I have been to a couple of CCC events in my late teens'ish. Around 26C3.
Over all can recommend, at least as a groups. I used it to meet some online friends for the frist time. Wifi / wardriving nerds that I spend a lot of time with online.
But man, I think I have never been at a place with so many small negative experience with other people. Death by a thousand paper cuts. One older man out of nowhere loudly proclaimed I was Anti-semetic, because I was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. When sitting in the cellar in the "hacking area", friends of mine and me where coding on kismet or aircrack-ng, when someone from the neighboring desk asked what we where doing. After I told him he only lifted his nose slightly and with a smug smile said "Oh, that's what you call hacking today?"
At one camp, where there even was an event on photography, someone I met almost went into a rage every time he saw a camera. Not pointed at him, just someone with a camera. Off he went to tell the camera owner about how it was last camp and his opinion ..
Everything just minor interaction. But as a whole it's just not people I want to hang around with any more.
I’ve been a hacker since the Cap’n Crunch days, I’ve been involved with many hackerspaces around the world, used to sit at the pay phones in Union Station waiting for distant calls, some forgotten first Friday of the month .. and all I can say, anecdotally, is that this death by a thousand cuts is par for the course.
Hacker culture has been co-opted by a broad spectrum of folks - and a big part of the value of CCC is navigating that spectrum.
I’ve met plenty of folks that are annoying as fuck in this scene - but I’ve also met plenty of folks who are just great.
As for the camera thing - Germans have an aversion to being held accountable for their actions in public. It is a deep-seated fear of consequences born from a culture that literally thought it was acceptable, not so long ago, to spy on ones neighbors. They cram themselves into boxes upon boxes and live on top of 2000 other people they want nothing to do with. Just remind them, public photography is not a crime, and that there is no right to privacy in the public sphere, and why don’t they just smile and enjoy the fact that they are frozen in time on some strangers device, just like a strangers memory they have no right to erase. This is the needed context.
Former freelance camera operator who worked in Germany here: you are misrepresenting the legal situation. It is not automatically forbidden to take or even publish pictures of strangers, but the circumstances matter. Merely taking an identifiable person's picture can already infringe their personality rights, even without any intention to publish it. A request to delete it does not automatically settle the matter, but "we are in public" does not settle it either. See BGH, VI ZR 272/94 .
Publishing such a picture generally requires consent under § 22 KunstUrhG , with exceptions under § 23 . "There is no right to privacy in the public sphere" is simply not an accurate description of German law. And "not a crime" does not mean something cannot violate someone's rights.
The comparison with memory ignores what makes a recording different: it can be copied, distributed and matched against other records. Someone remembering my face does not give them the same capabilities as having a photograph of it.
And protecting personal information is hardly some recent corruption of hacker culture. The CCC's own ethics say "Make public data available, protect private data", an addition they date to the 1980s: CCC hacker ethics .
I think you will find that our opinions are in alignment actually. I never take pictures of strangers - in all cases where I have been asked to review such public pictures, the individuals have been incidental to the subject in focus.
CCC is a private event, though. They have every right to the policies they enforce, and I am perfectly fine with adhering to these policies when I attend - after all, I also do not want my photo in some spook database.
But, on the bus? In the park? On a sidewalk in a public street? It is unreasonable to censor these environments.
The law very stringently allows for public photography - it does not allow for weaponization or commercialization of that photography against an individual.
Mashimo · · focus · HN ↗
Over all can recommend, at least as a groups. I used it to meet some online friends for the frist time. Wifi / wardriving nerds that I spend a lot of time with online.
But man, I think I have never been at a place with so many small negative experience with other people. Death by a thousand paper cuts. One older man out of nowhere loudly proclaimed I was Anti-semetic, because I was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. When sitting in the cellar in the "hacking area", friends of mine and me where coding on kismet or aircrack-ng, when someone from the neighboring desk asked what we where doing. After I told him he only lifted his nose slightly and with a smug smile said "Oh, that's what you call hacking today?"
At one camp, where there even was an event on photography, someone I met almost went into a rage every time he saw a camera. Not pointed at him, just someone with a camera. Off he went to tell the camera owner about how it was last camp and his opinion ..
Everything just minor interaction. But as a whole it's just not people I want to hang around with any more.
MomsAVoxell · · focus · HN ↗
Hacker culture has been co-opted by a broad spectrum of folks - and a big part of the value of CCC is navigating that spectrum.
I’ve met plenty of folks that are annoying as fuck in this scene - but I’ve also met plenty of folks who are just great.
As for the camera thing - Germans have an aversion to being held accountable for their actions in public. It is a deep-seated fear of consequences born from a culture that literally thought it was acceptable, not so long ago, to spy on ones neighbors. They cram themselves into boxes upon boxes and live on top of 2000 other people they want nothing to do with. Just remind them, public photography is not a crime, and that there is no right to privacy in the public sphere, and why don’t they just smile and enjoy the fact that they are frozen in time on some strangers device, just like a strangers memory they have no right to erase. This is the needed context.
atoav · · focus · HN ↗
Publishing such a picture generally requires consent under § 22 KunstUrhG , with exceptions under § 23 . "There is no right to privacy in the public sphere" is simply not an accurate description of German law. And "not a crime" does not mean something cannot violate someone's rights.
The comparison with memory ignores what makes a recording different: it can be copied, distributed and matched against other records. Someone remembering my face does not give them the same capabilities as having a photograph of it.
And protecting personal information is hardly some recent corruption of hacker culture. The CCC's own ethics say "Make public data available, protect private data", an addition they date to the 1980s: CCC hacker ethics .
MomsAVoxell · · focus · HN ↗
CCC is a private event, though. They have every right to the policies they enforce, and I am perfectly fine with adhering to these policies when I attend - after all, I also do not want my photo in some spook database.
But, on the bus? In the park? On a sidewalk in a public street? It is unreasonable to censor these environments.
The law very stringently allows for public photography - it does not allow for weaponization or commercialization of that photography against an individual.