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.
> Just remind them, public photography is not a crime, and that there is no right to privacy in the public sphere,
That maybe true in some places. But it's a lot more nuanced in Germany. The "easy" one is publishing a picture where individuals are key to the picture (not background noise) that is clearly protected and requires permission.
It becomes a lot more complex when just taking a picture and not publishing it. There are arguments about this already being problematic due to processing of personal data etc.
However at CCC it becomes easy again: It's private ground, not public. And then they can forbid and be done. Then you need a legal argument about you taking a picture being more important than their rights. And no, American freedom of speech or so doesn't work.
It’s a double-edged sword, and I concur that public photography should not be weaponized against the individual.
However, if I see a crime being committed, you can be sure I will be taking photo’s and dealing with the personal consequences later.
I am on the “public photography is not a crime and I don’t need anyone’s permission to record my personal experience” side of the debate, because I think that a society which does not allow free and open recording of events in the public sphere endangers itself, immensely.
I know it is incomprehensible to a lot of Germans, but without public photography being an open and uncontrolled activity, we wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement in the USA.
We wouldn’t know what was happening in Gaza every minute of the day.
There is a duty to protect this right in a free and open society - not just the American version of it - not just to record incivility and injustice, but also to promote the changes of culture in a society over time.
Would modern Germans have as much self awareness and responsibility for their state, if there were no candid photos of Sophie Scholl for future generations to refer to? A society which eschews such occurrences, endangers itself - indeed, censors itself. Germans are, after all, pretty much used to censoring themselves - but I think this has its limits and should not be tolerated.
So, I claim and exercise this activity because I think, as a responsible member of a society, it is important to hold the camera up - at times.
For sure, if someone asks me, I will comply with their wishes - I have no desire to confront a stranger with embarrassment or harassment by their own personal image - but I also think its necessary to resist the roboticism on this issue, particularly in Germany.
You are mixing a lot of things here. For one, taking a picture of a crime happening as capturing evidence overrules the right to one’s own image, as does the freedom of the press when capturing images of events of public interest.
However what is not okay, and I find that pretty reasonable, is taking a picture of someone else unaware of having their picture taken. I don’t want somebody taking a picture of me going about my life, no matter if I look goofy or wear an extremely cool outfit. You don’t get to take a picture of me, and I won’t take one of you either.
That does absolutely not imply that you couldn’t capture scenes of importance for whatever reason, and that happens literally all the time.
Germany sits on the 14th position of the press freedom index - the narrative you’re trying to construct about some kind of repression on documenting events in the public sphere is just not true.
>However what is not okay, and I find that pretty reasonable, is taking a picture of someone else unaware of having their picture taken.
That is covered by the law. Background subject? Okay. Foreground subject, picture taken covertly? Not okay. This is well understood.
>.. the narrative you’re trying to construct about some kind of repression on documenting events in the public sphere is just not true.
It’s only a matter of a generation or two, feeling entitled to privacy in a public space, until it is widespread ‘common knowledge’ that nobody can take pictures of anybody. That’s how these things work.
During a regular trip I observed some thugs harassing a woman and her dog in a public park in Berlin. I took their picture, they came to threaten me with violence and insist I delete it - I stalled long enough for the lady to make the call and I waited until the cops arrived.
The cops were grateful that there was a very definite picture of one of the thugs kicking her dog. They made the decision on the spot that I was not to be fined, and the lady thanked me. I sent her and the cops the picture, and I deleted it from my roll.
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.
johannes1234321 · · focus · HN ↗
That maybe true in some places. But it's a lot more nuanced in Germany. The "easy" one is publishing a picture where individuals are key to the picture (not background noise) that is clearly protected and requires permission.
It becomes a lot more complex when just taking a picture and not publishing it. There are arguments about this already being problematic due to processing of personal data etc.
However at CCC it becomes easy again: It's private ground, not public. And then they can forbid and be done. Then you need a legal argument about you taking a picture being more important than their rights. And no, American freedom of speech or so doesn't work.
MomsAVoxell · · focus · HN ↗
However, if I see a crime being committed, you can be sure I will be taking photo’s and dealing with the personal consequences later.
I am on the “public photography is not a crime and I don’t need anyone’s permission to record my personal experience” side of the debate, because I think that a society which does not allow free and open recording of events in the public sphere endangers itself, immensely.
I know it is incomprehensible to a lot of Germans, but without public photography being an open and uncontrolled activity, we wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement in the USA.
We wouldn’t know what was happening in Gaza every minute of the day.
There is a duty to protect this right in a free and open society - not just the American version of it - not just to record incivility and injustice, but also to promote the changes of culture in a society over time.
Would modern Germans have as much self awareness and responsibility for their state, if there were no candid photos of Sophie Scholl for future generations to refer to? A society which eschews such occurrences, endangers itself - indeed, censors itself. Germans are, after all, pretty much used to censoring themselves - but I think this has its limits and should not be tolerated.
So, I claim and exercise this activity because I think, as a responsible member of a society, it is important to hold the camera up - at times.
For sure, if someone asks me, I will comply with their wishes - I have no desire to confront a stranger with embarrassment or harassment by their own personal image - but I also think its necessary to resist the roboticism on this issue, particularly in Germany.
9dev · · focus · HN ↗
However what is not okay, and I find that pretty reasonable, is taking a picture of someone else unaware of having their picture taken. I don’t want somebody taking a picture of me going about my life, no matter if I look goofy or wear an extremely cool outfit. You don’t get to take a picture of me, and I won’t take one of you either.
That does absolutely not imply that you couldn’t capture scenes of importance for whatever reason, and that happens literally all the time.
Germany sits on the 14th position of the press freedom index - the narrative you’re trying to construct about some kind of repression on documenting events in the public sphere is just not true.
MomsAVoxell · · focus · HN ↗
That is covered by the law. Background subject? Okay. Foreground subject, picture taken covertly? Not okay. This is well understood.
>.. the narrative you’re trying to construct about some kind of repression on documenting events in the public sphere is just not true.
It’s only a matter of a generation or two, feeling entitled to privacy in a public space, until it is widespread ‘common knowledge’ that nobody can take pictures of anybody. That’s how these things work.
During a regular trip I observed some thugs harassing a woman and her dog in a public park in Berlin. I took their picture, they came to threaten me with violence and insist I delete it - I stalled long enough for the lady to make the call and I waited until the cops arrived.
The cops were grateful that there was a very definite picture of one of the thugs kicking her dog. They made the decision on the spot that I was not to be fined, and the lady thanked me. I sent her and the cops the picture, and I deleted it from my roll.
14th? Room for improvement, then.