Bringing what he sees in the world to ToorCon, infamous security expert Beetle says that the web community -- and hackers -- are missing the point and mis-estimating the dangers of the web.
The danger lies not in government monitoring, that's been thoroughly recognized and railed against, Beetle says. It's what we're willing to let people do to our stuff so we can get it for free. Google's autoscrubbing our searches for words to sell us stuff in the future is more dangerous to our privacy and future than pointless government monitoring, he says.
"We are letting strangers look at our bits in exchange for more free bits," Beetle says. "What you are giving up now is tantamount to what you will give up in the future."
We all talk the personal security, privacy goodfight right up to the moment we get a chance to get free stuff, Beetle says. Then we just surrender our privacy in exchange for free stuff - search engines, software, whatever.
"Two Os in Google, two Os in Spook, coincidence?" he asked - and got a round of applause in response.
Beetle talked Saturday to a roomful of hackers and he started with a discussion of great comics and a blast to BoingBoing for wandering so far from its origin - an enthusiasm for comics.
"Now it's about government ass-fucking, Chinese ass-fucking, bad people ass-fucking and once in a while, comics. Note to BoingBoing, less assfucking.gov."
SlashDot came under similar blast - "an army of OS fanboys who don't understand a thing and comment anyway," Beetle says.
Cyberterrorism is mostly myth, he says. "The e-jihad is a ruse.... If Osama has the internet in his cave, he's got all the virgins he wants off MySpace."
Who to fear? The Chinese, Beetle says.
They are major spammers who can monitor what their own population does, but when you ask the Chinese for the fix they say they can't do it.
Photo by Ms. President from ShmooCon 2006
