Hacking at Random
Alle van Meeteren
Hacking At Random,
International Technology & Security Conference August 13-16, 2009,
near Vierhouten, The Netherlands
Please circulate widely,
pdf version at http://har2009.org/index.php?p=86.
Submit your talk or workshop proposals before may 15th on
https://pentabarf.har2009.org/submission/HAR2009.
>From the ancient days long before the first wayback-machine snapshot,
hackers have a track record for appropriating technology that was
meant for something completely different and putting it to alternative
uses.
And every four years since 1989, the international hacker community
has descended upon The Netherlands in great numbers for a conference
that focuses on contemporary and future issues surrounding technology
and its social and political consequences. One reason that these
conferences have been successful is the wide range of participants:
from students, amateurs and aficionados to researchers, scientists and
entrepreneurs who are recognized as some of the best in their
respective fields.
The atmosphere is open, friendly and relaxed, the scope of subjects
insanely wide, the average level of knowledge high. The venue is
always buzzing with energy, ideas and projects. The New York Times
described the 1997 edition as 'Woodstock for Hackers'. We will gladly
honor that legacy.
This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of this event with a new
installment: 'Hacking at Random'. HAR wants to offer presentations
that feature the joy of hacking. That means hardcore hacking and
science for its own sake. HAR is soliciting abstracts from anybody who
is interested in giving a talk, in doing a workshop or in otherwise
presenting their work.
When this series of conferences started twenty years ago, the net was
new and unexplored terrain where only the bold dared to tread, and
where legislation and regulation were absent. That has changed. Today,
virtually every household in the Western world has access and many
analogue services are being relocated to the internet, reinventing
themselves while doing so, and thereby simultaneously making internet
even more of a commodity and an indispensable part of our daily lives.
Internet has become ubiquitous, all pervasive, huge and crowded.
Because of this, new questions are becoming increasingly important:
questions about governance, sustainability, dying analogue media,
ownership of data and content, shortage of IP space and energy,
censorship, filtering, data trails, data breaches, security,
surveillance - to mention but a few.
As the world is more and more defined in terms of the technology of
the internet, the once obscure political freedom-fights that hackers
were involved in, have truly reached center stage. The next few years
are about defending fundamental freedoms, and we better step to it,
because nobody is going to do it for us.
TOPICS AND TRACKS
We have chosen three main tracks for HAR: subjects that we think are
of prime (future) importance. Of course, not all talks and workshops
can be fitted within these tracks, nor is that our intention. If you
have an unrelated but interesting project, don't hesitate to propose
it.
Actually, the only thing we'll really be strict in is that _all_ talks
and workshops should definitely be interesting and knowledgeable,
hopefully be groundbreaking, and possibly, fun. We want to broaden
your and our own horizons, so not many restrictions apply - not even
our own. And it goes without saying that any other smart weird stuff
is fine, provided it makes us go 'wow!' That having been said, the
three tracks that we have chosen are:
1. Dealing with data (DD)
We live in a society that gorges itself on data. We check and
intercept more data and retain them for a longer period, we base
individual interventions on statistics, we amass data in centralized,
national databases, and more and more, we 'mislay' these data and
create data breaches. Often, data is used outside its original scope:
the 11 million files that the Brits have by now amassed on their
children in order to 'assist' child welfare, will be open to the
police looking for 'evidence'.
Some courts are however getting fed up. Germany has decided that home
computers are indeed private and that the EU data retention law is far
too wide in its scope: only when there's actual suspicion against a
person his or her traffic data may be retained. The European court has
ruled that the Brits - and hence, other EU countries - cannot keep
people's DNA in a database unless they have been convicted.
In this track, we will discuss cutting edge security aspects as well
as their political implications: whose property is a digital trace,
should data have a built-in expiry date, how to counteract identity
theft, ideas about 'data hygiene' and how we can make governmental and
company data mining more transparent or more restrained. This track
ranges from computer security to hacking 'safe' chip cards, from data
mining to data breaches, from lawful to unlawful interception, from
amassing data to data retention, from freakonomics to numerati.
2. Decentralization (DeCent)
Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, most technologies have
been moving towards centralization using economies of scale to create
profits.
The result of large centralized technologies has been concentrated
power in the hands of fewer individuals with control over large
amounts of cash to pay for expensive factories and infrastructure.
Modern organizations like nation-states and multinationals mimic this
centralization trend.
Many new technologies however are moving in the opposite direction.
Cheap
home computers and affordable connectivity to a global (but
decentralized)
network have made individuals and communities the center of creativity
again. Other fields of technology that are decentralizing are energy
and manufacturing (think solar and 3d-printing). We'd like to hear
cool ideas about what this could mean for all of us and for the
societies that we live in. Are 200 euro laptops, wifi and 3d-printers
the beginning of the end of multinationals and the nation state? Does
the spreading of technology give power to the people, atom bombs to
the terrorists, or both? We don't know what will happen but maybe you
do. If so, we'd like to hear from you.
If you have a 3d-printer, a solar powered vehicle or a fusion-powered
coffee machine, we'd like you to show your stuff and tell your tale.
You will however be asked to leave your nuclear weapons at the
entrance.
3. People and politics (PNP)
We live in the proverbial 'interesting times' the world is running out
of oil, the climate's all weird, geopolitical power is shifting and
decentralization has taken off the gloves. We'd like to think our
community holds some small part of the clues needed to understand
today's world.
Hackers have traditionally used these events to help others to become
better equipped to go out and make some changes in the way the world
works.
This event has in the past had a large number of presentations that
bridged between technology, activism, digital rights, privacy,
politics and citizenship, and this edition will be no different. If
your presentation can help others to become more aware or (better)
more equipped and more effective in these fields, please tell us.
Again, these ideas are by no means restrictive. If you have a
fantastic story to share about agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa,
about nanocomputing or about biotechnology, please submit your paper.
Bear in mind that those attending HAR are technophiles and love talks
in which technology - or the politics of technology - is key. Also, if
you know of someone whom you think should be present at HAR2009, ask
them to submit an abstract, or inform us of their name and subject.
DEADLINES
Abstracts should be submitted to our paper submission system on
https://pentabarf.har2009.org/submission/HAR2009 and are due May 1st,
2009.
We will inform you about our acceptance or rejection of your abstract
before June 1st, 2009.
General information about HAR2009 can be found on http://www.har2009.org
and http://wiki.har2009.org.
If you have further questions regarding your talk submissions; the
speakerdesk can be reached at speak...@har2009.org
With kind regards,
The Hacking At Random 2009 Program Committee,
Thomas Dullien
Rop Gonggrijp
Menso Heus
Alex Le Heux
Peter Honeyman
Arjen Kamphuis
Karin Spaink
Stephanie Wehner
Jasper van Woudenberg
ontleend aan nettime.
Alle