] The good work at hand is called The International Summit
] on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security. It feel a little
] like the World Economic Forum, though smaller and more
] focused. The security is intense and the press is
] excluded.( Though, interestingly, I am posting these
] words from inside a session, along with the many other
] bloggers.)
]
] I fear, that despite enough good intentions to pave a
] superhighway to hell, not much is likely to come from
] this. Everyone seems to be playing we within the
] boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear
] anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the
] idiocy of this age.
]
] And I'm no better in this regard. I spent all damned day
] yesterday in session with many of the stars of
] Cyberspace, folks like Joichi Ito, John Gage, Dan
] Gillmor, David Weinberger, Ethan Zuckerman, Marc
] Rotenberg, Andrew Mclaughlin, Rebecca MacKinnon, etc.
] etc. Laboring long and loud, we collectively produced the
] following statement:

Click and read on.

BarlowFriendz: The Infrastructure of Democracy: Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World

Welcome to the obvious.

Sitting of a given IRC network and going to the most populated channels is like sitting with a birds eye view of the back end of any given club in any given city, with all the elements. You will see all the shady entering, leaving, and doing of its thing. That place is one of connivence. Be sure there is either ignorance, or several cloaks, between its true participants and yourself. You may be the ignorant. If you cannot mirror the experience to the real world, hang out with me for awhile and I'll open your eyes with a pair of pliers.

Is this a good thing? In a place where freedom, law, and order all exist in concert, it is a fact of life. Be sure everything said is monitored and logged fifteen different ways by thirty different parties sharing resources. Welcome to what is called by some, the game.

Play your cards at your own risk.

In my case, I don't have any issues, content, or ideas I'm not willing to express in any forum, including that of my own creation. I find it an amusing sideline to the net culture I have grown up in and decided to uphold over the years. I would rather have something happen in the open then behind the closed doors of crypto and inaccessibility. There are many other options then the current, available given the need to further develop them out of theory. The reasoning for keeping it the way it is, is simple, but challenging to explain. Those who pursue the transgressors of the law are more likely to understand then the followers of the angry hurt mob, as the irony goes. The exceptions lie at the far upper and disconnected end, such as Tenet.

IRC is a protocol; a protocol used to create a multi faceted forum. A forum can be used in a number of ways. As any open forum, the uses of any given IRC network are up to the users of that network. It goes the way it is permitted go, like a growing and living organism. The author of this article holds up Freenode as a "good" use, and I agree (and hold an open connection to it most of the time). As I agree that "ErisFree" has more to do with the evils of lame management then the presence of malevolence.

Barlow in his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace spoke of nations in the infinite space created by the Internet. If in terms of community and governmental structure on the Internet, if there exists a clear example of this, it lies in IRC. For better or for worse. Create an open space, and those who wish to have a space will inhabit it.

When any issue of illegal activity on IRC networks comes up, it should be viewed through this lens. If there is a point of scale that does occur, it is within a scope based upon limitations and allowances protocol. I hope that is understood, at least by the inteligencia, digirati, or whatever we wish to call it.

Defend IRC. Defend IRC networks. Defend the points of abstraction on the network which are open and free. These are the nascent market of ideas.

What you see when you view a community within a given space created by a protocol, is a mirror of what people expect out of the space created by the uses the protocol enables. This is the same situation created by a system such as MemeStreams. We do not have a crime problem here, but we could. Dare I say the word "torrent" in a threat filled world for the free exchange of information?

Free is a tough word. Freedom of information versus free beer is an old cliche of an old argument, but still a fresh problem. Any place it can rear its threatening head is a place of contention; a place we hope a solution can grow, or at best a market. When you view IRC, that is the lens you must look through. It is out of focus, like all points of significance, given time.

IRC Analysis

The Internet will change everything, we are surely in the process of it, but at this point, I'm still capitalizing "Internet".

] On Tuesday, January 4th BlackRatchet and I released our
] latest project on the unsuspecting internet world.
] DocDroppers is a hacking library of sorts. On it, you
] will find not only all of the texts from myself and the
] DDP, but any and all text files from the world of
] hacking. People have attempted collections like this
] before, but ours is much different.

The Docs have been Dropped!

] "Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered."
]
] This simple yet startling sentence marks the last entry
] Rachelle Waterman made in her Internet journal before she
] was arrested on charges she participated in killing her
] mother. And it marks the beginning of an online
] discussion that's as remarkable for its popularity as its
] content.

The journal is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/smchyrocky/

According to another news article, Waterman convinced two 24 year old men to abduct and murder her mother while she and her father were out of town. Her mother's body was discovered in a burnt up van on a remote logging road. The three of them have been charged with first degree murder.

This just got some widespread attention, so various LJ threads are exploding. I guess nothing gets the LiveJournal community going like parricide.

Anchorage Daily News | People flock to online journal after 16-year-old's arraignment

... see you all soon!

Update:

In a word, enjoyable. It was great seeing everyone, as always. I look forward to next year.

I should have given a MemeStreams talk. A number of people pointed this out to me. I have no idea why I didn't. Maybe the novelty of going to a con and not speaking for once..

I missed seeing a number of people due to missing most of the Saturday late night festivities. I had to take care of one of the fallen. I view it as karma for my over doing it at Interz0ne last year. Shit happens.

The Stadium Days Inn is a good hotel for PhreakNIC. Friday night had a sort of funhouse feel. By the time I got to soak in the vibe Saturday, it was 4am and everyone was already quite dead.

Till next year..

] A second variant of the Atak worm, which goes to sleep to
] avoid detection by antivirus software, has been linked to
] an al-Qaida sympathizer who once threatened to release a
] powerful worm if the United States attacked Iraq.

] Mihai Radu, communications manager at BitDefender, said
] the virus, discovered Friday, is signed by Melhacker, which
] is the moniker of a Malaysian-based coder called Vladimor
] Chamlkovic, who in 2002 threatened to release an
] "uber-worm" if the United States attacked Iraq.

'Atak' worm variant linked to al-Qaida sympathizer | CNET News.com

Here is a collection of all the artwork from HOPE for your printing and distributing needs. It turns out that the creepy Ready.gov posters weren't fake. The site that distributes them is linked from here. Now, if only they had a link for the almost funny if they weren't real "Republicans are coming, make nice" posters that were hung up on the lamp posts down the street.

The Fifth HOPE Artwork

] "If you're 15 and angry at your dad, you want to go and
] break something. But the biggest part of hacking is
] creation," notes "Acidus," a speaker at a Friday panel on
] intellectual property and technology.

The line that got be the biggest applause was "Do you think Marconi and Tesla could have built the radio if the telegraph was a little black box you couldn't open? We are selling out our future inventors and innovators for the short terms profits of the RIAA."

USATODAY.com - Hackers have HOPE

] We got to listen to Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
] computer and hacker legend speak today with his HOPE
] keynote.

This speech has something I had never seen in countless shows about Woz or Apple. It talks about *why* he did and thought the way he did, as well as how he taught kids in school.

Steve Wozniak HOPE Keynote for download