Policing our community

[renderman]

Cotman posted this and it made me smile: https://forum.defcon.org/showthread....l=1#post124400

One of the lulzsec suspects was the guy at DC12 doing the electronic civil diobedience talk. The guy who was basically removed from stage for his own protection when the audience was having none of it. (video: https://media.defcon.org/dc-12/video...sobedience.m4v). I think I might have a longer version of the video ripped from the DCTV feed that shows more.

The reason it made me smile was that we as a community can point to this and say we were not in favor of his tactics or attitudes. We saw the way the proverbial extremist wind was blowing and wanted none of it (not going to argue specific points of personal opinions, I'm speaking about the group in general). It's something we can use in the media to say, hey, he's not one of us, look what happened. Seperating criminal actions from hackers.

Ironically there was a similar talk at HOPE just before that was very civil and well recieved, showing you can talk about the topic but make sure to do so responsibly.

In general, we tend to police our own fairly well. Shame goes a long way it seems and kudos to Priest and the goons for thier work.

Any thoughts on our communities self policing?

[TheCotMan]

Re: Policing our community

Any thoughts on our communities self policing?

We've been really strict on the forums with respect to people posting boasting about doing things that are probably illegal, asking for things to be done that are probably illegal, or encouraging others to break laws. Some of this is self-preservation, as I do not like the idea of having to rebuild all our services from source, and don't know if DT would even want to spend the resources to start over, if/when feds came to visit World Domination HQ, and take away the drives and/or servers.

Idiots (and trolls) benefit from these rules and actions related to these rules, and those that do not learn from their mistakes risk someone on the forums notifying a would-be target of illegal action, before it happens. (Check Fucktard Hall for some examples of this from the most, "special," of people that visited the forums asking for laws to be broken.)

Speaking of "real world" events, and things that really matter, Defcon Security goons do these kinds of things in the real world at Defcon. As much as people claim fear of Defcon Security Goons, they are the closest thing most attendees have to what could be described as, "older brothers (or sisters.)"

Let's consider:
* Attendees are doing something illegal or putting their lives or other people's lives at risk
* If hotel security finds this, these attendees, they may get banned from life from the hotel, and maybe arrested.
* If law enforcement find these attendees, they may get arrested.
* If Defcon Security Goons find attendees first, and these attendees aren't jerks, and are open to advice from security goons, it is possible that a difficult situation can be eliminated, and troubles can be averted without being perma-banned from the hotel, or attendees spending their rest of con in Jail. (Also, once in jail late enough Friday, you would probably stay in jail until Monday morning when a judge is available -- a sucky way to spend your Defcon.)

This does not mean security goons will be nice to people causing problems, and does not mean security goons are everyones personal, "guardian Angels." Even Defcon Securtiy Goons have limits to what they will tolerate. (Don't poke the bears.)


In another realm, organizers of events set examples, and share information. Before twitter, radios were a way the information could be passed at con. Before twitter, when hotel security was cracking down on, "too many people in rooms," which were, "too noisy," word spread among attendees in groups where one or more people had a radio. Word of mouth was also used. People that had hand-writen paper signs letting people passing down hallways know about room parties, removed these, and moved to more covert channels to pass information about where a party was. (I was not much into any kind of party at these early cons; I did not know anyone. I spent time at one room party, in a corner, reading a book that I purchased from a vendor.) With twitter, and smartphones, information can pass even faster to a larger percentage of people, and attendees learn to route around troubles. Attendees learn where there is strong, weak and no resistance and they share this with each other.


Finally, at the lowest level, members police each other with comments and advice. There is no guarantee that fellow members will follow advice, it is provided, just the same. At Defcon 6? (I think) there was a power failure in a large part of the hotel. Some attendees decided the best thing to do, "now," was to take a screw driver to the hallway security cameras, "because they won't have any power during the power failure." I asked them if they understood what, "E-Power was," and asked them, "how do you know the same backup power providing electricity to the emergency exit signs were not also powering the video cameras." Just these questions were enough for them to change their agenda and find some other mischief. :-)


Sometimes there is no such voice of reason, or question asking, "are you sure you want to do this?" One year, attendees in their hotel room spotted a piece of electronic equipment embedded in the ceiling, so they decided to remove it, and examine it. They brought it to a person that finished providing a presentation on hacking hardware, who let them know it was probably a heat detector to automatically turn of lights, or smoke detector, or any number of other things like it, but it was not a video camera or microphone to listen to their room conversations. (Curiosity is great, but being a slave to it can lead to unnecessary costs.)

Hope this helps. :-)