When I presented myself at the SHACamp 2017 info desk bright and early on the first full day of the camp, I was surprised to find that I was to be assigned a volunteer along with my press badge. Because of the way our community is sometimes covered by the traditional media, it was necessary that any journalists touring the site have a helping hand to ensure that they respect the privacy of the attendees, gain permission from people likely to be in any photographs, and generally not be idiots about the whole Hacker thing. I pointed out that I was working for Hackaday and not The Sun, and that as an active hackspace member and former hackspace director I was very much a part of the community attending SHA 2017 who would simply be wasting the valuable time of any volunteer assigned to me. Fortunately for the next volunteer in line they agreed with my point of view, so one of the angels was spared a day of my breakneck walking pace and impenetrable British colloquialisms.
It’s interesting therefore a few weeks after the event, to investigate how it was portrayed through the eyes of people who aren’t coming as Hackaday is, from within the bubble. To take a look at that disconnect between what we know about our community and its events, and how the traditional media sometimes like to portray us. Are they imagining the set of a Hollywood “hacker” movie in which assorted geniuses penetrate the computer systems of various international institutions by the simple expedient of banging wildly at a keyboard for a few seconds, or will the reality of a bunch of like-minded technology enthusiasts gathering in a field for several days of tinkering and other fun activities be what makes their reports?
The coverage of the event has been handily summarised on the SHA2017 wiki, and comes from a mix of security and IT publications, traditional news outlets, and Dutch TV. Not being a Dutch speaker it’s difficult to review a TV report, and the IT publications are strictly factual in their reporting and not the group we’re interested in, so for the purposes of this article we’ll take a look at the traditional outlets. We are certain not to cover every word written about the event, but there should be enough present to at least catch a flavour.
There seem to have been three broad streams to the coverage, first pieces that give a balanced review of the event, then those that concentrate on a single aspect such as a particular talk, and finally those that disappear down the hacker movie rabbit hole. Those three are ranked in order of acceptability from the perspective of our community, for even a responsibly written piece about a particular item can be slanted to appear as though that was the theme of the entire event. Looking at some examples below, we’re linking where appropriate to a Google Translate rendition of those not in English.
What Was Written
It’s pleasing to see that there were a decent number of positive and well-written pieces. Probably the most such came from [Marco Calamari], for Punto Informatico (Italy) written very much from a perspective of One Of Us. Meanwhile [Isabel Baneke] for Trouw (Netherlands) gave a balanced coverage, and [Detlef Borchers] for Heise (Germany) talked about the history of the event and its keynote. Then [Hal Faber], again for Heise (Germany), wrote another positive piece, this time post-event.
On the single-issue coverage, [Ms. Smith], for CSO Online (USA) concentrated only on the [Bill Binney] talk about NSA surveilance, while [Chris Baraniuk] for BBC News (UK) wrote a slightly alarmist piece on [Willem Westerhof]’s description of attacks on solar inverter infrastructure. [Arjen ten Cate], for de Stentor (Netherlands) was one of several that reported work on cracking a Dutch fire truck’s wireless network, and responsibly made it clear that the fire truck was there at the behest of the fire service following an incident in Rotterdam in which a similar truck had been compromised in the wild. Then [Detlef Borchers] again for Heise (Germany), wrote a responsibly written piece on several of the “Hacker” themed talks, without going into the others that were anything but.
The wooden spoon for worst reporting would have to go to Omroep Flevoland, the Dutch regional TV channel for that province. Their event preview specifically portrayed the attendees as computer criminals unless we’re reading the translation wrongly, and their follow-up piece went on to portray the camp’s purpose as nefarious. Talking to SHA staff members shortly after their visit, it seemed they had been looking for stereotypical “Hacker” scenes to film, and had come away having photographed the site’s telecoms infrastructure hub with its backup manual telephone exchange. Edgy, so edgy.
The Verdict
So on balance, the coverage was better than one might expect. We’re (mostly) not portrayed as computer criminals, even if we aren’t the happy-go-lucky geeks partying in the sun that we might see ourselves as. For readers of most of this coverage we likely appear closer to the hacker bashing wildly away at a keyboard to magically enter the AIVD‘s most sensitive digital echelons than the hacker magically creating awesome things with a 3D printer and a soldering iron.
It is most concerning that the worst coverage comes from the local broadcaster. Personally I found rural Flevoland to be a friendly place, the local people I met were very tolerant of a random Brit on her travels. I hope we didn’t cause them any disruption and that we all cleared up our villages to the extent that the SHA team could hand the site back in good order, so it would be nice to think that we would be welcome there again. It’s difficult to estimate how many Euros the European hacker community spent locally in their time on the polders, but it can’t have been insignificant.
To see the local media doing their best to fix us in the minds of the locals as nothing more than a bunch of ne’er-do-wells is particularly disappointing. They should know better, their viewers deserve it. It is a sign that there is much work to be done fixing in people’s mind the benefit of the benevolent hacking ideal for individuals and communities.
Nice article. Thanks.
P.S. the Dutch paper is called Trouw and not Truow. :)
Apologies, that’s my poor spelling.
Which, by the way, translates as either “faithful” or “to marry”.
Thought you might like to know the meaning of the name of this particular christian Dutch newspaper.
Just read the Dutch articles. Aside from a fairly narrow definition of hacker the articles weren’t too negative. Just focused a lot on the computer security aspect and not really on all the other fun stuff. Since they also wrote the Tesla hack was requested by the actual Tesla company I think we can agree they didn’t do a lot of research.
We crack copy protection. We crack mail accounts to leak evidence of corruption. We crack lame attempts to secure by obscurity wich can only be defended by even lamer it’s illegal to look at it laws.
