EVENT: Movie Night w/ Maryland Juice on Friday // PLUS SEE: "Terms & Conditions May Apply" Trailer & Filmmaker Interview

MOVIE NIGHT WITH MARYLAND JUICE: One of Maryland Juice blogger David Moon's ongoing work projects involves national advocacy for progressive issues and Internet freedom through a 1.5 million member group called Demand Progress. In that capacity, I am currently helping promote a startling new film about online privacy and government surveillance, titled "Terms and Conditions May Apply." The movie premieres in DC this Friday at the West End Cinema, and Maryland Juice thought some readers might want to join for the festivities, given the timeliness of the topic for Maryland politicos. The opening night screening (Friday at 7:00 pm) will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and privacy experts, along with a wine reception. Not a bad deal for the cost of a movie ticket. Below you can watch the official film trailer, read an exclusive interview with filmmaker Cullen Hoback, and find out more about Terms and Conditions May Apply.

WHAT: Premiere of Terms and Conditions May Apply

WHEN: Friday, August 16th at 7:00 p.m.

WHERE: West End Cinema, 2301 M Street NW, Washington, D.C.

WHAT: Following the screening, Craig Aaron of Free Press will moderate a conversation with Terms and Conditions director Cullen Hoback, Open Technology Institute Senior Research Fellow Seeta Gangadharan and privacy expert Ashkan Soltani. Wine and snacks will be served at a reception.

ADMISSION: Tickets may be purchased here.

ABOUT THE FILM "TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY" - The YouTube page for this movie describes it as, "a documentary about what you're really agreeing to when you click 'I accept.'" But the film goes much deeper than what rights you sign away through your online account agreements. Terms and Conditions May Apply takes viewers through a tour of surveillance and privacy infringement from companies like Facebook and from the government itself. The film was selected as a "New York Times Critics' Pick," and their movie review called it a "quietly blistering documentary" that "should rile even the most passive viewer" (excerpt below):

NEW YORK TIMES: Investigating our casual surrender of privacy rights every time we click the “Agree” button on those dense (and typically unread) online user contracts, the director Cullen Hoback outlines the real-life dangers of digital heedlessness. As the film illustrates, a random tweet or innocent Google search could summon a SWAT team to your door or transform you into a suspected terrorist.

Actual horror stories aside, this concise and lively summary of the many ways corporations, law enforcement and government agencies gather, share and use our information — assisted by digital giants like AT&T and Google — is creepily unnerving....

Audience members and critics alike agree with the New York Times, and as the film review site Rotten Tomatoes notes, Terms and Conditions May Apply has a strong 88% approval rating from critics and 83% from audience members. Below you can watch the official film trailer and read an exclusive interview with filmmaker Cullen Hoback:

INTERVIEW WITH TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY 
FILMMAKER CULLEN HOBACK

First of all, why'd you decide this subject matter -- this was before the issue became nearly as prominent as it's been over the last several months? 

CULLEN HOBACK: I began the project nearly three years ago, asking the question "How is technology changing us?" It took me over a year of work to realize that the greatest change wasn't the technology itself at all, but what's behind that technology.  All those seemingly benign terms and conditions and privacy policies revealed the real cost of using digital services--the complete erosion of privacy.  It almost felt like I was being sucked into a conspiracy theory.  The pure scope of what the government seemed capable of was beyond science fiction.

Were there any really surprising things that you learned about the ways in which the law around privacy rights operates?

CULLEN HOBACK: The concept of the 3rd party doctrine is still baffling to me.  The notion that it's okay for a government to access information about you if you've given that information to a 3rd party, like a bank, or an email provider is totally mind-blowing.  It's like what we did in Iraq when we wanted to conduct operations that the military couldn't legally do itself.  We hired a private contractor: Blackwater.  That's essentially what major tech-companies have become; a sort of de-facto Blackwater that provides surveillance the government couldn't legally achieve by itself.  The main difference is that these tech companies aren't being paid for this.

Without giving too much away, can you speak to some of the more interesting, personal anecdotes that you cover in the film?

CULLEN HOBACK: I show multiple cases of perfectly innocent people having their lives upended dues to these spy systems.  A comedian is visited within hours after he makes a bad joke on Facebook.  A 7th grade boy is visited by our FBI, after posting a concerned message to Obama on Facebook--a warning to watch out for bombers after Osama Bin Laden was killed.  His mother wasn't notified when the FBI showed up at his school to interrogate him.  These systems are bad at context.  And that's a dicey game when you're in the business of trying to prevent crimes from happening.

