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.
I think Germany is not the same as the US in regards to expectations of privacy in public when it comes to photography. Also there are plenty of signs and warnings at CCC to respect privacy and not take pics without consent…
Yes, Germany absolutely has a right to privacy in the public sphere
It's a nuanced right that has to be weighted against other rights and societal benefits. On the street it's usually easy: your picture can contain crowds or people who are there incidentally, but if you point the camera at a person you need their consent. But at a gathering like the CCC even being an identifiable member of the crowd might create issues for people, and you have to take that into account as photographer (both ethically and legally)
Well, having lived there I'd describe it thus: You might get shouted at for taking a harmless picture at a conference; They brag about their great "data protection" laws, and the same same day you read in the news how yet another of their universities got hacked and how some incompetent government agency leaked the sensitive private information of hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Not that anyone cares or that anyone would get punished for it. But don't you dare forget adding cookie popups to your website or trying to build a finance app without extremely invasive and questionable KYC.
> They brag about their great "data protection" laws, and the same same day you read in the news how yet another of their universities got hacked and how some incompetent government agency leaked the sensitive private information of hundreds of thousands of their citizens.
I would claim those people from Germany who are very privacy-minded indeed have a huge distrust of these data collections exactly because they know that sooner or later someone will crack these systems.
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.
dudefeliciano · · focus · HN ↗
wongarsu · · focus · HN ↗
It's a nuanced right that has to be weighted against other rights and societal benefits. On the street it's usually easy: your picture can contain crowds or people who are there incidentally, but if you point the camera at a person you need their consent. But at a gathering like the CCC even being an identifiable member of the crowd might create issues for people, and you have to take that into account as photographer (both ethically and legally)
trompetenaccoun · · focus · HN ↗
Well, having lived there I'd describe it thus: You might get shouted at for taking a harmless picture at a conference; They brag about their great "data protection" laws, and the same same day you read in the news how yet another of their universities got hacked and how some incompetent government agency leaked the sensitive private information of hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Not that anyone cares or that anyone would get punished for it. But don't you dare forget adding cookie popups to your website or trying to build a finance app without extremely invasive and questionable KYC.
Privacy-mindedness with German characteristics.
aleph_minus_one · · focus · HN ↗
I would claim those people from Germany who are very privacy-minded indeed have a huge distrust of these data collections exactly because they know that sooner or later someone will crack these systems.