<story><title>NSA director finally greets Defcon hackers</title><url>http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57481689-83/nsa-director-finally-greets-defcon-hackers/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mindcrime</author><text>IMO, when the director of the NSA goes on-stage at DEFCON and the result is anything other than tomatoes being thrown and him being booed off the stage, something is wrong.&lt;p&gt;While it is true that hackers are not a single minded collective, and some hackers may have sympathy for the NSA, I&apos;d hope that most hackers would see the NSA as what it is: just one more head of the Medusa that is the US government, in all it&apos;s civil liberty infringing, experimenting on it&apos;s own citizens program, illegal wiretapping, constitution ignoring glory.  The NSA are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; - so far as I&apos;m concerned - the &quot;good guys.&quot;  Some individuals in the NSA may be &quot;good guys&quot; but the agency is just a tool of a government that is out of control.&lt;p&gt;&quot;We don&apos;t keep files on every American citizen&quot;  Yeah, right... this guy would have had more credibility if he&apos;d just said&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, of course we do.  You know it, we know it, so why beat around the bush.&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>NSA director finally greets Defcon hackers</title><url>http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57481689-83/nsa-director-finally-greets-defcon-hackers/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mettle</author><text>I saw the talk. Much of the talk made the assumption that the hacker community has the same goals and values of the NSA. This NEEDS to be justified.&lt;p&gt;This is a hacker community and while not a single minded collective I believe there are many popular views that are diametrically opposed to some of the goals of the NSA. He mentioned that he wished the internet would be perfectly secure and then went on to mention how this would protect American IP laws. His definition of secure internet does not include values such as censorship resistance or freedom of expression/information.&lt;p&gt;He also tried to tell everything how great it would be if we all had IDS&apos;s that reported back to the NSA in realtime.&lt;p&gt;We were not allowed to ask questions. They brought up a paper with questions that must have been determined BEFORE the talk happened which isn&apos;t fair to the attendees.&lt;p&gt;I wish there was a DEFCON panel to discuss this. Everyone just clapped and seemed cool with him from my perspective. I&apos;m not against the director talking at DEFCON, but I don&apos;t think we shouldn&apos;t be accepting his ideas without more public criticism and discourse.</text></comment>