What do you see as the relative importance of government surveillance and corporate surveillance?  Or are they one in the same?

CULLEN HOBACK: If a corporation can see everything you do, and use that information to target you with ads or profit from its sale, then the government essentially has access to it as well.  So yes, they're one in the same.  In some instances, we've seen companies like Twitter stand up for the rights of their users.  However, this doesn't mean that the NSA isn't able to collect information against the will of a company through other means.  We need greater encryption built into innovative and new online tools.  The kind of encryption that disables both the company and the government from seeing what you do on any given service.

What would you advise viewers who are inspired to fight for their rights to do?

CULLEN HOBACK: I'd recommend visiting trackoff.us and petitioning Congressmen to see Terms and Conditions May Apply, because I think the first step in fixing these systems is to educate lawmakers.  From there we need greater control over our information, and we need to put pressure on companies like Facebook to stop tracking us, changing the rules overnight, and lying to us about what they do with our data.  A mixture of regulation, innovation, and pressure are vital to seeing change.  This and more will happen at trackoff.us.  Also, begin using tools like Ghostery, Wickr, duckduckgo, and Firefox and consider emerging social media services with privacy at the forefront like Sgrouples. 

The question everybody asks: Why should you worry about privacy rights if you're "not doing anything wrong"?

CULLEN HOBACK: If you feel that way, I'd recommend taking the blinds and curtains off of all of your windows.  And take your clothing off as well.  It's not about doing anything wrong, it's about it being no one else's business.  Beyond that, the use of these spy systems against free speech and a free press should be enough to make anyone shake in their totalitarian-fearing boots.

What do you hope will come of the Snowden situation?

CULLEN HOBACK: That I'll get to eat brunch with a free man, a man who's considered a hero, and that it will happen on US soil.  I'd also like to see Clapper investigated for lying under oath to the US Senate.

We hope you might join Maryland Juice for a movie night this Friday at 7:00 pm, but if you can't make it to the opening night screening and festivities, you can still catch the film during its run at the West End Cinema.

NOW OR NEVER: Congress to Vote on Ending NSA Surveillance Today // Left-Right Coalition Needs You to Call Your House Reps

PLEASE CONTACT MD MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TODAY  //  DETAILS BELOW

MARYLAND JUICE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you paid attention to the news in the last month, you likely discovered that the NSA, America's top-secret surveillance agency headquartered in Maryland, has been spying on and harvesting data on your telephone usage, email communications, social media accounts, and much more -- all in the name of your safety. Numerous major corporations have been complicit in providing the NSA and FBI access to your communications data, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Skype, AOL, YouTube, Facebook, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and more. But the surveillance dragnet has involved millions of innocent Americans with little to no transparency for the public and minimal oversight from members of Congress. The only reason we now have proof of this government snooping on residents of the United States is due to the disclosures made from a handful of whistleblowers dating back to the George W. Bush administration, and most recently from 29-year-old former defense contractor Edward Snowden -- who is now being pursued as a "traitor" and "spy" by the Obama administration.

In fact, due to the NSA's classification of their spying operations as top-secret information, Senators who knew about what was going on were not even allowed to talk about it. But as the liberal blog DailyKos recently reported, a trio of U.S. Senators has been warning us for years about this civil liberties travesty (excerpt below):

DAILYKOS: Over two years ago [U.S. Senators] Merkley, Udall and Wyden warned about the administration's surveillance overrreach: "I want to deliver a warning this afternoon,” Wyden said. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry...."

U.S. HOUSE VOTE TO END MASS SURVEILLANCE OF AMERICANS TODAY: This may be the only vote the American public gets out of Congress to finally curtail years of sketchy behavior from government spying agencies, so your diligence as a voter is urgently needed today (details below). Dozens of groups on the left and right are mobilizing their supporters to call members of Congress and urge them to vote to end mass surveillance of Americans. The Huffington Post reported on the rare development yesterday, and noted that the NSA is now lobbying against the interests of the people (excerpt below):

HUFFINGTON POST: The National Security Agency called for a "top secret" meeting with members of the House on Tuesday to lobby against the first House amendment to challenge the agency's authority to cull broad swaths of communications data, according to an invitation circulated in Congress.

The amendment was authored by Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Michigan, and cosponsored by former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and liberal Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers. The House ruled the amendment in order on Monday, and it is expected to get a vote sometime this week.

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. "In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency," reads the invitation. The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others....

The Amash amendment would put the House on record when it comes to NSA snooping. The measure, which would be attached to the Pentagon's spending bill, "ends authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act" and "bars the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215...."

But Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee with access to classified details about the program, said there is no evidence that the data collection had been directly responsible for stopping any single plot. Civil libertarians, meanwhile, are aghast at the NSA's broad interpretation of the law, and even the [Patriot Act's] author said he was surprised at how it is being used....

IT'S NOW OR NEVER TO STAND UP FOR YOUR CIVIL LIBERTIES: The excuse by our nosy bureaucrats and government contractors over the years has been that the mass surveillance of Americans was all made legal years ago through the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act. Today you have an opportunity to take that excuse away from lawmakers and finally tell Congress to put their money where their mouths have been regarding civil liberties and your privacy rights. Please contact Maryland's U.S. House members and ask them to support the "Amash amendment" to end mass surveillance of Americans:

• CD1: Rep. Andy Harris (GOP)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-5311
• CD2: Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-3061
• CD3: Rep. John Sarbanes (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-4016
• CD4: Rep. Donna Edwards (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-8699
• CD5: Rep. Steny Hoyer (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-4131
• CD6: Rep. John Delaney (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-2721
• CD7: Rep. Elijah Cummings (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-4741
• CD8: Rep. Chris Van Hollen (DEM)  -  Email,  Tweet  or call 202-225-5341

This issue speaks to the fundamental balance of power between the people and our government, and Maryland Juice will be fairly unforgiving to those Democrats who choose to stand with the military industrial complex on the side of the Bush-Ashcroft-Cheney surveillance state. You can find additional details on the effort to protect our civil liberties through the "Amash amendment" in the ACLU Fact Sheet below:

ACLU Fact Sheet on Amash Amendment to End NSA Surveillance

Full disclosure: Note that I work for a progressive, Internet Freedom organization called Demand Progress that has been fighting the NSA's surveillance efforts.

HACKING POLITICS: The Death of Aaron Swartz, The Birth of Maryland Juice & State Senator David Brinkley // Read My Book

MYSTERIES OF MARYLAND JUICE REVEALED

Dear Maryland Juice Reader:

Maryland Juice's alter-ego (David Moon) has just co-authored a new book called "Hacking Politics" [Paperback available now & eBook available on a "Pay What You Want" basis for a limited time]. The collection of writings from myself and numerous figures in tech policy and online organizing chronicles the 2012 battle to defeat Internet censorship legislation called SOPA/PIPA. But rather than post some self-congratulatory and shameless plug for the project, I thought it would be better to break my silence on a few matters in the fairly lengthy piece below. 

What does it mean to actually "be the change?"

INTRODUCTION: I thought it was about time for me to provide a little bit of context surrounding the circumstances of this blog's formation and explain why I volunteer my spare time to expose the inner workings of Maryland's political system. Along the way, you'll read some hints about my future plans, and you'll also hear a few untold stories about how my work on Maryland Juice relates to the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz and (oddly) to Maryland State Senator David Brinkley. The collective of political hackers called Anonymous even makes a cameo appearance (kind of). 

I've been steadily working on this piece over the course of the last few months but always found myself lacking the mental energy (and the time) to finish the job. In recent weeks, however, several incidents have pushed this persistent "almost-article" into the front of my mind.

It's been great meeting so many wonderful people around the area over the last year and discovering that they are readers of Maryland Juice. I am truly honored that you've chosen to spend time reading about Free State politics through this progressive civil libertarian's lens. But I've also heard from a few detractors who say my blog is biased, sometimes snarky, and might even have an agenda. Let me be clear: I think that's exactly the point.

Maryland Juice was formed in August 2011, a few months after I started working for an Internet activist group called Demand Progress. I had decided to take a pause from campaign work after several years of back-to-back election cycles on the trail for a range of candidates including State Senators Jamie Raskin & Rich Madaleno; Delegates Al Carr, Ana Sol Gutierrez & Jeff Waldstricher; MoCo Councilmembers Nancy Navarro & Hans Riemer; and the Maryland Democratic ticket in 2010. After that election cycle, I even applied for a job trying to bring my electoral reform experience (built up while working at a group called FairVote), to try and setup an election monitoring system in Tunisia. I needed to be working on something different.

But instead I ended up at Demand Progress, and the work I was doing there very quickly began to influence the way I approached how to use my blog. Remember that nationally Democrats had just gone through the bruising Tea Party cycle of 2010. So somewhere between the models of the Maryland Politics Watch blog and the aggressive activist tactics of The Tea Party, Occupy, Susan G. Komen protests, and more -- I started developing a new theory of change for progressive politics. I had already tried affecting change on the campaign trail, in nonprofits, through ballot measures, with a law degree, with a PAC, in primaries, in generals, and even from within the government itself. But weaponizing information (especially information that might go viral) was something new to me.

