Comment by Fnoord
1 day ago
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
1 day ago
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
I’m not sure you think otherwise, and are just calling on the US as an example since the HN crowd is heavily US skewed, but just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a German event.
The US is a large, well connected country with a lot of hackers, for all definitions of "hacker", it is even the country that created the term.
And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
Anyways, it is the CCC, and they are doing it in Germany, of course, because they are German.
> And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
I would say that with the current US administration, it is similar hard to get to the USA as to Russia.
The difference rather is that in Europe's hacker scene there exist quite some people who, if they stated their opinions openly, would get in much worse trouble if they stated their opinion in Russia than in the USA (because in the USA these opinions are currently "more acceptable"). On the other hand, for Russian hackers likely the reverse holds: I can easily imagine that quite a lot of Russian hackers, if they stated their opinions in the USA, would attract quite a lot of trouble.
Just to be clear: I consider it to be quite plausible that in 5 years, the situation might be similarly bad in the USA as it is today in Russia.
Now, I could say a lot of things Russia is known for, but not for their rich hacker culture, lest it to be mentioned in the same context as USA. Russia simply isn't known for their large hacker culture; Europe is (since I want to include a member of FVEY, specifically a country which Brexited, and am also referring to a time when EU did not yet exist). A somewhat dark past of CCC is related to Russia via Eastern Germany by CCC member Hagbard (my nickname here related to it). Back in those days, the hacker culture very much was counterculture. KMFDM has a couple of good tracks about it.
CCC is German, and started in West-Germany. It is the oldest hacker conference. The second was USA (DEF CON), and the third was The Netherlands (theirs is approx every four years, and has a different name every year). The first one in NL was HeU 1993 (Hacking at the End of the Universe). This list excludes demoscene (IMO part of hacker culture due to reversing / cracking software, plus programmming and art in limited constraints, but at the very least it is related to); the first demoscene party was called Copy Party in Finland, 1980. Nordic countries are well represented in demoscene.
I am only aware of one person who fled USA to RU, and said person wasn't known in hacker culture before he did, plus he ended up there by mistake. By contrast, various people in infosec left USA for Europe. Jacob Applebaum went to Germany, Drew DeVault went to The Netherlands.
Since 2022, brain drain started in Russia due to the full scale invasion and war with Ukraine.
There's a very free country near the USA which does not have the ridiculous entry requirements the USA has. It even has a couple of large cities near the US border, including near cities with a rich hacker culture. Entry to said country is about as easy as entry to Germany. The country is called Canada. Yes, your neighbor.
May HOPE, DEF CON, and Black Hat end up in a tolerant, hacker-friendly country. I am not aware of brain drain due to Trump II. I mean, it is happening, but it also happened during Bush era, and the proportions I don't know about.
As for CCC being held in Germany. They have been very open to foreigners (as have us Dutch been), famous USA hackers were always welcome (and came) to hacker conferences in NL and DE. Talks in NL were almost all in English, at CCC partly (German is a relatively popular language in Europe). Nowadays, almost all German talks get dubbed and subbed. So CCC is very American-friendly, cause we Europeans get that Americans speak almost exclusively English only.