Violet Blue

Violet Blue is an awarded author, notorious blogger, and independent journalist for CNET, Engadget, Zero Day, ZDNet, CBS News and other outlets. Blue is a notorious public pundit on privacy activism and bleeding-edge tech culture. She is an educator, speaker, crisis counselor, volunteer NGO trainer: Blue is outspoken and controversial. She lost a domain to Libya, has been yelled at by Steve Jobs, and was the first female podcaster. Ms. Blue is well known for breaking news stories at the intersection of cybercrime and activism, as well as the impact of technology on at-risk populations. She was first to break the stories of Wikipedia's paid-editing scandal; the hacking of US Government institutions such as The Federal Bank and Federal Sentencing website by Anonymous; the Google "real name" ("nymwars") debacle; Snapchat's database hack, and many more stories. Blue has worked and taught in the healthcare harm reduction sectors for over a decade, and participates as an instructor in UCSF