Naturally, Maryland Juice began coopting some of the tactics I saw providing some measure of success for online organizers and conservative activists. For example, when the political shaming strategies of Rupert Murdoch's rightwing NewsCorp were revealed to the world, I paid close attention. The curation of Maryland Juice is an experiment in learning from some of the aforementioned tactics -- but unlike some other pratictioners, I've been trying to use these strategies to promote social and economic justice. And during much of the time I've been writing the blog, I've had an entirely parallel activist life that I haven't talked about much on Maryland Juice -- until now.

The tragic events described below have made me impatient for change and determined to shock the conscience of voters into awakening. As a result, the blog itself has over time evolved into an aggressive attempt to hack politics. You and I are participating in an experiment in state-based progressive activism that I call Maryland Juice, and among the central theories driving this project are the ideas that to create change we must insist that decorum and inertia yield to justice, and that we must stop "waiting for Superman" to fix politics.

DECORUM MUST YIELD TO JUSTICE: This point was never so clear to me as it was last January, when my friend and colleague Aaron Swartz hung himself with a belt from the window of his Brooklyn, New York apartment. He was only 26 years old. 

Aaron co-founded and helped develop numerous cutting-edge sites and online information-sharing technologies including reddit.com, RSS 1.0, Creative Commons, and (as we discovered after his death) the New Yorker's online system for receiving anonymous news tips. His high-profile pursuits were noted as early as age 14, marking the arrival of one of the most interesting child prodigies of our time. This August Aaron is posthumously being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame alongside titans like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and a documentary film is being made about his life (watch the trailer). Lastly, in response to Aaron's high-profile death, last month a bill called "Aaron's Law" was introduced in Congress to prevent future tragedies. 

You see, the U.S. Department of Justice (under Eric Holder's leadership) decided to try and make a criminal out of Aaron and threatened him with thirty-five years in prison for unbelievably trumped up felony "hacking" charges. In truth, if Aaron had been convicted, he would've been a political prisoner. I explain why down below.

---

"Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. I think a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity."

 - Aaron Swartz 1986-2013

---

Practically the entire time I knew Aaron and worked with him, he was living under the cloud of a menacing prosecution. But he was intensely private about the whole affair and refused to do more than shrug his shoulders when I asked him about it. I would later come to discover that Aaron's friends were being dragged before federal officials to testify against him. All the while, Aaron kept his head high and continued his activist work and projects. He never stopped thinking about ways to make positive change on complex issues of justice. But in some ways I feel I may have let him down, as there would come to be signs that the prosecution was taking a personal toll on him.

MAY 2012: AARON SWARTZ FOR NY MAYOR? - One of the last times I saw Aaron alive, he had come to Silver Spring, Maryland (near where I live) to give the keynote speech at the annual Freedom to Connect conference. I didn't arrive at the AFI Silver Theatre in time to hear his remarks, though the YouTube replay has now been viewed by over 400,000 people. Sadly, I couldn't have known then that this would be one of Aaron's final public addresses. Nevertheless, after his speech Aaron wanted a ride to Union Station so that he could catch the next train back to New York. And as soon as we got in my car, he asked plainly, "what's on your mind these days?" Aaron was always curious to hear more about what others were working on.

I described to him my frustrations with the lack of political courage on criminal justice reforms that would end the mass incarceration of Americans for non-violent offenses (who, by the way, are disproportionately poor and of color). I ranted about the fact that across the nation, Democrats had all but given up on challenging corporate power in our political system. And I also told Aaron I had been thinking about running for public office in Maryland.

Given Aaron's interest in open information, I tried to tickle his interest in experiments with activist legislating for the cause. In particular, I described to him some possible things an elected official could do to force complacent legislative leaders to grant the public access to information about what their government is doing. Maryland, for example, had only recently started publishing committee votes online. But why couldn't a diligent lawmaker simply have gotten some staff or interns to systematically scan and publicly upload all of the committee votes themselves? And just like that, we started gaming out different ways of going rogue to create disclosure of government proceedings that the public ought to be able to see.

It was at this time that Aaron told me he had recently plotted out a hypothetical run for New York mayor in his head, as he wanted to see what it would take to mount a serious bid. Though it didn't seem he was actually talking about running, it was clear to me that this was a continuation of a conversation we had the first time I met Aaron only one and a half years earlier.