It is naive to think it is only public ignorance when we piss powerful people off and have the audacity to mock them in public. It is naive to think those people wouldn’t use their influence to portray us as dangerous criminals in the publics eye.
We in this context are everyone who use computers and electronics in non passive ways.
Hacking is cracking, 3D printing is guns and don’t you dare open that lid and touch that debug UART.
Oh, crap!
Now I’m a terrorist!
All because I’ve opened my internet-of-toaster and touched that UART!
I’ve detonated a chain reaction positively leaving holes in the tracks that slammed
a bunch of unsuspecting electrons into the gate and set off that MOSFET!!!
Worse still I fired the relay and the bread came exploding out!!!!
Now they’re toast!!! What ever am I gonna do!!!
It’s a crime to touch young UARTs. :-p
And when you crack a fat you have nothing you can do with it but fap.
“So on balance, the coverage was better than one might expect. We’re (mostly) not portrayed as computer criminals, even if we aren’t the happy-go-lucky geeks partying in the sun that we might see ourselves as. For readers of most of this coverage we likely appear closer to the hacker bashing wildly away at a keyboard to magically enter the AIVD‘s most sensitive digital echelons than the hacker magically creating awesome things with a 3D printer and a soldering iron.”
Isn’t that why we’re trying to do what some (notorious) big businesses do and push for a name change like say “makers” instead of “hackers”?
Isn’t that why we’re trying to do what some (notorious) big businesses do and push for a name change like say “makers” instead of “hackers”?
How about Tinkers? That moniker has a long and storied history and tinkerer comes directly from it.
Does that mean female makers can be Tinkerbelles?
Yes, the term “hacker” is probably wrong.
Though, I wouldn’t call myself a maker as well….
I am just an individual that happens to have a hobby within electronics, just like all the other people with strange hobbies as well….
It’s interesting, when I am referring to our wider community here you may have seen me referring to “Hackers and makers”, because plenty of people define themselves as either or both. I’m reflecting the readers rather than making a particular statement in this.
the local papers and media are always the worst ones. I intention to give a new view on something, just pointing to something the readers already think (read: have been told wrongly before… propaganda anyone?) we at hack42 avoid them like the plague.
There’s a simple explanation for this: the best people in any news organization float to the top, which means they are given responsibility for stories of national and international interest. The noobs and less sophisticated journalists are the ones assigned to local stories.
Actually, the Omroep Flevoland pieces are not negative at all (Dutch speaker here). A bit short on detail and nuance but that’s to be expected.
I lack the language skills to watch the reports, but the text comes across as very misleading.
I used the articles to show my friends and family what I was doing this summer. After a few I gave up. NOS (Public Television, news channel in The Netherlands) only wrote/talked about hacking the fire service communications (on request). And suggested 4000 people where just doing that…
Omroep Flevoland narrator said: “4000 computer hackers are gathered here in Zeewolde.” “Hacking is getting in where it should not be possible (computers, networks).” Just as I’m writing this reply I found the second report of Omproep Flevoland. “Hacking? Isn’t that illegal?”.
The reporters are biassed and are more likely to ask the wrong questions. Ask the attendees whats SHA all about…
As a counterpoint to Jenny’s experience, I didn’t try to convince the press ops at the CCC from assigning me some press angels. I ended up hanging out with some cool people.
They took me backstage in a bunch of places where I wouldn’t have otherwise been, and introduced me to some folks I wouldn’t have otherwise found. It’s like having a pair of assigned, clued-in friends to run around with for a few hours. Press folks are lucky to have such good guides available.
Damn, I wish I’d thought of that!
Love the terms “press angels” and “volunteer”.
Although the description “… to ensure they protect the privacy.. gain permission..” sounds more like a “chaperone” or “handler”.
.. like they use in North Korea… for your own protection…to educate you
.. or indoctrinate as the case may be.
Did they zipper the tent behind you and politely ask for your passport at the hot end of a soldering iron?
The chaperones / press angels _are_ there to enforce the no-photos-of-people-without-permission policy, which was unfortunately broken by a particularly large German media player a few years back. So yeah, the origin of the chaperoning is a bit censorial, in the sense that they want you to actually follow the rules that you’ve already agreed to. I’m a weaksauce privacy fanatic compared to some CCC members, but even I understand and appreciate the rule.
But you only need to have a press angel with you when you’re out on a photo shoot. I mostly hung out with friends and went to talks. I was only with the angels for like five hours, but they were a very productive five hours for Hackaday.
(And if you’re unfamiliar, volunteers in CCC events are called “angels” and get free food/drink in “heaven” and all sorts of other jokes. They sacrifice some of their time at events to make stuff work, so the name is not undeserved. Beats “goons” IMO, although that’s kinda funny too.)
Since those events are mostly non-commercial, hundreds of volunteers/angels help make these camps.
And [heise] always reports on these events, since it has a long relationship to the german version of that camp/conference (CCC Camp or Congress) and mostly a very good understanding of what happens there. [heise] also reports on these events on its other outlets called [Telepolis] and the german [make]. The printed magazine [ct] (also part of heise) always had long articles about the camps or congresses.
Not an unexpected consequence when you adopt a colloquial label that already has a definition within popular culture.
Local media is always the worst.
They operate in this bubble… it’s like Rodney Mullen (skateboarder, TED presenter) comment about how they’d get to a show, get out of the van and there’d be a couple, few hundred kids /screaming/ for him… get back in the van, drive 10 minutes, get out and nobody gives a rat’s ass… … ..the perspective of popularity?
Inside their own community they are used to having this small popularity, to having a voice. A voice to persuade… what’s worse is that they get used to what they oppose not having a similar platform to swing from so they live inside this false narrative where they aren’t quite as important in the overall grand scheme…
…good on you for attributing your points to the people raising them.