Well, where do I start.
Since announcing the first London Cryptoparty last week, we quickly
realised the space we had booked at the London Hackspace was way too
small for our needs, so we quickly rearranged to use the google
campus.
There seems to be a bit
of irony that we're using the google campus as a venue for a
Cryptoparty, given that google are one of the biggest data collectors
in the big brother society. However, the essence of the Cryptoparty
is to reveal only what you wish to reveal. In a city like London,
there are cameras everywhere. Wherever we go, we will be watched and
filmed and recorded. In this situation, why not take our campaign
into the belly of the beast, so to speak, and show them we aren't
afraid of them, and we can beat them at their own game.
There is one concern we
had using the google campus. Everyone coming will have to give a
name, and we greatly encourage you to not make that your real name,
although please be a bit more creative than Mickey Mouse or Donald
Duck. We can get away with a lot, but they aren't complete idiots.
We have already had over half the maximum allocation taken for this
event, so please register fast to avoid disappointment. Once the
tickets do sell out, we will be running a waiting list in case of
people dropping out.
Another exciting
addition recently is the Online Cryptoparty. This came about over a
conversation on the Occpytalk Mumble platform on the subject. It
turns out there are a lot of people who don't live in the locality of
a Cryptoparty, or don't have enough local support to set one up.
This will take place on Wednesday 26th September, and will
be mainly focused as a skills sharing workshop, and making sure
everyone has the tools and knowledge to be able to stay safe online.
Everyone is welcome to attend this, and hopefully this can become a
regular meeting.
I'm sure a lot of the
workshops for both live and online Cryptopartys will seem very basic
to people who have experience with cryptography and safety techniques
before, but this has to be the case, and I urge everyone with any
experience to be on hand to help people out. Certainly the online
party will focus on the most basic systems at first, but we aim for
this to become a regular event, with more advanced techniques being
discussed at later events, when everyone has mastered the basics.