DECEMBER 2010: HACKING POLITICS - In September 2010 Aaron co-founded the online activist organization Demand Progress with my high school friend, former Rhode Island State Rep. and congressional candidate David Segal (who grew up in Montgomery County). Aaron and David brought me in to serve as Demand Progress' "Washington Guy" a few months after launching the organization. Though Aaron is not able to see what's become of his work with us, I think he would be pleased to know that we now amplify the voices of 1.5 million members in the aggressive defense of civil liberties, progressive causes and Internet freedom.

At the time, Aaron was most widely known as an open information advocate, who happened to believe that access to taxpayer funded academic research should not be a luxury reserved for wealthy nations and institutions. He was also a wildly creative and idealistic activist who looked for opportunities to make real change. When PACER (the U.S. court system's database of federal court documents) announced a pilot project to provide free access to public records at some libraries, Aaron found a way to download millions of the court documents and upload them into the cloud. Like a modern-day Robin Hood, Aaron made the files publicly available and was investigated by the FBI for his activism. At the time, PACER charged users 8 cents per page for public records and allegedly ran a surplus of nearly $150 million. 

Though Aaron's PACER stunt was discussed in the mainstream media, I didn't know about the law enforcement distaste for his tactics when I first started working for Demand Progress. A passage from my new book Hacking Politics describes the first time I met Aaron Swartz, and it also details the beginning of a running dialogue we had about how to get justice-minded candidates to seek public office (excerpt below):

DAVID MOON (VIA HACKING POLITICS) - [Demand Progress'] primary function is to mobilize the public to advance civil liberties and progressive causes. We do so primarily during key moments in the public dialogue, when the actions of a few can be leveraged into results for many more.... Our work to stop SOPA/PIPA ... fits the paradigm for activism today: harnessing grassroots disruption to advance social change....  The Arab Spring protests, Occupy, the Tea Party, and Anonymous have all illuminated this paradigm shift.

My involvement with Demand Progress began on December 20, 2010, when I met the young Internet activist Aaron Swartz for coffee in Washington, D.C.'s Dupont Circle. I had never heard of Aaron or his work -- but over time, I quickly saw that he was trying to trigger many of the same policy changes I sought to advance....

But my first meeting with Aaron wasn't even really about [Internet censorship legislation called] COICA or Demand Progress. Instead, I asked Aaron to describe his broad vision of what he hoped Demand Progress might achieve. Aaron expressed immense frustration with the political process and stated that his dream was to see well-meaning grassroots candidates running for office in every district in the nation. Privately, I thought the idea sounded a bit grandiose (at least in the context of trying to create a short-term strategic plan for an organization), but that was mostly beside the point: it was clear that I shared Aaron's sense of impatience with a broken political system and his desire to go big....

FEBRUARY 2012: A CAMEO BY ANONYMOUS (KIND OF) - By February 2012, Demand Progress was reveling in the glow of the unexpected defeat of the SOPA/PIPA legislation. That month I spoke on a panel at DC Social Media week titled, "Who was Really Behind the Internet Blackout Day? A SOPA & PIPA Case Study." It was a great event and a community celebration for Internet freedom fighters, but after the event I was approached by a gentleman who handed me a business card that had no text on it and simply displayed a bizarre pattern of shapes. When I gave him a puzzled look, he stated, "I'm anonymous. But I may be in touch." I don't know if those were his exact words, but you get the idea. Given recent high-profile news coverage of hacktivism, I assumed my mysterious new acquaintance was affiliated with the Anonymous (eg: the one with a capital "A"). As it would turn out, I never heard from him again, but the run-in would cause some confusion weeks later.

Indeed, soon after speaking at DC Social Media Week, and I can't remember exactly when, I received a USB flash drive in an unmarked manilla envelope in the mail. When I opened the unmarked package and saw the disk drive with no accompanying note, I immediately gulped, as I conjured up all sorts of crazy stories about what was on the drive or what might happen if I inserted it into my computer. By this time, I was already aware of the federal charges facing Aaron, so I thought it best to explore the mystery of the flash drive at a later date. With that decision made, I took the envelope and flash drive and threw them into the trunk of my car -- where they sat for months. Life and work, as is normal, diverted my attention from extracurricular activities such as this new mystery.

JUNE 2012: DARK DAYS FOR AARON SWARTZ - In June 2012, I was invited to speak on a panel at the annual Netroots Nation conference (the topic was SOPA/PIPA organizing again). I remembered that the USB flash drive was still sitting in my car and decided I would bring it to the gathering in Providence, Rhode Island. I was finally ready to explore its contents. 

