In an age of heightened security, are our most vital civil liberties at risk? Shahid Buttar of the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides an insight into the history of mass surveillance and incarceration policies, how those policies conflict with the very ideas of a democratic society, and how these policies affect everything from popular movements to our daily lives.

Shahid leads EFF's grassroots and student outreach efforts. He's a constitutional lawyer focused on community organizing and policy reform as a lever to shift legal norms, with roots in communities across the country resisting mass surveillance.

From 2009 to 2015, he led the Bill of Rights Defense Committee as Executive Director. After graduating from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he grew immersed in the movement to stop the war in Iraq, Shahid worked for a decade in Washington, D.C. He first worked in private practice, with public interest litigation projects advancing campaign finance reform, and marriage equality for samesex couples as early as 2004, when LGBT rights remained politically marginal. From 2005 to 2008, he helped build a national progressive legal network and managed the communications team at the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, and in 2008 and 2009 he founded the program to combat racial & religious profiling at Muslim Advocates.



This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx