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<P>
<B>CLEARING OF WORDS AT DEFCON</B>
<P>
I'm a firm believer that if you make addendums or additions/corrections
to an article, you leave the original article entirely intact, and put
a clarification statement before the original article. I find this makes
it much easier both to separate the changes that would normally slip into
a later revision of a document sight unseen, and also lets you see,
together, both the progression of thought and the original jumping-off
point.
<P>
Roughly 100 people have read the article at my site by this point. I
know that it was copied and posted to a number of mailing lists, and
that means the number of viewers is probably a bit more. Most importantly,
the article filtered to the DEFCON organizers/staff mailing list.
Within about a day of my article going up on this page, I recieved
various communications from a number of DEFCON Staff (I still hate the
term "goon" and believe strongly it is both misleading and part of the
problem) with opinions about the article.
I've had the opportunity to discuss the events of July 13, 2001 with them.
The conversation has also, in a few cases, expanded to the idea of DEFCON
and being a Goon in general, as well as helping work through the lingering
issues that I think my article raises. Some of these issues, I believe,
linger in the mind of many DEFCON attendees, and are either forgotten
until the next year, or groused in the sort of quiet, non-threatening
way that people train themselves to do to avoid "trouble".
<P>
However, that's obviously not what I did; I typed out my thoughts and
put them out on my site, and now I'd like to to tell you about what I've
learned from the "Other Side", the folks who help run DEFCON every year.
<P>
(You are doing yourself a major disservice if you do not first read
<A HREF="http://www.textfiles.com/thoughts/gun.html#original">the
original article as it appeared</A> on this page.)
<P>
I can defuse some of the issues by clarifying what I was trying to say
in my writing.
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<I>Coming to the wild, wooly, and enjoyable DEFCON this year, I idly
watched some pamphlets get distributed with the same sort of hazy
indifference that many attendees might show towards the usual complaints
that the event they're attending is sub-par. My neutrality towards
the complaints were quickly sharpened to a full awareness when I
was intensely (by my standards) interrogated by armed guards working
in the capacity of DEFCON staff, accompanied by a number of
red-shirted goons angry about the pamphlet. Defusing the situation
as best I could from my side, the guards moved on to other suspects,
and I was left with the cold sweat of a person who has felt the
crosshairs of an overactive investigator pass over him and move
elsewhere.</I>
<P>
<I>I came away from this experience with a sour taste in my mouth,
and I felt this was an extraordinary thing to bring into such a
naturally volatile conference, especially over a pamphlet.
To prove my point about the positive aspects of airing out words
instead of hiding them away, I review the issues raised by the pamphlet
(as best I can) and leave them sitting there, ugly and naked, much
as I've heard them recounted to me in the past.
</I>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
How well I achieved this goal is up to the individual reader, but
I recieved feedback ranging from "thought-provoking" and "interesting"
to "long-winded", "one-sided" and "fiction".
<P>
It's not fiction; it's what I saw and felt. It was definitely
one-sided: the feelings of the attendees who were in the scene. I
ran the article by them before putting it up on my site, because
I wanted to make sure I was as accurate as possible.
<P>
That said, several of the criticisms I recieved were very valid.
The article contained a number of factual errors which have been
brought to my attention. Most of these errors center around the
specific structure, responsibilities, and hierarchy of the DEFCON
Staff. I would be doing a disservice to attempt to accurately
describe the whole team, other than to say that some are paid
(for repetitive jobs such as registration and inspecting badges)
some are volunteers (goons), and some are in an administrative
capacity and technically recieve money although not as employees
(such as Jeff). Most glaringly, the DEFCON staff also includes (in a
manner of speaking) the Alexis Park Security Team, which is a separate
organization run by the hotel itself. These are the only individuals
who were carrying a gun in a holster during DEFCON. No goon wielded
a gun, and DEFCON did not hire armed guards; they merely used the
services of already present armed guards. In the case of my experience,
this is almost academic, because regardless of who the guard was
beholden to, I was interrogated on the spot and I did feel threatened,
but he was not put in place specifically by the DEFCON organizers.
