[hackerspaces] Master's thesis

[Don Ankney]

I'd amend the statement that hacker doesn't mean security researcher to hacker doesn't necessarily mean security researcher. In some spaces, it actually does.
________________________________
From: Alan Fay<mailto:emptyset at freesideatlanta.org>
Sent: ‎1/‎15/‎2014 12:14 PM
To: Hackerspaces General Discussion List<mailto:discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org>
Subject: Re: [hackerspaces] Master's thesis

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Philip Poten <philip.poten at gmail.com<mailto:philip.poten at gmail.com>> wrote:
It is not that the authors of such studies are of malicious intent,
but rather that the studies can be used as a means of developing
policies, counter tactics and infiltration programs.

Can you elaborate on this?  Are you speaking from experience?

I don't know what you have going on in your hackerspace, but at Freeside we're mostly just a bunch of people working on personal and hobby projects (think Arduino powered birdhouse with LEDs, not so much anti-surveillance tech).  This could be a southeastern US hackerspace experience; I only know of a few west coast US hackerspaces seem to have an activist element, and I can't speak for the rest of the world.

We joke that it would be awesome to have a corporate/government mole at Freeside; they'd be the ones doing the dishes and keeping the space clean.  I mean, if some corporation is seriously threatened by some geeks with half-working 3D printers, then that company needs some serious introspection on how they conduct business and why they're slumming it at the local hackerspace, searching for innovation and competitive edge.

Fefe has a few points lined out here in german:
http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=afed4222 for those interested.

>From the Google-translated German (I don't know German), is he implying that some front group did a study for BP on activists?  Is there any solid proof of that?  I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just curious.

If that is true, then BP must be seriously fragile if they fear some protesters can actually produce any negative effects on their business practices and profits - and that should be some really good news to the people against BP, because it's news to me that the activist tactics of the last decade has substantially altered the balance of power to favor working-class people and consumers, in any context.

I'm not saying don't cooperate or all researcher on this topic is evil
to begin with - but think about how little is known about the
social/networking structures of current day bankers, politicians,
lobbyists and their potential political implications. Maybe keep that
in mind, and the fact that the hacker community already has much more
open resources publicly on the web than those groups when answering
any such questions.

It's that accessibility to resources that makes hackerspaces an attractive topic (and maybe some of it is people with no clue that the "hacker" in hackerspace does not mean "black hat netsec researcher").  Most researchers and journalists aren't going to do the investigative legwork required to truly look into the byzantine mess of bankers, politicians, and lobbyists - precisely because it's difficult work, very inaccessible, and this type of work even when paraded in front of the public, rarely results in even moderate changes to that entrenched system, so it's ultimately completely unrewarding.

I'm not saying this work isn't essential or important, but given a choice between studying an open group and a closed, shadowy group the former is a lot easier.
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