will not be its last. We expect to be supporting more journalistic sources and whistleblowers in the future and we expect to grow as more journalistic sources are nominated as recipients.

It is the only fund endorsed by Edward Snowden. If you see others claiming to raise revenue for Edward Snowden, please report them to the trustees at: [email protected]

To contact us about any issue involving the site, or how to volunteer, please email: [email protected]

Edward Snowden has been charged by the US government with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person”. The last two charges fall under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Each of the three charges carry a maximum of ten years in prison plus a fine, totalling a possible 30-year sentence. It is possible that further charges may be brought against Snowden.

The US administration has already taken many actions towards the extradition of Edward Snowden. Not only have arrest and extradition warrants been issued to numerous countries, but US officials have also personally pressured political leaders and threatened to cut trade benefits for failure to pursue Snowden’s extradition. People who have assisted, or are suspected of associating with, Snowden have also been put at risk or harassed, including WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Edward Snowden during his transit from Hong Kong to Moscow, and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, who was detained for nine hours under the UK’s Terrorism Act while transiting through Heathrow airport.

Edward Snowden risks an unfair trial as there is no public interest or whistleblower exception under the Espionage Act. This means Snowden would be unable to use his intent as a defence. In an interview, he explained the reasoning behind his revelations: “I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

Snowden is not only at risk of legal punishments, but physical as well. Despite a letter from US Attorney-General Eric Holder that Edward Snowden would not be subject to the death penalty or torture, Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, notes that these comments are “meaningless“. On the subject of torture Mr Ratner commented:

“Think about how the US defines torture. The US doesn’t really think that anything it did under the Bush era was torture, with the exception possibly of waterboarding. So that means Ed Snowden can be subjected to every enhanced interrogation techniques – you know, lights on all the time, loud noise, cold temperatures, hot temperatures, strapped into a chair. All of the, quote, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ are allowed under US view of torture.” He also commented: “It doesn’t say anything in the letter [that the US] won’t put him into some underground cell and keep him there the rest of his life.”

To understand the threats against Edward Snowden, one need look no further than the other whistleblowers who have been prosecuted by the Obama administration. The Obama adminsitration boasts about the fact that they have “prosecuted twice as many cases under the Espionage Act as all other administrations combined”. A notable case is that of Chelsea Manning, who after three years of pretrial detainment, including under unlawful conditions, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The Obama administration’s crackdown on national security journalism and its whistleblowers has been escalating for some time and Edward Snowden’s revelations place him in the crosshairs.

More info: https://edwardsnowden.com/

Our Mission
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that protects, defends, and empowers public-interest journalism in the 21st century.

The organization works to preserve and strengthen First and Fourth Amendment rights guaranteed to the press through a variety of avenues, including the development of encryption tools, documentation of attacks on the press, training newsrooms on digital security practices, and advocating for the public’s right to know.

Freedom of the Press Foundation is built on the recognition that this kind of transparency journalism — from publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate, to uncovering the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and CIA secret prisons — doesn’t just happen. It requires dogged work by journalists, and often, the courage of whistleblowers and others who work to ensure that the public actually learns what it has a right to know.

Our Work
We accomplish our mission in several ways:

SecureDrop. We lead the development of SecureDrop, an open source platform for secure communication between sources and media organizations, and we support its adoption by newsrooms around the world. SecureDrop is available in 10 languages and used by more than 70 media organizations world-wide, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, The Intercept, USA Today, CBC, and The Guardian.

Digital Security Trainings. We conduct in-person digital security trainings with journalists and filmmakers to help teach them about digital security tools and offer them the best available technologies to protect themselves and their sources.

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. In partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists, we run the US Press Freedom Tracker, a website for monitoring press freedom violations in the United States. This nonpartisan news website is the first to provide reliable, easy-to-access information on the number of press freedom violations in the United States—from journalists facing charges to those stopped at the US border or physically attacked while on the job.

Encryption Tools & Special Projects. We also build a variety of experimental technology projects that aim to protect journalists or promote transparency. In 2017, we helped release an Android app called Haven, which can use the sensors on anyone’s smartphone to act as a security system for your surroundings. The project is open source and does not send any information to the cloud. We also built a Twitter bot called FOIA Feed which automatically collects stories that rely on the Freedom of Information Act from over a dozen different news outlets. Additionally, we built a tool that can archive at-risk news outlets which are in danger of being blocked or deleted from the web and it was credited by reporters as being a factor in stopping Peter Thiel from buying and permanently deleting Gawker.

News and Advocacy. We engage in public and legal advocacy around critical press freedom issues, including excessive government secrecy, the protection of whistleblowers, the surveillance of journalists, the Freedom of Information Act, and reporter’s privilege.

Crowdfunding. Non-profit media, independent transparency organizations, and open-source security tools are increasingly a critical component of the journalism landscape. We aim to broaden the financial base of these types of projects by crowd-sourcing funding and making it easy for people to support the best journalism from an array of organizations all in one place.

Our Vision
Freedom of the Press Foundation aims to protect and promote the basic human right of freedom of the press, both in the United States, and abroad, in a world where surveillance, censorship, and manipulation are becoming more sophisticated and more pervasive. Public interest journalism — the kind of journalism that holds power accountable and defends human rights — is under threat everywhere.

Our goal is to ensure that all news organizations worldwide recognize that digital security is a critical press freedom issue in the 21st century. To protect journalists, their sources and their audiences, it is imperative that newsrooms use best-available security tools and practices, including encryption of sensitive communications and materials, anonymization of sources, and distribution of news through secure and censorship-resistant channels.