Hackers Convention

Without the veneer of legitimacy that cushions the scientific community, hacker culture has had a rough time justifying itself, even in the best of times. The year 2002 has not been the best of times, which is what led me to H2K2-HOPE ("Hackers On Planet Earth"), 2600 magazine's hacker convention, a couple weekends ago. Despite "homeland security" measures raising the possibility of a grim and authoritarian near-future for hackers, the event is evidently bigger than ever, and the three-day conference took over two floors of the Hotel Pennsylvania with speakers, DJs, tech workshops, an open network and lots of retro hardware.

In a hyperbranded consumer culture, H2K2 supported no products or advertising, so even the merchandising of 2600 paraphernalia and any vendors allowed to set up were an attempt at grassroots support. I was surprised at the high number of female attendees packing laptops and looking interested, not like trophies dragged to some outlaw geek convention by their boyfriends. In fact, many attendees were far from the college-age white male middle-class nerd stereotype, though everyone was always passing a laptop, phone, PDA. A rainbow coalition of technophiles. Though to many "hacker" is synonymous with "criminal," the real heavies?shady operators profiting off electronic fraud, terrorism, organized crime, corporate/domestic/foreign espionage, etc.?were unlikely to turn up. It was a mostly civilian scene, techies who wanted access to free bandwidth, electronic privacy, freedom of information and the right to take apart, break, rebuild and modify to their hearts' content.

A guy named Alex gave me pointers on panels to check out and people to interview. He also explained the convention ID cards, which parodied the Homeland Security threat levels: green for regular attendees, blue for panelists and speakers, yellow for volunteers, orange for event security, red for core 2600 members and anyone who'd experienced arrest or a lawsuit. Alex's badge was red. "That means you're a badass," I laughed. He was recently sued for his protest site, www.verizoneatspoop.com. Even the IDs were a hack. There was a functioning chip inside, plus a barcode that could be read with a card scanner and coded at the front desk as a hotel keycard.

Up the escalators to the network room, where the walls were adorned with absurd 50s-style posters about information security; neo-Cold War agitprop. I assumed they were also parody, then later found out they were real, disseminated by the NSA and ripped from www.AdAge.com.

The real hacker convention was happening on the free network?kids logging into terminals, playing with programs and cracking into one another's machines; groups of older hackers building impromptu wireless networks and trading files. Around the corner was the "retro computing" area, heaps of well-used 80s silicon, all bulky brown casing and monochrome display, glorious in their obsolescence.

HOPE was a good name for this conference. I got a real sense of gee-whiz youthful idealism. At the same time, though, the event seemed the focus of some federal or at least corporate scrutiny. CNBC, for one, was all over the joint, waving tv cameras. Then again, every other kid there had one too. Radio host and Grand Theft Auto 3 conspirator Lazlow popped up before Friday's second panel to announce, "I just talked to Emmanuel Goldstein and there are already security memos circulating at AT&T about us." ("Emmanuel Goldstein" is the Orwellian handle of H2K2 organizer and 2600 editor-in-chief Eric Corley, who's had his share of legal trouble, most recently trying to define the concept of "fair use" of copyrighted material under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.)

The organizers' stated goal was to bring the disparate elements of hackers, electronics hobbyists and social activists together for serious cross-pollination. Events with practical applications ("Caller ID Spoofing," "Fun With 802.11b"?aka hacking wireless networks, "Introduction to Computer Viruses," "Social Engineering") routinely pulled higher attendance than the political ones ("The Patriot Act," "The New FBI and How It Can Hurt You"). A presentation called "Black Hat Bloc or How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Corporations and Learned to Love the Hacker Class War," delivered by "hacker activist" Gweeds, was the first time I'd ever seen attention to class consciousness in the hacker scene. In the bust after the 90s tech/dotcom boom, it could be that the hackers-gone-legit are even questioning their own materialism. Can hackers "sell out" by taking jobs with Microsoft, or using their exploits as a resume? Do they bring unfair persecution on the rest of the community by testifying for Congress or publicizing security holes? Is expensive technology elitist?

Doug Rushkoff, author and scene celeb, observed that "Each new interface removes users even further and further away from the actual workings of the computer." The emerging goal of this scene is no longer just pranks and technical wizardry, evidently, it's a challenge to what's called "end user mentality," where people take a passive role and accept that someone else should mediate their ability to use and access technology. The idea is to take the next step and apply this approach to government, media and culture. Swiping access may be fun, the message was, but causing damage and stealing for profit aren't. Better to build a server yourself and get your friends online free.

If this is the hacker vanguard, though, it was counterbalanced by Friday's sold-out Marc Anthony concert across the street from the hotel. It struck me that the real hack will be for these few hundred geeks and rebels to bring it to the consumer masses at the Garden.