Hackers

I've just recently begun watching YouTube videos of hackers giving presentations at conferences like DEF CON. They all either seem to be security consultants, or university professors, or both. A company will hire them to "break their stuff," as they call it: to circumvent their security, and then to report to the company and advise them how to make themselves more secure. They seem to typically make a lot of money, the ones giving conference presentations on YouTube videos -- at least: a lot of money compared to, for instance, me.

Several of them have spoken of Edward Snowden in glowing terms, and said that the world is safer today because of him.

I don't like Snowden. I saw a recent interview with him. The interviewer pressed him hard to give opinions on current politics. The worse that he would say about Trump is that Trump needs a hug. He repeatedly insisted that he is non-partisan. However, that didn't stop him from making extremely negative references to the Clintons, Obama, and members of the Clinton and Obama administrations, or publicly supporting Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

Several of the hackers have harshly criticized Apple for monetizing -- well, everything they can. They talk about how the Internet was created by people who intended it to give freedom to the masses, not regular customers to huge corporations. I like that.

Of course, any group who get together at conferences to talk to and about each other will tend to speak highly of their own group.

I've seen several videos with Samy Kamkar. He's the young fellow who, about 15 years ago, accidentally crashed MySpace, and was sentenced to probation, community service and several years without Internet access. I had heard about him before, but I'd never seen a picture of him or heard his voice. When I saw and heard him on video, I was immediately reminded of the speech and mannerism of many fictional hackers in movies and TV shows, and immediately wondered whether some of them are based in part on Kamkar. Maybe he's a consultant on some of those movies and TV shows. Or maybe that's just the way that many Americans born in the 1980's sound and act. Kamkar especially reminds me of Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Lex Luthor in the movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

But when I think about it some more: Eisenberg sounds and acts that way in other roles, too. Maybe that's just the way he sounds, whether he's acting or not.

Overall, so far, I don't hate these hackers on the videos, at all. That kind of surprises me. But, it's early in my journey from knowing squat about them, to wherever I'm headed. They seem like a fairly un-diverse group of white men, but they themselves seem to be aware of the diversity issue.