EFF Pioneer Award

Winners

• 1992: Douglas Engelbart, Robert E. Kahn, Tom Jennings, Jim Warren, Andrzej Smereczynski
• 1993: Paul Baran, Vint Cerf, Ward Christensen, Dave Hughes, USENET developers (accepted by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis)
• 1994: Ivan Sutherland, Bill Atkinson, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Lee Felsenstein, and the WELL (the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)
• 1995: Philip Zimmermann, Anita Borg, Willis Ware
• 1996: Robert Metcalfe, Peter Neumann, Shabbir Safdar and Matt Blaze
• 1997: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil (special award; posthumous with respect to Antheil), Johan Helsingius, Marc Rotenberg
• 1998: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Barbara Simons
• 1999: Jon Postel (posthumous award), Drazen Pantic, Simon Davies
• 2000: "Librarians Everywhere" (accepted by Karen G. Schneider), Tim Berners-Lee, Phil Agre
• 2001: Bruce Ennis (attorney) (posthumous award), Seth Finkelstein, Stephanie Perrin
• 2002: Dan Gillmor, Beth Givens, Jon Johansen and Writers of DeCSS
• 2003: Amy Goodman, Eben Moglen, David Sobel
• 2004: Kim Alexander, David L. Dill, Avi Rubin (for security issues with electronic voting)
• 2005: Mitch Kapor, Edward Felten, Patrick Ball
• 2006: Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, Jimmy Wales
• 2007: Yochai Benkler, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier
• 2008: Mozilla Foundation and its chair Mitchell Baker; Michael Geist; and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein
• 2009: Limor "Ladyada" Fried, Harri Hursti and Carl Malamud
• 2010: Steven Aftergood, James Boyle, Pamela Jones of the Groklaw website and Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru
• 2011: Ron Wyden, Ian Goldberg, and Nawaat.org
• 2012: Andrew (bunnie) Huang, Jérémie Zimmermann, The Tor Project
• 2013: Aaron Swartz (posthumous award), James Love, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras
• 2014: Frank La Rue, Zoe Lofgren, Trevor Paglen
• 2015: Caspar Bowden (posthumous award), Citizen Lab, Anriette Esterhuysen and the Association for Progressive Communications and Kathy Sierra
• 2016: Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice, data protection activist Max Schrems, the authors of the "Keys Under Doormats" report, and California State Senators Mark Leno and Joel Anderson.
• 2017: Chelsea Manning, Mike Masnick, Annie Game
• 2018: Stephanie Lenz, Joe McNamee (from EDRi), Sarah T. Roberts
• 2019: Danah boyd, Oakland Privacy, William Gibson
• 2020: Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, Deborah Raji; Danielle Blunt; Open Technology Fund Community
• 2021: Kade Crockford, Pam Dixon, Matt Mitchell

Name change to EFF Awards:

• 2022: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Digital Defense Fund, Kyle Wiens
• 2023: Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, Signal Foundation
• 2024: Carolina Botero, Connecting Humanity, 404 Media
• 2025: Erie Meyer; Just Futures Law; Software Freedom Law Center, India