At this point in time, Demand Progress was still trying to steady its fundraising operations, so I was trying to find other activists to share my hotel room with me. I ended up bunking with Aaron and his girlfriend Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. Taren and I were both speaking on panels at the conference, and Aaron's attendance was actually a last minute decision. As the story goes, Taren had boarded a train to Providence, and Aaron was feeling down and wanted to be with her. He happened to be near New York Penn Station when talking to her on the phone and realized that the next train to arrive would be the one that Taren was aboard. So Aaron jumped on Taren's train and joined us in Providence.

Admittedly, I found the living arrangements a bit awkward, as I wanted to give Taren and Aaron some personal space. Our first night together was fine, as we were mostly all tired upon arrival, and the next morning Taren and I woke up and departed to our various panels. Aaron, however, stayed behind in the room. When I returned sometime after lunch, he was alone in the room with the shades drawn shut in total darkness. When I asked if he was going to come out with me, he stated that he wasn't yet ready to partake in the conference. I didn't think much of this. 

But I returned yet again in the early evening as the famous Netroots Nation happy hours and parties were about to begin and demanded he come out to socialize with some of our activist friends. Aaron promised he would meet up with me at one of the parties being sponsored by this or that progressive organization, and then he disappeared back into the darkness of the cave he had created for himself. Today I wonder whether this was a sign of the mental toll the federal prosecution was taking on him.

For whatever reason, this situation didn't seem so bizarre to me at the time, as I knew Aaron to be a bit eccentric and often not interested in mindless socializing. In fact, he was staying with me once on my birthday, and during my party he shut himself in my guest room as soon as people started singing to Journey. "What's going on down there?" he asked like a father might. That weekend, he enjoyed himself much more in my company when others were not around. I introduced him to the HBO television show Bored to Death and the rock band The Black Keys, and that seemed more his speed. In any case, with that experience in mind, I decided to give Aaron and Taren some space during the rest of the conference. Rather than continuing to intrude on their time together, I slept on the spare bed in the hotel room of one of my friends and former colleagues (Vermont State Rep. Chris Pearson of the Progressive Party -- a disruptive catalyst for change in his own right).

FLASH DRIVE MYSTERY SOLVED BY SEN. DAVID BRINKLEY - The morning after I was exposed to Aaron's dark day of solitude in our hotel room, I went back to our shared quarters to fetch some things. It was around lunchtime and Aaron was sitting in bed clacking away on his laptop. This time he allowed sunlight to penetrate the room.

I told Aaron that I brought a mysterious disk drive with me to the conference, and I disclosed to him the story about the man with the wordless business card. He immediately jumped out of bed and insisted we go down to the business center to explore the contents of the device. Aaron's face lit up with curiosity, and he was alive like I hadn't seen him during the rest of the conference. This was, in fact, the first time I had succeeded in getting him out of the hotel room.

So Aaron and I marched down to the business center at the conference to borrow one of their desktop computers. After all, I had refused to open the flash drive on my own computer. Hilariously, I had my own laptop in my hand, and the clerk at the business center inquired why we needed to use his computer when we had our own. I hadn't considered that one might wonder about this, and I stammered some garbled words in response. I thought the jig was up. But I quickly recovered and stated something about needing to print documents from their machine, and we proceeded to rent one of their computers.

When I finally loaded the USB drive into the computer, my excitement turned into disappointment. There were exactly two files on the drive, and they were both labeled something like "David Brinkley 911 Call." It turned out that the mysterious package had nothing to do with hacktivsm or Anonymous at all. The real story behind the anonymous mailing was that Maryland Republicans were embroiled in a heated primary race for the 6th Congressional seat held by GOP Rep. Roscoe Bartlett at the time. A State Senator named David Brinkley was challenging Bartlett in the primary, and someone had sent me copies of 911 audio recordings relating to a domestic disturbance at Brinkley's house. Obviously, they were hoping I would post the tapes on my blog Maryland Juice. At the time, I had decided to start writing about and weighing in on the horserace aspects of the GOP primary battle, since the mainstream media was seemingly not doing too much in-depth coverage of the race. 

The primary was held during April 2012, but I was so terrified of the unmarked package that whoever sent it to me probably had no idea I wouldn't even look at the contents until well after the election was over. As a result, the anonymous sender was later forced to post the 911 call tapes on YouTube and send them to me by email. Though the resulting Maryland Juice story caused quite a stir in state politics, I didn't even bother to tell Aaron what was on the flash drive. Instead, when he asked what the files were, I didn't think he'd be interested in the story. So I just told him that the fiiles were related to my blog. But now I wish I told him the full story, as I think he would've been amused. Oh well.

