
The congress is a huge gathering of people to share information, hack, talk and party, and the past days have been a blast. This congress strikes an excellent balance between high quality talks, interesting hacks and electronics and a laid back atmosphere, all almost around the clock. (Well, the official track stops around 2 a.m., but continues around half past eleven in the morning.) The schedule is really relaxed, which makes it possibly to party at night, and interrupt dancing for a quick presentation about colonizing intergalactic space — done by domain experts.
The conference also has a large unconference part, hacking spaces, and lounge areas, meaning that the setup is somewhere in between a technology conference, a large hack-fest and a techno party. Everything is filled to the brim with electronics and decorated nicely, and after a few days, the outside world simply starts to fade and “congress” becomes the new reality.
No Love for the U.S. Gov
I’ve attended a bunch of sessions on civil rights and cyber warfare, as well as more technical things. One presentation that touched me in particular was the story of Lauri Love, who is accused of stealing data from agencies including Federal Reserve, Nasa and FBI. This talk was presented by a civil rights activist from the Courage foundation, and two hackers from Anonymous and Lulzsec. While Love is a UK citizen, the US is demanding extradition from the UK so they can prosecute him under US law (which is much stricter than the UK’s). This would create a precedent making it much easier for the US to essentially be able to prosecute citizens anywhere under US law.
The media team at this event is recording most of the sessions, so if you have some time to spare, head over to media.ccc.de and get your fix. See you at 34C3!
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!