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I passed the Chevy's in question today and I thought the sign read "Free lunch for RSA attendees".

Weird.

> Juniper says pulling out of a conference out of protest is “first world outrage.” #RSAC

Ugh. Considering Juniper has been one of the router makers named in the leaks from NSA for having backdoors, comments like that just makes them seem more complicit. If I were them I probably wouldn't try to sound like I'm on NSA's side in moments like these.

RSA itself seems to be even worse at this. Just look who they're allowing to crash the party:

https://twitter.com/HackingDave/status/438434358311919616

The third world is utterly fucking doomed to an eternity of indentured servitude if people in the first world don't stand up against those who might implement a global electronic panopticon.

The second world, meanwhile, is likely to collapse and fall prey to assimilation by the inevitable first world borg collective, if they're prevented from committing thermonuclear suicide first.

If the first world doesn't save us from itself, then who will?

The guy came off as somewhat of a twat based on that. OK, people are dying in Africa. Does that make NSA spying ok?

He ended a little better by making the point that we should be doing more than just talking, we should be building technical defenses against such things as NSA spying. It's a reasonable point, but I think he was just trying to be edgy in his talk.

Given that any number of people who have died in Africa post World War II did so because of the "great game" between the US and Soviets, spook action is likely the direct result of those deaths he professes to lament.
If the NSA put their resources towards educating and empowering third world children instead of perpetuating their oppression and spying on them, they could easily fund and equip the "One Supercomputer Per Child" project.
Loved the anecdote about Kevin Mitnick getting turned away from Chevy's. I hope he's doing some serious sleeper cell business or something, I've still got a few Free Kevin stickers in a closet.
There was a long time when we made 'Put Kevin Back' stickers because despite his public proselytizing he is really a media-loving fool with minimal actual skill.

But mostly, we did it as a joke.

Oh, so THAT's what all that was about! What wondering why all the RSA backpacks & badges were floating about.

I walked past that chevy's today; they gave me this: http://i.imgur.com/7gEk58c.png

Amazing how grown-ups can de-evolve so quickly to middle schoolers. "Seriously, like o.m.g. did you hear that kevin got turned away by hackajar at that party???"

Don't get me wrong - I'm on the same page as everyone about a lot of this stuff, but gods be damned, the infosec/hacker community can be so childish sometimes.

I was a volunteer for the organization that was passing out the badge ribbons, and we got through a box of 1000 ribbons pretty quickly. Only got yelled at by one rsa guy. Everyone else was pretty receptive.