EPIC Champions of Freedom 2025

The EPIC Champions of Freedom 2025 was held on Monday, September 15th at the True Reformer Building in Washington, D.C.

EPIC established the Champions of Freedom Awards in 2004 to honor individuals and organizations that have worked to safeguard the right to privacy, open government, and democratic values with courage and integrity.

The event this year felt unique and energizing because of the location and the collected company. The True Reformer building anchored us in the history of the District and the reality of our current federal occupation by the National Guard and ICE. What we needed more than ever was to come together with our colleagues and partners to share strategies and perspectives on this collective fight against digital authoritarianism.

We were lucky to have such an excellent group of speakers to discuss the challenges we face and the work ahead:

  • Ava Smithing from Young People’s Alliance emphasized showing people a vision of what a healthy digital future could look like and including more voices in the conversation
  • Rohit Chopra, former Director of CFPB, explained how a lack of robust consumer protection enforcement led us down this road
  • Mark Samburg, Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward, explained how litigation is a powerful tool of resistance to the privacy invasions and federal workforce attacks by this administration, even when we don’t win every case
  • Sandeep Vaheesan from the Open Markets Institute spoke about the lack of comprehensive anti-competitive work being done at the federal level and the need to reign in surveillance advertising
  • Paromita Shah from Just Futures Law underscored the urgency of the moment, given the threats posed to immigrant communities in particular, and the need to grow the tent and bring a broad range of groups together to push back

EPIC does not take government or corporate funding so we deeply appreciate our sponsors and attendees that allowed us to make the Champions of Freedom 2025 Event happen this year.

We will be posting more content from the event soon, so stay tuned.If you have any questions about the event, please reach out to [email protected].