The main Def Con event that takes place in Las Vegas from 1 August and will see 15,000 hackers debate security topics and demonstrate their coding prowess. The convention had been an “open nexus” where government security staffers and law enforcement agents could freely mix and share ideas with the other hackers, researchers and security professionals that attended. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23269125 Now revelations about the scale of US government spying meant emotions in the hacking world were “running high”. And as a result, organisers are asking federal agents to take a “timeout” from Def Con this year. The request was posted to the main Def Con webpage by Jeff Moss, the founder of the hacking conference. “Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect,”
Many people now questioned that free exchange of ideas in the wake of ongoing disclosures about the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme, which, since 2007, has been scooping up huge amounts of data about people’s online activity.
“It would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a ‘timeout’ and not attend Def Con this year,”
However, Def Con organisers were not going to be checking the identities of everyone who attended to weed out federal agents and send them packing.