JANUARY 2013: THE DEATHS OF AARON SWARTZ & NORM GLEICHMAN - Around 2:30 am on Saturday, January 12, 2013, I received a Google news alert informing me that my friend and colleague Aaron Swartz had committed suicide just hours earlier. Given our work together on Demand Progress, in pro forma fashion, I had subscribed to news alerts mentioning Aaron. I was out of the house the night of Aaron's death and didn't know that the multiple missed calls were attempts to reach me about the shocking news. But when I got home and realized what was going on, I quickly made a late-night phone call to my tired sounding Demand Progress colleague David Segal. After confirming that the news alert was in fact true, I went to bed stunned and emotionally numb.

After just a few hours of uneasy rest, I bolted awake the next morning and quickly grabbed my smartphone to read any email messages that may have come through while I was sleeping. Though I was seeking more information about Aaron's death, I was instead astonished to read a Facebook message from a friend in Takoma Park informing me that our mutual friend Norm Gleichman died suddenly and unexpectedly while on vacation with his family. I first met Norm, a senior attorney in SEIU's national office, while managing Jamie Raskin's insurgent campaign for State Senate in 2006, and though we both mingled in some overlapping political circles, I actually knew Norm mostly in a non-political context. I had been over to his house a few times to have dinner with his family and also saw him shine as a thespian taking on the lead role in the Greenbelt Arts Center's 2009 production of the play "Amadeus." One of my friends briefly dated Norm's daughter and yet another had been working with Norm in SEIU's legal department for the past couple years. So when my wife Melinda and I moved close to Norm and his wife Marie's house in Takoma Park last year, we were excited to reconnect with them and have them over to our house for dinner. We've finally completed a year of mayhem living in a house undergoing renovations and are ready to entertain, but alas we will now miss the company of Norm, too.

Aaron Swartz and Norm Gleichman died on the same day under wildly divergent circumstances, and attending the two funerals in quick succession left me with a lasting psychic scar. But somehow Aaron's voluntary taking of his own life rattled me more than perhaps I've been able to comprehend. I had only weeks earlier met up with him at the December 2012 RootsCamp organizing conference in Washington, DC. That was the last time I ever saw Aaron in-person, but in our final conversation together, we caught up on our discussion about my potential run for office and Aaron followed-up by connecting me via email to an academic he knew who was working on the issue of mass incarceration in America. We also talked about maybe getting together later that weekend, but again I got too busy to actually meet up with Aaron. That would've been my last opportunity to chat with him about anything.

Aaron did, however, contact me on Twitter ten days before his death with a warning to protect one of my own accounts, which was probably spamming him with nonsense. His final message to me (though helpful at the time) now means something more to me than its ordinary tone would suggest. With all that must have been going on in his head, I can't even believe that he spent a nano-second writing this message to me:

CONCLUSION: Aaron and I never had the opportunity to finish our ongoing conversation, let alone even continue it. And so now I am continuing this dialogue directly with you instead. Maryland Juice is obviously not a mainstream media outlet, nor are we just another news blog or online political column. This operation is yet another experiment in Hacking Politics ... one reader at a time. Much, much more on the next steps soon. In the meantime:

#OccupyLife

MORE DETAILS ON MY BOOK: HACKING POLITICS -  Hacking Politics chronicles the 2012 battle to defeat Internet censorship legislation called SOPA/PIPA. I co-authored the book with former Rhode Island Rep. David Segal, and former George W. Bush webmaster Patrick Ruffini. The strategies and work style reflected in the chapters I wrote are a window into the ethos of Maryland Juice. Though the book widely concerns a policy battle over Internet Freedom, I hope it is a useful case study for thinking about organizing more broadly. Our coalition's efforts culminated in a dramatic Internet-wide blackout of websites including Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Mozilla. Along the way, our ragtag coalition came to include technologists, Tea Partiers, progressives, businesses, civil libertarians, and literally millions of ordinary Internet users around the nation. We went up against a massive coalition of industry interests including giants in the pharmaceutical industry, Hollywood, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- and we prevailed. 

