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Besides, DEFCON's statement was symbolic. If the NSA is watching us constantly anyway, they're going to be hacking us and us hacking them even if we and/or they are not at the conference.
A statement such as "We believe the exclusion of the "feds" this year does the exact opposite at a critical time." is just ridiculous. Even more bizarre is the idea of mentioning openness in the (current) government context.
If there is a positive effect between the openness of the hacker community and the Feds then why did we end up with the current situation?
The current situation is incredibly bad so I absolutely support the decision by DEF CON. Even if there is only one single occasion where people stop talking/avoiding a person who is working to close with government agencies this is a success.
People who work for these agencies will always hide behind some "greater good" narrative and avoid taking personal responsibility. My hope is that by getting personally shunned by their former peer group it might help them realize that this is not longer just business-as-usual.
Government loves to really up the public with the us vs them rhetoric so they definitely deserve a dose of their own medicine.
Bullshit, that's exactly what it is.
As a symbolic statement by DEF CON, I like the "no feds" thing. Pragmatically, it probably won't much much difference, since any Feds who want to attend can probably attend and just not identify themselves as feds. OK, yeah, Keith Alexander might be spotted, but the average run-of-the-mill FBI or NSA geek probably isn't all that recognizable unless they wear their official ID or something. BUT... looking at it from t…
You missed the point completely, your post is a contradiction and way off base.
Hopefully their talk will be replaced with a Q&A session with NSA reps.
this is so awesome by Secure Ideas, and also an awful move by DEF CON. one of the largest problems with current state of technology is that what the fed is doing is possible. hopefully there will be a lot of talk about how to shift towards more secure services such as mesh nets and polymorphic encryption. the feds would have been good resources to talk to, and it's extremely hard to find an opportunity to have the ki…
I think you meant 'legal' but you accidentally wrote 'possible' instead. Mesh nets and polymorphic encryption don't stand a chance against a supoena and the threat of a lengthy imprisonment/huge fine for noncompliance.