14 DAY TRIAL // In a blog post published on Wednesday, DEF CON founder Jeff Moss (aka The Dark Tangent) asked government workers not to attend this year’s conference. The announcement comes in light of the controversy that surrounds the PRISM surveillance program revelations.
“For over two decades DEF CON has been an open nexus of hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics, and feds can meet, share ideas and party on neutral territory. Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect,” Moss wrote in a post titled “Feds, we need some time apart.”
“When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship. Therefore, I think it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a ‘time-out’ and not attend DEF CON this year. This will give everybody time to think about how we got here, and what comes next,” he added.
As Brian Krebs highlights, over the past years, DEF CON hosted a “playful and mostly harmless” contest called “Spot-the-Fed.” The contest encouraged participants to identify the undercover government agents that took part in the event.
This year, the game might not be so playful.
Furthermore, ZDNet’s Violet Blue explains that, last year, the US National Security Agency (NSA) had an information and recruitment table on the vendor floor. The table was right next to the one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The list of vendors that will be present at the upcoming DEF CON shows that the EFF will send some representatives to the event, but the NSA will not be there, at least not officially.
DEF CON 21 will take place on August 1-4 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.