33C3: Works for me

The calm days between christmas and new year are best celebrated with your family (of choice), so I went to Hamburg where the 33rd edition of the Chaos Computer Congress opened the door to 12.000 hackers, civil rights activists, makers and people interested in privacy and computer security. The motto of this congress is “works for me” which is meant as a critical nudge towards developers who stop after technology works for them, while it should work for everyone. A demand for a change in attitude.

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.

This, combined with the US jail system poses a serious threat to Love. He wouldn’t be the first person to commit suicide under the pressure put on him by the US government agencies, who really seem to be playing hardball here. (Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower behind the videos of the baghdad airstrikes, in which US airforce killed innocent citizens carelessly, among others) who suffered from mental health issues, was put into solitary confinement, instead of receiving health care. Against that background, the UK would send one of their own citizens into a jail that doesn’t even respect basic human rights. On particularly touching moment was when the brother of Aaron Swartz took the microphone and appealed to the people who asked how they could prevent another Aaron, that helping Lauri (and Chelsea) is the way to help out, and that’s where the energy should be put. Very moving.

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!