The giant silver coffee dispensers positioned at the center of the meeting rooms in the New Yorker Hotel were mobbed. Lawyers in crisp suits rubbed shoulders with activists in wrinkled T-shirts. Geeks with modular pieces of technology clipped to their belts roved the wireless network via laptop while journalists swapped censorship stories with human rights workers.

While the war in Iraq raged, the almost 300 international attendees of the 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (CFP) in New York City, whose political beliefs spanned the spectrum from left to right, came together with a shared goal: to protect individual liberties during a time of international turmoil and fear. And these defenders of cyber liberty were not just talk. They had fought for their beliefs everywhere from the Supreme Court to the United Nations, and even from jail.

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