<P>
Therefore, saying that this was the first year that DEFCON had armed
guards was wrong. It would be much more accurate to say that this was
the first year that I became aware of an armed presence moving through
the convention, and once I knew to look for holsters, I saw them an
awful lot. This bothered me because armed authority figures means
the potential for someone to get shot, and I don't like to see
people get shot.
<P>
There is some confusion, even among the DEFCON staff that contacted me,
as to how much of the use of the Security staff was the doing of the Alexis
Park and how much of it was the actual DEFCON staff. The use of the guards
was certainly effective in terms of sniffing out suspects and generally
getting "the job done". The question that lingers is whether this was
a course of action that needed to be taken to get "the job done". And
now we get to the meat of the issue.
<P>
DEFCON is obviously an entirely different experience for the Goons and
the Security/Hired Staff than it is for the attendees. There's a strong
hint of that in the promotional materials and in the attitudes of the
staff if you talk with them, but it's not explicitly written down anywhere:
The near misses of violence or medical emergencies they contend with,
the harassment many recieve, the strange and taxing situations they
will find themselves in, in a moment's notice. I had the number of 5,200
attendees for DEFCON 9 mentioned to me; if this is the case, then it's
hundreds of people per Goon on duty, and that can be a tinderbox and
an endless cascade of difficult momentary decisions to be made.
And what it tends to end up with is a misunderstanding as to why the
Goons are taking an action, and towards what purpose.
<P>
An example: I was one of several dozen witnesses who watched a young
male attendee get ordered out of one of the pools because he was swimming
naked in it as part of the Defcon Scavenger Hunt. He was thrown a towel,
made to climb out of the pool, and talked to for a number of minutes.
To myself (and a number of others, I would like to think) this scene
made no sense; he didn't seem intoxicated or under the influence of
drugs (he was doing an excellent butterfly stroke) and he "wasn't
hurtin' nobody". And yet here he was being hauled out like he'd just
broken a neighbor's window with his baseball. It made no sense to me.
<P>
It has now been explained to me that the Alexis Park has a strict policy
and demand under the laws of Nevada against public nudity. Apparently
this is enough of an issue that they have to step in quickly in any
case where public nudity occurs on hotel grounds. This has been
indicated to me as a strict state law issue, on the same level as
the fire laws (rules governing the occupancy limits of a room). The
ability of the fire marshalls in Las Vegas to shut down an entire
convention/meeting has been made clear to me by other people than
just DEFCON, so I can personally vouch for it.  Laws are funny things.
<P>
How are we supposed to know about all these unusual legal situations?
<P>
Well, yes, we could go to the laws of Nevada and look all of them up.
But then again, that would also rule out underage drinking, violation
of copyright laws, and felony computer intrusion, all of which also
occurred. So that's not very helpful to know what's a no-no and will
cause the staff, security, or goons to get involved.
<P>
The staff knows what the real big problems are, and why they're the
big problems. They go out of their way on the website to give you
reading lists, file mirrors, FTP sites, and links to caravans and
gun shoots, but there's surprisingly little on what the actual current
structure of staff is, what the hotel has very strict policies against,
and what all of the staff's responsibilities/priorities are. This
is just the thing to add to the website.
<P>
It is my belief that many, many misunderstandings, hard feelings,
rumors, speculation, lies and the usual poison could be avoided if
DEFCON sat down and wrote the following:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<I>
An Accounting, as best as they could, about all the major
events that were encountered during the cons just past, what actions
were taken, what the opinion of the DEFCON staff was, and what the
resolution ultimately was for the conflict.
<P>
A clearer disclosure of the role of Alexis Park Security in the
entire running of DEFCON, and when they are generally called
upon to intervene in the convention.
<P>
And, as mentioned above, a more explicit listing of some of the
more quirky aspects of the Alexis Park and Las Vegas rules and
how people might find themselves in conflict with them without
knowing it. Framed as a way of saying the staff is NOT insane
and NOT micromanaging the convention, it will help put together
a clearer face on the people doing all the hard work of
keeping the convention running smoothly.
</I>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
The second part of the article ensnares me into a number of growing
conflicts and stale debates I don't honestly want to be a direct part of.
