Hacker News Reader

Comment by majkinetor | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing.

There should be hacker clubs in each country double checking all suspicious public procurements.

The CCC is a mature organization and culture, there would be some clear challenges to bootstraping something similar elsewhere that wouldn't be quickly infiltrated and co-opted the way that civil liberties, environmental, and other activist organizations have. CCC (and defcon) appeared to work because they operated in a similar grey-area of risk and competence as a motorcycle club.

I've been pitching around the idea to use hackerone as a framework but restricted to local college and university programs to do bug finding in provincial/municipal public service delivery systems as a way to create a pipeline of competent public service talent, develop real civic engagement, and create the incentives within govt to build less appallingly shitty systems.

The main challenge with that is it requires a total rethinking of what government is, which is already happening organically as dev/eng people and culture builds more generational influence in govt beyond being just "IT," but that's a longer term vision. GenX doesn't code and they're still 10-15 years from retirement, but internet generation people are slowly taking the management reins.

Near term, absolutely hack your region's contact tracing apps, and if you want to really affect change, use technology and data to create and test hypothesis' to find corruption. It's going to be unpopular and even make you a target, but if you want to summarize what the cyberpunk aspect of hacker culture was, a lot of it was based on the hypothesis of there being a corrupt conspiracy running infrastructure of The System, and by learning its secrets you could become somehow more safe from it, or expose it.

CCC in Germany does really fantastic work and they are well recognized in the public. And they have some friends. Years ago, the club was moving from Berlin to Hamburg, I think. They had an ongoing dispute whether they are, tax-wise, recognized as a charitable, non-profit entity (many associations in Germany are recognizes as non-profits, but for some that are politically inconvenient, such as the Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) [1], the tax administration as well as politicians are trying to dispute their tax exemption).

Then they got a mailing where somebody mailed them an entire collection of correspondence between the tax administration and other government bodies which was apparently intended to be sent to the Hamburg tax administration. It detailed how they were trying to actively put obstacles to financing the CCC's work. Apparently, that mailing went accidentally to CCC, which was not the intended address....

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Action_Germany#P...

Do you have a link of the email correspondence?

I'm part of the CCC in Hamburg

We will move to stockholm and I'm thinking of creating one :)

Do you know if CCC supports regional chapters?

Yes, they're called Erfa-Kreise: https://www.ccc.de/en/club/erfas

They're all in German-speaking countries.

In Germany there are various "local subsidiaries", mainly in or around larger cities. They are also often somewhat tied/connected with local hackerspaces and whatnot.

Good luck. In countries like Germany or Norway there is a culture of hacker organisations sustaining themselves financially via their members.

This culture doesn't exist in Sweden, and the spaces and organisations that aren't subsidised by government funds or universities all disappear after a few years.

(Source: Lived in all three countries, was active in such organisations in all three countries)

Oh, there are tons of hackerspaces in Sweden. Its just that they are either tied to universities, startup clusters or for kids.

I guess you were simply not in contact with the right people.

You're saying exactly the same thing as me: There are very few independent hacker spaces (in most cities, none), unlike in Germany and Norway where that is the norm.

CCC isn't a hacker space as I understand the term. CCC is a club of security experts. hacker spaces are communal spaces where you can tinker with peers using provided tools.

In Germany the CCC has a lot of physical clubs where people hang out. They have some specialised equipment, but are from my limited experience more social spaces for cohacking, giving talks, etc. There's also the chaos communication congress, with is a big hacker festival/conference (by the same group of people), run by I think the same org, and I've never fully understood how one navigates the identical acronyms...

Typically, the Chaos Communication Congress is referred to by its number and the abbreviation C3. So it's 36C3 for the last regular installment.

Chaos Computer Club also means there are actual physical club rooms where members can meet.

The CCC is both. It's a club of computer- and technology-interested d people. Most cities have some rented space that doubles as a hacker and tinker space. It really depends on the members in each city what the specific location looks like.

That there is also a branch of very public security experts is... Incidental, I'd say.

Neither is right. CCC also has security experts as members, which sometimes comment publicly. In general however, it is the parent organization for local hacker spaces (though it is possible to be member on only local or only CCC level). And many local spaces are also called ccc-xy. Wnd their interests.

> CCC is a club of security experts

No. It happens that a lot of members are security experts but it is far far broader than that.

The CCC is a very decentralized organization. A lot of hacker spaces are in fact operated by local subdivisions or are completely independent organizations but with a lot of overlap in membership.

In general the CCC likes define itself more by those who share its values and less by the legal entity with that name.

Maybe this is a naive question since I’ve never been involved in a hacker/computer club but why is a dedicated space required? Does the club usually purchase hardware/equipment that needs to be stored? I suppose I always assumed the members brought their own equipment to meetings.

You know, the more I think about it, I’m not really sure I have any idea what a computer club actually is and does...

It's a space to hang out and meet people, where you can talk about and tinker with technology.

Only socializing online is just not the same.

It's a good question and not easy to answer in general as there a lot of different types of hackerspaces.

Some hackerspaces are more a kind of makerspace and provide expensive, large or complicated hardware like industrial laser cutters, 3D printers, embroidery machines and (electronics) workshops with soldering irons, electronic parts etc.

Other hackerspaces are focusing more on the social side and offer a space to hang out, meet and discuss with beverages (I guess mostly mate and beer). There can be talks, workshops or competitions (like CTFs) and so on.

Also providing services to the public, like repair cafes and holiday programs for kids can be a way to further engage in society to share technical knowledge.

hackerspaces.org has also extensive explanations on theory of hackerspaces: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Theory

> Its just that they are either tied to universities, startup clusters or for kids.

…or lacking members. He wrote, glancing around the empty room

Because of COVID?

Currently, I suppose, but no; it’s been “active” since about 2010.

As a Norwegian I would love some pointers to the Norwegian hacker spaces. I am vaguely familiar with some, but it would be nice with some more info.

I'm mostly familiar with the Oslo scene, which has Hackeriet[0] (of which I'm still a member) with more of a CCC-style crowd and Bitraf[1] which has a lot of physical equipment for "makers" and has a much larger space. Hackeriet's IRC channel is also quite nice (though usually in Norwegian and/or svorsk).

There's a few other organisations, notably Teknologihuset[2] which has some communities organising regular events and NUUG[3] which doesn't have a physical space but moves around and is generally a good community to get in contact with.

Note that NUUG have members all throughout Norway, and also an active (Norwegian) IRC channel, which may be a good place to ask about other towns as my knowledge of those is either outdated or non-existing!

Ses på IRC! :)

[0]: https://hackeriet.no [1]: https://bitraf.no/ [2]: https://www.teknologihuset.no/ [3]: https://nuug.no

Have you tried the Hackerspaces wiki? https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Norway

I would join in a heartbeat!

Check out https://www.blivande.com/ Burners, artists and (I think) hackers doing stuff together in Stockholm. (I'm not in sthlm but part of the Scandinavian burning scene)

Looks amazing! I will

What does burner mean here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man

Wow, I didn't expect that to be a thing people identify with so strongly in Stockholm of all places.

The CCC is a national treasure.

I love what I hear about them. Germany has a basic culture that is quite conducive to this kind of thing.

The only thing I wish, is that it was called "KAOS Computer Club," and that they have a picture of Bernie Kopell in their entryway.

http://classicshowbiz.blogspot.com/2016/07/an-interview-with...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com