The Electronic Frontier Foundation is inviting programmers, designers, and other contributors to mark Aaron Swartz’s legacy at a free in-person and remote hackathon on November 8, 2026. Swartz was an advocate for digital rights and an open internet. In 2011, federal prosecutors charged him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after he downloaded academic journal articles from JSTOR; facing the possibility of a lengthy sentence, he died by suicide in 2013, aged 26. EFF describes him as a friend and ally and connects the event to its continuing work defending programmers through the Coders’ Rights Project.
Participants can contribute code, documentation, or design to public-interest and open-source projects, including SecureDrop, Open Library, Quantifying the Commons, Onion Press, and EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance. EFF State Affairs Director Hayley Tsukayama will lead an Atlas of Surveillance onboarding session at 11 a.m. at the Internet Archive, which is hosting the in-person gathering. The event is supported by the Internet Archive, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Creative Commons, and Free Law Project. Contributors of all experience levels are welcome, and organizers invite suggestions for additional projects and workshops, especially GitHub projects that participants can continue developing afterward. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time, with a social lunch from 1 to 3 p.m., at the Internet Archive in San Francisco; attendance is free, with an RSVP requested.
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