<P>
Regarding my statements about HOPE versus DEFCON, to be honest, I will
continue to attend both, and both sides dragging each other into a
war of words and claims helps neither of them.  It's also not my war,
and I couldn't fight it if I wanted to. May the best man win, and I
hope it's both of you.
<P>
The money made or not made at DEFCON is not my direct concern; I
certainly like to buy t-shirts and swag at these events, and as I've
always been a speaker at DEFCON, I've never actually paid the admission
fee, so its debatable expensiveness is me talking theories and not
facts. (It's obviously up in the air whether I will be able to speak
next year). If massive money is made, lost, stolen or earned, I
myself got my money's worth.
<P>
But Jeff should be aware of the amount of questions about the money
part of DEFCON. They've always hovered around it like a stink as long as
I've paid attention, and will continue to. He tends to answer these
criticisms with one or two line responses that have the theme of
"This con takes a lot of money to put on, and you get your money's
worth." This is his battle, not mine, and he knows how and whether
to respond to it.
<P>
Black Hat is another issue altogether. I've never attended Black
Hat, I know I can't afford it, I doubt I could convince my employer
I need to go there, and I don't think speeches about BBS History
will be welcomed with open arms to a security symposium. It's
another distant issue as regards me.
<P>
So why would I ever have brought all these thorny, sticky issues up?
Mostly to prove a point, I suppose; that if the flyer's questions,
no matter how crudely expressed, were in some way supressed or
censored, then the natual response by the kind of person who attends
DEFCON would be to consider the issues raised by the pamphlet.
And the issue is: Is DEFCON Exploiting Hackers and hacking culture's
natural openness for personal monetary gain? Is DEFCON part of the
problem instead of the solution?
<P>
But ultimately, I'm not going to answer that question. The Goons
certainly don't think this is the case. Jeff doesn't seem to think
this is the case. And the attendees.... well, someone should ask
them.
<P>
So to end what has been an overly long rebuttal/clarification that
has extended past the original length of the article it is discussing,
I hope I've made it clearer why I wrote my article in the first place
and that my feelings were genuine and true, if not granted all
the perspective of the DEFCON staff. One member of the DEFCON
staff wanted me to tell you to feel free to ask the goons at DEFCON
why they're doing something or not doing something, to seek them
out and ask them for information or clarification if they don't
understand why a choice was made or an action was taken. I can't
voice for how this will work out in a real life situation.
<P>
And speaking of real life, that's what this whole thing was about.
Theoretical vs. Practical. Concepts of freedom or keeping the
peace vs. percieved threats and angry words spoken in the heat of
fear or indignity.
To drag out one of the other famous statements about freedom, also
from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The right to swing your fist
ends at the tip of my nose." When words become actions, that's when
defense is unquestionably justified. When words are just words, that's
when the principles of free speech come into play. When there's question
on any side as to what is speech and what is action... that's where
the mud comes in, the names are called, and the misunderstandings
can explode into accusations, interrogations, protests, and
retaliation.
<P>
I don't pretend to have all the answers, or to know what the right thing
is. I have my principles about feeling secure with one's possessions and
well-being and I have an awful bad feeling when I see a fight over words.
I used words to get attention to the situation, and that has now happened.
I hope that my efforts, in some small part, help everyone, staff and
attendee, understand where the other side is coming from.
<P>
- Jason Scott<BR>
  July 20, 2001
<P>
<HR HEIGHT=5>
<P>
<A NAME="original">

<FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" SIZE=+1>
<B>FEAR OF WORDS AT DEFCON</B>
<P>
<I><B>
The gun knocked against my friend's head as he turned to me. "What is your
name? Where are you from? Tell me who the person was who did this. You know
who they are."
</I></B>
<P>
</FONT>
<FONT FACE="Courier New" COLOR="#00FF00" SIZE=-1>
You might think I was quoting some cheap detective novel, or maybe describing
my visit to some oppressive country and what went wrong, but I'm not.
<P>
I'm talking about my first day at DEFCON 9.
