MUCH TO HIDE
27.-30.12.2008 Berlin Chaos Computer Club
Nothing to hide, 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3)
When Steve Kurtz, professor of University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, former professor of art on the Carnegie Mellon University in May 2004 found his wife dead (she died due to the hearth failure) he called the police. The police consequently went through his house and found among others petri dishes prepared for the upcoming exhibition of GMO agriculture, they contacted FBI and Steve was charged with bioterrorism. In 2007 approximately 150 people committed so called “civil disobedience” and destroyed field with about hectare of genetically modified corn, which lies by the way in “GMO Free Zone”. This action was declared by the government as criminal and terroristic act. The temperature of our planet unfairly raises high. One search request on Google eats as equal amount of energy as 11 Watt bulb per hour whereas produce 6.8 grams of CO2. Opencard with integrated RFID supposed to simplify our life in the city. But this technology can be used and surely will to track people down by those who own the technology and those who are interested enough to get those data for their needs.
Nicholas Rockefeller on the line with Aeron Russo:
N.R.: “..by having this war on terror, you can never win it…so you can always keep taking people’s liberties away..the media can convince everybody that it’s real”
A.R.: “What are you doing this for?”
N.R.: “the goal is to get everybody in the world chipped with an RFID chip…and have all the money behind those chips and everything on those chips and when anybody wants to protest what we do or what we want, we just turn off the chip”
Internet is an open medium but few exceptions, the censorship in the China, Germany … The great problem is particularly its transparentness. Everyone can get the information of someone else without him noticing. For example in Brazil hijackers search for needed information on Myspace, Facebook, Youtube and so forth. Even on the Prague Cyber 2008 conference on cyberterrorism hold by the Ministry of the interior of the Czech republic admitted that the FBI and Czech police too use social networks to get information about suspects. Not only hackers try to keep hiding their identity. Although the privacy right is essential cornerstone in civil rights during the Cyber 2008 conference come out the opinion that anybody who tries to hide him/her self is a hacker and considered as a cyber terrorist. Why anyone needs to hide his/her identity if he/she is not engaged in something illegal? The question of privacy solves hacker not only hiding him/her self behind someone else’s identity but they also create programs such as Tor (http://www.torproject.org/). By using Tor common user can surf the Internet with no traces and can send, receive or share his own data anonymously. The Mailinator (http://mailinator.com) lets user create an temporary email whereas registration is not required. The security question was present throughout the whole Berlin conference. Hackers in cooperation with scientists used 200 Playstations 3 (coupled in cluster) and during days of the 25C3 conference creates out of common SSL certificate working CA certificate. Thanks to this CA certification can be further created new legitimate certificate and consequently used as a verified certificate for money transactions.
Based on the common widely spread picture of the hacker we could treat him/her as a person without soul trying to get somewhere where he/she has no obligations ideally exercising robbery. On the contrary hacker seams to be critical thinking looking for the possible solution for his “homeland” virtual world and for his planet he/she lives on as well. Seams like there is a link among hackers and artists, both have critical sight and slight consciousness of technological impact on human and the earth. This trend can be seen again in Berlin and it’s Transmediale or in Linz on ARS Electronica. Whilst in the art world still prevail non critical fascination of technology, the hacker world already (sort of) understands that this world is not just a fancy toy.
25C3 homesite:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/,
conference recordings:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/Conference_Recordings
If you like to read the Czech version (bit truncated thought) buy new No. of Flashart(cz)..I guess it’ll be printed out on the beginning of February 2009.
I do not really watch tv, I do not even have one (even though I pay for it, that’s something I have to change, anyway back to the story), not because I do not have money, but because I don’t thing they give us the truth, who does :)
