US May Prevent Chinese Hackers From Attending Def Con, Black Hat

Taco Cowboy (5327) links to a report from Reuters that says "Washington is considering using visa restrictions to prevent Chinese nationals from attending popular summer hacking conferences in Las Vegas as part of a broader effort to curb Chinese cyber espionage, a senior administration official said Saturday. The official said that Washington could use such visa restrictions and other measures to keep Chinese from attending the August Def Con and Black Hat events to maintain pressure on China after the United States this week charged five Chinese military officers with hacking into U.S. companies to steal trade secrets."

Comments

Isolation

[Anonymous Coward]

Good move US, isolate yourself from the rest of the world, so we don't have to do it.
See how that goes for you. Moves like this will only make the next Con's happen in a non totalitarian country, your loss.

PS: Isn't the 2nd amendment's sole purpose to prevent your government from acting against the people? Can you tell me what the f* you're waiting for?

Re:They're doing it wrong

[Mashiki]

Pretty much. I'm sure people are going to froth at the mouth and all the rest until you post stories like this.

Time to move the conferences

[spasm]

When the US govt starts dictating who is allowed to come to your conferences you need to move the conference. Same as the AIDS research conferences have been held anywhere except the US since the 80s because from 1987 to 2009 the US govt banned people with AIDS from traveling to the US.

Re:Time to move the conferences

[Frobnicator]

It isn't the only one. Quite a few conferences dedicated to cryptography and security have been held outside the US because of the ITAR controls and other regulations that treat encryption as weapons and security systems as terrorist devices.

Cryptographic systems were listed as arms until about a decade ago, and even today some security technologies are potentially on the list. Even if they aren't on ITAR any more, attending the conference is certain to get your name entered to all kinds of US-based lists. Rather than risk being considered for international arms dealing and international terrorism, quite a few conferences take place anywhere but the US. The risk both to the conference itself and to those who might attend the conferences are just too great.

Austria, Switzerland, France, Malaysia, ... many countries are still more popular for security conferences than the US.

Re:better idea

[russotto]

What you have described is exactly the Chinese government model. Except for the hiring part - the US clearly does that at Def Con, but instead of threatening to jail people they threaten to pay them 6 figures.

How soon we forget. The FBI arrested Dmitri Sklyarov at DefCon.