14 DAY TRIAL // The protests against next month’s RSA conference have gone up a notch as boycotters are organizing “TrustyCon” (short for Trustworthy Technology Conference) just down the street from the Moscone Center where the RSA event is scheduled to take place.
Following a report that the NSA paid security company RSA $10 million (€7.36 million) to build a backdoor into its encryption technology, more and more people started to protest. Various speakers scheduled to make an appearance at the February event have already announced that they won’t be attending.
Speakers from the ACLU, Mozilla and Google are just some of those who canceled their appearances at the conference. Instead, many are choosing to attend a brand new conference called TrustyCon, a jab to the fact that the RSA cannot be trusted anymore.
The new event is organized by security firm iSEC Partners, civil liberties group EFF, and DEF CON, and will take place on February 27, the day before the last one of the four-day event that RSA has planned.
As mentioned, TrustyCon will be held at Metron, a movie theater just down the street from the RSA conference. Tickets are $50 (€37) each and all proceeds will go to the EFF.
Several speakers that have quit the RSA event are moving shop to TrustyCon, including Google’s Chris Palmer and ACLU’s Chris Soghoian. Stephen Colbert, popular public figure, is still mentioned on the list as well, although he is facing some pressure to cancel after a petition was created in support of this.
There are many people still scheduled to speak at the RSA conference, including cryptographer Bruce Schneier, who has helped journalists with the Snowden files. Recently, he has told Forbes that he will keep his promise, especially since he would be discussing the NSA, something he believes is an important topic for that particular audience.