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.defcon.org">DEFCON</A>,
if you've not heard of it, is billed as the largest convention of
hackers and computer people on earth. They gather once a year in Las Vegas,
Nevada, in what until now has been a series of hotels, each one burnt out
by the surrounding vandalism and mischief of the legions of miscreants that
accompany the experience. In the last few years, it has stayed at the
<A HREF="http://www.alexispark.com/">Alexis Park Hotel</A>,
an off-strip "resort" hotel that has no on-premises
gambling, and which therefore can allow people aged less than 21 to rent
hotel rooms and walk around without too much trouble.
<P>
<A HREF="http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Hacking/Conventions/">"Cons"</A>
of this sort have been going on for
<A HREF="http://www.savage.net/public_html/net/cons.html">roughly 10-11 years</A>, and meetings of hackers in public spaces went on for decades before that.

I avoided the conventions before 1998 because I had nothing but fear about
such a stable, easy-to-see target; so many self-professed hackers in one
place, in a world where people have been brutally mistreated by police for
merely congregating in shopping malls? This wasn't a place I'd feel safe at.
<P>
But DEFCON proved itself to be a different sort of animal; with thousands
of people in one place, I figured there was safety in numbers. People might
not like the "mainstream" appeal of DEFCON, but at the time it was what finally
convinced me to attend. One rent-a-cop harassing 20 people in a hotel room is
one thing; trying to mistreat thousands of people at once would be another.
<P>
And I was right.... sort of.
<P>
DEFCON is now so large that it was able to sign a multi-year contract with
the Alexis Park, ensuring a semi-permanent location. Thanks to the efforts
of the
<A HREF="http://www.cultdeadcow.com">Cult of the Dead Cow</A>
and their release of the
<A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/16903.html">Back Orifice</A>
suite of tools at two DEFCONs, worldwide press has focused on the event as an
easy lap-up of stories for the next couple of weeks.  This means a lot of
attention, a lot of press, and a lot of focus on the general debauchery that
takes place at the hotel. Each year, a new group of people come trying to
outdo the legends of the previous year. And each year someone generally
does in fact reach a new low or high in various ways: I won't waste space
recounting the many destructive and inspiring events that have taken place.
<P>
But this year, things were a little different.
<P>
DEFCON hired armed guards.
<P>
Lots of them.
<P>
And they put them everywhere.
<P>
The purpose of having such a massive armed security force at DEFCON is
obvious; you can't have 4,500 people in one place, especially with the
years of examples from when these people last met, without wanting some
ability to control the crowds. You try and make the best preparation
you can for any contingency, and there comes a time when a volunteer force
of friends and associates brought together by word of mouth just doesn't
seem adequate against an army of free-thinking hacker types. So you make
a tough choice; you bring in "the professionals".
<P>
DEFCON has its own force of volunteer guards, organizers and general
administrators of the peace. They call them "Goons". The term
<A HREF="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=goon">Goon</A>
means, among other things, a thug, and was probably once an ironic
term used to describe helpful volunteers as some sort of scary force.
This is similar to calling your loose camaraderie of friends a
"Secret Ninja Army". You're neither secret, ninjas, or an army; you're
just a group of people proud to know each other. Unfortunately, the
"Goon" term just serves to alienate these volunteers from the other
people at DEFCON. When I use the term "Goon" here, I use it because they
use it, not because I think that's what they actually are.
<P>
There's some <A HREF="http://www.fitshaced.com/4/aa.html">lingering
questions</A> as to what these professionals can and can't do. In the case
of DEFCON, they had the full run of the place, deciding who could or
couldn't enter the convention area, breaking up any "unwanted" activities,
and generally making themselves known as a position of authority.
<P>
But the professionals are, technically, under the control of the people who
hired them. And they take their cues from their bosses. If the bosses say
something is unimportant, they will ignore it. If the bosses say that
something is vital, then it becomes top priority.
<P>
On July 13th, a set of pamphlets started showing up in the bar and lobby area
of the Alexis Park. Entitled "REJECT HACKER EXPLOITATION - FIGHT BACK", this
single sided one-eighth-page paper gave a list of suggestions and thoughts
on DEFCON and what it has become. It espoused several general themes: DEFCON
has become the very corporation it supposedly was created to fight, you
should turn DEFCON into a scene of Chaos, and you should refuse to follow
the artificially-imposed rules DEFCON has placed on its attendees.
<P>
But don't take my word for it.
