Clearly ...
... It's because his name is an anagram of "I'm ogler John", and we can't have that in this day of the hyper politically correct, now can we. Obviously, he has to go.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) co-founder John Gilmore has been removed from any active role on the digital rights organisation's board but will continue to serve as emeritus member. "Since he helped found EFF 31 years ago, John Gilmore has provided leadership and guidance on many of the most important digital rights …
I love British wit. I feel I got smarter chasing this one down. So John Gilmore cracked the DES (and could have ogled our private bits), which ironically (given the anagram) got us off 56-bit to something more secure and less likely to be ogled.
Then this sacking is payback for that revelation and probably other inconvenient views Gilmore had on things like privacy and liberty.
Really witty joke/puzzle; thanks.
What I don't get is all the downvotes; it doesn't seem that far-fetched he finally 'put it to the man' enough times to find out what happens when an elephant notices you are trying to irritate it with your spear.
It does have a certain Hemlock feel to it. Happy Halloween.
> why didn't he simply resign from the board then...?
Presumably he had hoped/expected that (a majority of) the board were going to back him, and was either deaf or blind to the fact that they weren't. That, or his allies changed their minds at the last minute and screwed him over.
And why do the books look good only because the US govt *gave* EFF $1.7 million.
Payroll Protection payment April 2020, forgiven Feb 2021.
And travel expenses went down only 30% in a pandemic? What would it take to decrease by half? Nuclear war?
Event expenses were down over 50%, so who was travelling? It's like they didn't know how to use modern communications tools.
I'm "Guardian" level contributor to EFF which gets me a newsletter (free on their website) and various tschotskes if I want them. But I am as much in the dark as everyone else.
I can think of two possibly controversial recent actions that Williams may have disagreed with - EFF's support of Assange and their support of the Palestinian digital rights group 7amleh. I frankly can't see Williams objecting to either.
But, I can think of one of Williams' positions that the EFF might have a problem with - his growing identification with drug law reform and marijuana legalization.
I suspect it was the latter and the EFF wanted to distance itself from these issues (and the whole 'encryption helps drug gangs' narrative) but retain Williams as an advisor.
That's pronounced "Bruce Schneier". He's a major force in cryptography.
Vice Chair of the Board Brian Behlendorf worked on NCSA's https back in the day (so did I ...and hundreds of other people), and was part of the group that forked it into what became Apache. Was this "groundbreaking"? Not in my mind. He's an administrator, in the old meaning of the word.
Board Member Brewster Kahle helped to invent WAIS. Groundbreaking? Not really. More of a logical necessity. Obsolete today, but brought us such charmers as Go ogle.
Board Member Jonathan Zittrain did the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia ... WTF? I thought this was the electronic FREEDOM foundation!
And that's about it. Pretty much everybody else (board or everyday employee) identifies as a lawyer, an advocate, and/or an activist ... all of which are a dime a dozen in San Francisco, where they are located.