The Admiral Mike rogs its new Director NSA has not been invited this year to any of the two major hacking conferences (Black Hat and Def Con) as he did last year with his predecessor Keith Alexander in Def Con.
So while hackers are preparing to gather in Las Vegas, the leadership of the US National Security Service will probably not make the trip.
Vanee Vines, recfaceNSA confirmed Rogers' absence from the conferences, and said he did not know if he had received invitations to the conferences. He also said he does not know if any other NSA staff members will attend.
A spokeswoman for Black Hat, Meredith Corley, said: "We are meeting to talk to all members of the security community, both public and private. We did not call in Admiral Mike Rogers this year. "
US intelligence services will of course have some representation. A keynote speaker at Black Hat, starting Saturday, will be Dan Geer, an information security specialist who currently serves as the In-Q-Tel security chief, the technology arm invested by the CIA and the wider community of information services.
Def Con representatives, through conference founder Jeff Moss, publicly called on federal government officials to take a "time out" and stay away. (Moss is a member Department of Internal Security Advisory Committee.)
Να υπενθυμίσουμε ότι ο προκάτοχος του Rogers, Keith Alexander, έκανε μια εμφάνιση στο Def Con το 2012 προτρέποντας “τους καλύτερους της κοινότητας” να δουλέψουν για την NSA και στρατιωτική δίδυμη αδερφή της, US. Cyber Command, while employees of the service distributed leaflets to the participants.
We recall Keith Alexander's speech because he then answered a question from the audience, saying, "the story that states that we have millions or even hundreds of millions of surveillance files is completely false."
But the tech community seems to be watching and reacting. The "grounding" of the intelligence services may be a reaction, but that does not mean that there will be no government hackers at the conference, or that the secret services will always be looking for staff from the participants.
At least while they are there they will have the opportunity to listen to his presentations Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU who will speak on topics such as "Blinding the surveillance state" and "The year in digital civil liberties", or in English respectively "Blinding the surveillance state" and "The year in digital civil liberties".