<A HREF="flyer.jpg">Read the Pamphlet Yourself.</A>
<P>
The pamphlet is juvenille. It's simplistic. It's badly thought out. But
it's JUST A PAMPHLET! It's WORDS ON A PAGE.
<P>
So because someone distributed a pamphlet with the phrase "Fuck up a Goon",
the armed security force started hunting people out, interrogating on the
spot, looking for "the perpetrators", and generally turning the entire
convention into the scene of a witchhunt.
<P>
So it was that I found myself in the bar area of DEFCON being interrogated
by an armed guard. When he sauntered over to our table and pointed at the
pamphlets scattered about, he turned and his holstered gun smacked against
my friend's head. This brought my strict and firmest attention.
<A HREF="http://vagina.rotten.com/poliz1/poliz5.html">I've seen what
guns can do to people.</A>
<P>
"Are these your pamphlets?" he demanded. No sir, we said. "Did you see who
put these pamphlets here?" Some guys, we said. "Can you describe them?"
No, we couldn't.
<P>
<I>
I knew exactly who had dropped those pamphlets here. But even though we
weren't the closest people in the world, there was no way I was sending an
armed man against him. This is the sort of choice a person has to make in
this situation. It's not a "snitch-rat" sort of thing; it's a "decency"
sort of thing.
</I>
<P>
He walked away, into a back room that I saw was full of other guards like
himself. My friends and I discussed how unpleasant we felt, and how much
overreaction was happening.
<P>
Then they came out again.
<P>
Now it was a couple goons and several armed guards surrounding us. The
"manager" guard (no obvious gun, wearing a suit, part of the entourage
nonetheless) walked around out of our sight while the questions came
again.
<P>
The look on the goon's face was pinched, angry. The
guards asked the questions again, and further ones besides. "Where are
you all staying? What are your names? Are you staying at this hotel?
You must tell us WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE."
<P>
I glanced nervously down at my knapsack. I'd taken some copies of the
pamphlet for a souvenier; were they going to <I>search through my
belongings</I>? Could I stop them if I wanted to? Would they try to
physically restrain me if I refused or decided to walk away?
<P>
<B>I SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO CONSIDER THESE THOUGHTS.</B>
<P>
This entire situation was a classic out-of-control escalation. Faced
with nameless person or persons who mentioned violence against them in
a pamphlet, the goons decided to use any means at their disposal to
ferret out the responsible parties. Guards brought in to quell potential
violence or serve as a hardened private police force in the event of a
riot or major threat to life and limb were now trying to find who
had printed some words on a paper.
<P>
I stood up and immediately introduced myself, engaging them in a conversation
and revealing that I was just another speaker at the con, someone who was
harmless and completely on their side. This calmed the situation
immediately, and I heard the goon say "They're cool." The manager guard
behind me nodded and turned back to his cell phone, moving the entire
entourage out into the lobby.
<P>
Before leaving, the guard took all the copies of the pamphlet lying around,
gathering them up into a pile and taking the stack with him. Ostensibly
they destroyed them all.
<P>
The goon was wild-eyed with anger and fear. "I don't want to have one of
us stabbed with a screwdriver because of this." He went away as well.
<P>
Yes, that's right. Someone would actually attempt murder on someone because
they read on a little piece of paper that the person should be "fucked up".
This is poor, panicked thinking, the thinking of a person who has no sense
of context, who sees a single sentence aimed at his archetype, and goes
temporarily insane.
<P>
I specifically heard the guards use the phrase "This is like shouting
'fire' in a crowded theatre." How learned they are to discuss a quote from
a 1919 supreme court case! But as better
<A HREF="http://www.eclipse.net/~mtngoat/fire.htm">covered in other
forums</A>, this phrase is often misquoted, and in fact may have been
<A HREF="http://www.krusch.com/real/supreme.html">entirely unnecessary</A>
in the original case it was part of.
<P>
At least the circumstances of the two cases were similar in that a
pamphlet was involved (the 1919 supreme court case was over an anti-war
pamphlet, and this was over an anti-DEFCON pamphlet). Of course, the original
individuals were convincted of conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act
during wartime. It was said their words represented a
"<A HREF="http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Schenck/">Clear and Present Danger</A>"
to the country.
