From: anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 09:59:51 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon
Message-ID: <199607302309.QAA23623@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Short review of the Fedz show at DefCon.  

Most of the San Francisco Computer Crime squad was in attendance.  SA Black and Butler's presentation was classic good cop/bad cop (respectively).  Nice quote by them in the Vegas paper about how all hackers aren't bad.  They were even doing recruiting, and had the little hacker puppies eatting out their hands for a mug, t-shirt, or minature badge. 

It wasn't determined whose surveillance goodies were being installed in the drop ceiling of the conference room at 4:30 AM.  The "hotel maintenance" guy certainly hauled ass when one of the official DefCon Goons showed up (classic textbook time for raids, black bag jobs, etc).  Tsk, tsk.  And me without any TSCM gear.

Points to the Fedz for great psy-ops (especially the quote about how the "new" FBI is more sensitive).  Points off to quite a few hackers who don't have a historical context of government abuse and are pretty damn easy to manipulate.

All in all, probably more entertaining than most shows on the Strip.

Obligatory comment on hackers compared to cypherpunks.  Zero to no  political savvy.  Extremely poor organizational and communication skills.  Nearly clueless on social issues.  These would be the hackers.  Yeah, yeah.  I know there are exceptions.  But all in all, I'd rather hang with C-punks.