Hacking Politics details how it all went down from the perspective of numerous key participants, and in doing so shines the light on the massive influence of special interests in Congress -- and how to fight back guerilla-style. The book includes colorful stories and insightful commentary from Aaron Swartz, lawmakers including Ron Paul and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, musicians like Erin McKeown and Jonny 5 of the Flobots, as well as advocates from a range of websites including Google, reddit, Megaupload, Cheezburger, Suicide Girls, and more. I hope you might check it out at: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/hacking-politics-2

You can also watch a crude trailer I previously made for the book below:



NOTE: I am doubtful that simply mentioning my interest in public office in a single article on a blog that predates the creation of my committee requires an authority line, but just in case, this particular article alone may be considered: By Authority: Friends of David Moon. Treasurer: Usman Ahmed.

Maryland Juice Talks Policy w/ Top Chef Tom Collichio, Harry Reid's Brain, Ben Huh & Bob Marley Film Producer at SXSW

#OccupyLife + Subversive Art

BACKGROUND: Last week, Maryland Juice had the privilege of attending this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. The annual gathering brings thousands of people together to showcase the latest technology, screen award-winning films, and listen to the next wave of innovative musical acts. The gathering has the feel of a World's Fair reboot, and I was psyched to be able to represent Demand Progress at the festival.

I arrived in Austin, Texas with little to no formal agenda; rather I was there with a vague goal of meeting up with techno-activists from the SOPA/PIPA battle. Indeed, I had never met most of the key figures with whom I had worked in a loose coalition with for the past year. Many of them were planning on attending the technology-focused portion of the SXSW festival, and so I decided to join them.

To be sure, I had many robust and productive conversations about future activist experiments with many sage minds and next-generation figures in the movement for Internet freedom. But more intriguing to me were the unexpected conversations I had with people about policy -- both tech-related and more conventional. My SXSW experience included policy ranting with Top Chef Tom Collichio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's former Chief of Staff Susan McCue, Cheezburger.com CEO Ben Huh, film producer Steve Bing and more!

Maryland Juice Invades Republic of Texas // What Is An eBook Mixtape? We're Launching a Special New Book Project at SXSW

Maryland Juice has just arrived in Austin, Texas for the annual SXSW festival. I am here to launch a new project with my colleagues & allies from the fight to stop SOPA & PIPA (aka Internet censorship legislation that stalled in Congress a few weeks ago).

Along with David Segal from Demand Progress and Patrick Ruffini from Engage DC, I am writing, editing and curating content for a new eBook titled:

Hacking Politics: How we -- the Internet -- stood up to defend ourselves against #SOPA & #PIPA

I'll be trickling out details about the project -- and hopefully some teaser content very soon. The eBook will not only feature important commentary from key figures in the fight for Internet freedom; we are also going to try and highlight a new model for how eBooks are created (see a hint below). Stay tuned!

www.HackPolitics.com

P.S. Maryland Juice will be publishing on a bizarre and erratic schedule over the next couple days. Apologies in advance, but rest assured -- more MD political juice coming soon!

I'm Writing A Book With George W. Bush's Webmaster (Seriously) // Read Hacking Politics

www.HackPolitics.com

Maryland Juice's life is an ongoing experiment in advocacy and social change efforts. Last year, I took a job with a start-up Internet organization called Demand Progress. The organization was founded by a young tech prodigy (Aaron Swartz) and a former Rhode Island State Representative (David Segal) who grew up in MoCo. By promoting civil liberties and progressive causes, they quickly attracted a following of over 300,000 Internet users.

Photo with Senator Ron Wyden and Members of the Anti-SOPA/PIPA Coalition After Defeat of the Legislation

Over the course of the year, we virally grew the organization's membership from 300,000 to over 1 million users, and in the course of doing so, we helped organize Internet protests against dangerous innovation-stifling legislation called SOPA and PIPA. You may have seen some of the results of our coalition's work.

Though most of you know me as a bomb-throwing progressive, I've always stated that I'm an issues-guy at heart. That's why the fight to protect the Internet from undue government and private sector control put me in a coalition with conservatives (Tea Party/Liberty/CATO/Heritage) and liberals (MoveOn/Reddit/etc). Even Kim Kardashian got involved.

Now, I am writing a book with my Demand Progress colleague, David Segal --- along with Patrick Ruffini, the e-advocacy guru for the RNC and George W. Bush. We are going to tell the story about the largest Internet protest in history, and what it means for the future of organizing. Already, pundits are pointing to the SOPA protests as the precursor for Susan Komen and likely a wave of new activism.

Find out about the new era of organizing on the Internet: Sign up to receive a copy of our free e-Book. The project will feature insights and commentary from many noteworthy advocates, alongside newly emerging leaders of the movement for open information and a free Internet. Stay tuned!