<P>
So was a pamphlet with a list of destructive things to do at DEFCON a
"Clear and Present Danger" that could represent a violation of federal
law by inciting subordination among the nation's military? Well, no.
It was a somewhat crude anti-DEFCON pamphlet printed on cheap paper that
got scattered over a hotel lobby in during DEFCON.
<P>
You see, this entire situation is especially henious to me because of the
site I run here. With 30,000+ files of all types, if I actually believed that
people would be incited to do horrible things because of my files, I'd
cry myself to sleep each night. That's not why I put these files up;
I put them up because they represent real and honest history. People typed
these files for a reason; maybe by putting them all together, we can learn
more about people. Trying to hide, destroy, remove the words we don't like,
it just buries away the honesty and the truth those files contain, directly
or indirectly.
<P>
Maybe some people shove the First Amendment too far away into the theoretical;
they think it applies to a particularly racy movie or whether you can get
Hustler at the 7-11. They forget it enters all our lives, all the time.
<P>
So they tried to bury what the pamphlet had to say.....
<P>
...let's take a little look at DEFCON as the pamphlet requests, shall we?
<P>
There's 4500 attendees, of which we can assume maybe 4,000 pay the admission
price. That's 4,000 x $50: $200,000. The speakers are unpaid, and must cover
hotel rooms, air travel, and whatever materials are required to put on their
show. (The Cult of the Dead Cow, for example, generally covers the cost of
renting their own lights, sound board, and props. This can run into the
thousands of dollars.) The Goons, the staff of DEFCON, is unpaid.
<P>
And then there's <A HREF="http://www.blackhat.com">BlackHat</A>. Held in
three different cities, the costs of attending are eye-opening: Over
<A HREF="http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-01/bh-usa-01-index.html">one
thousand dollars</A>! Scroll to the bottom of that link to see the sponsors.
Microsoft. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. This is not exactly the kind of
free flow of information you might expect. That's what DEFCON is for, they
say. But is it?
<P>
Jeff Moss (Dark Tangent) is a talented organizer; this is not something to
take lightly. Pulling off something like DEFCON requires a lot of experience
and many "best guesses" as to what will be needed. As time has gone on, he
has no doubt picked up skills as an organizer that few other people in his
line of work might have; this is why not everyone can run one of these
conventions successfully, year after year.
<P>
But if you look at the whole situation, you start to realize how truly
controlled, how
<A HREF="http://www.jinxhackwear.com/scripts/grpItems.asp?group=dc">buy-sell</A>, how
<A HREF="http://www.sheer.org/~curious/defcon/defcon/unsortedpicts-of-media-people/stuff6-001.jpg">media-oriented</A> and
<A HREF="http://www.netwiz.net/~spot/Adios_CPM/adios_cpm.html">look-at-me</A> the whole
situation has become. You might read
<A HREF="http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-9-pre.html">words from the DEFCON
site that it's</A>
all about free flow of information, but it's not. Consider this:
<P>
The opening paragraph of the DEFCON information booklet <I>went out of its
way</I> to indicate that it was bigger than
<A HREF="http://www.h2k.net/">H2K</A>, the hacker convention held
on and off in New York City by
<A HREF="http://www.2600.com">2600 Magazine</A>.
It indicated it was bigger than
H2K was right now, and they would be 10,000 square feet bigger next year.
Why do this? Why attempt to indicate another convention wasn't worth going
to? Why especially do this when the other convention isn't being held in the
same city, is being held by folks who have been involved in the hacker
community for nearly 20 years, and make this your opening welcome to your
information booklet?
<P>
Maybe the money has become so big, any competition that looks like it might
come over the horizon and draw away dollars has to be addressed directly? Is
this a case where the most important thing about the entire process of
discussing your convention is to position it as the only choice, the assumed
leader in conventions? How long will it be before the
<A HREF="http://www.defcon.org/other-conventions.html">Other
Conventions Page</A> on the DEFCON site is no longer updated, or updated
with the information too late to actually attend?
<P>
These are ugly thoughts. But they rise from an ugly experience. An experience
I hope to never have again.
<P>
<I>- July 18, 2001</I>
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