yeah, a leatherman might be very confused indeed...:)
also, it just occurred to me that outside of a liberal sex-positive culture, that the victim was wearing a "flirt with me" hankie might be used as an excuse/defense for a harasser/rapist, a la the "she was dressed provocatively" tactic.
If someone is giving the signal that they are interested and then they get flirted with are you going to call that assault? If that is the case then any interaction could be called assault.
We need clarity, rules, codes, and they have to be consistent.
Something like this might work well in highly social events where some flirting is generally appreciated by most but some people don't want to have to fight off continuous advances. I'm not sure that it'd work in more mainstream contexts where the norm is a conservative approach - it might not be able to achieve critical mass.
I like the idea though. I'm going to give it some thought.
We'll need to create a separate namespace from hankies. They're long since out of colors and collisions would be highly unfortunate.:)
Like I said, go with a Wiki which can be continuously updated and slowly spread the memes through the 4chan and other networks until hackers accept the new code.
admittedly you'd need to adapt it a bit; take out the fetishes and replace them with levels of acceptable social contact.
There you go. You just solved it. Now why don't we have articles on Slashdot about that instead of articles blaming the entire hacker community for several random assaults?
Sexual harassment is just plain old immature behavior. It isn't a part of Hack Culture.. its a part of immature people who associate with hacker culture.. hmm.. so maybe that should be a yes?
I'd go with correlation, not causation. "Hacker culture" typically comes from young introvert males with weak social antennas. "Sexual harassment" typically come from young introvert males with weak social antennas. That and how like-minded people in a crowd always stretch it further than any one person would individually. So it's a high risk event but I wouldn't say the hacker culture glorifies it in any way.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since you seem to mean well but that post was seriously fucked up on many levels. I kind of want to tear you a new one but I'm going to try and refrain since you seem to at least have your heart in sort of the right place.
First, social engineering skills != social skills. Not even close.
We disagree on the premise. In order for it to be a skill it has to be something which can be learned and it has to be objectively measurable. Conformity can be learned but are you really saying that fitting in with the pack is the most valuable social skill to you? That is really the only social skill missing in the hacker community, they don't want to conform but why should they have to?
Actual social skills that actual healthy adults
Healthy adults is just code word for "normal" adults. Once again why is it important to be normal?
have are a combination of understanding the motivations of others and having respect for them as individuals.
Not every hacker has a complete disrespect for individuals. But all individuals manipulate each other. Watch apes or monkeys interact and see what I mean. If you cannot see that on the fundamental level humans manipulate each other then perhaps you have a lot to learn. Normal people manipulate guilt all the time, that is not seen as disrespectful but I'm sure you've heard the phrase "guilt tripping". Hackers manipulate more than just guilt and have the same goal that everyone else has, hackers want to find ways to get you to do what they want you to do just like everyone in society is trying to do. That is social skills, it's just the methods people use to get you to do what you're supposed to do.
If hackers use these social skills properly hackers can actually make the world safer.
People are not a set of walking stimulus/response sets for someone to manipulate.
Then what are people? Autonomous objects free to do anything they please? Apparently that can't be true if there are laws and governments, advertisements and corporations, churches and cults.
Instead of blaming the hacker for having a deep understanding of certain aspects of reality why don't you work with the hacker to change what you don't like about reality? Because blaming or attacking the hackers is only going to make things worse.
A failure to distinguish between the two is very common among intelligent, socially awkward types. Hacker types *are* socially awkward on average.
It's easy to distinguish between the two if you ask hackers. But if you ask government officials, professors, doctors and the people who actually run society they'd view you more as an object to be controlled. If you have a problem with that then maybe you should rethink capitalism, rethink organized religion and rethink government itself because that is where the culture is coming from and that is what produces the "social awkwardness" that you have a problem with. Hackers adapt to the environment they were in best, develop skills which you do not understand, and probably will never understand unless you actually become objective and study the hacker community without bias or labels or stereotypes of social awkwardness.
The thing is that most people in hacker circles manage to learn actual social skills at some point. Sadly a portion of them never grow out of the mindset that crude, non-consensual manipulation of others for entertainment or gain is somehow indicative that they have learned to interact with other people on a meaningful level.
Why are you blaming it on hacker circles? Your circle doesn't have these immature people? I've never been in any circle which didn't have assholes, jerks and immature people. These people are in every level of society from top to bottom. They are in every class, race and gender, yes there are immature females.
Oh, so Admiral Grace Hopper was a fangirl/cheerleader. Radia Perlman is clearly just a cheerleader, not an excellent hacker (far better than I'm ever likely to be.)
The problem is a lack of certain social skills, not a lack of all social skills. It's also an attitude problem, and alcohol contributes to it. Sexual harassment/assault should not be tolerated, they're not a necessary part of hacker culture.
Sexual harassment isn't lack of social skills it's just immaturity. You have guys who went to the best schools, in the best clubs and fraternities, all the best training and they get drunk and act like assholes yet we don't claim it's because they lack social skills because they are jocks or preps?
There are assholes in all communities. It doesn't mean the whole community lacks social skills or lacks anything it just means there are a few assholes.
Hackers know how to use tools but not people. Thus people get used like tools by tools.
Why are you acting as if only hackers are doing this? Everyone in society uses everyone else and hackers are just among the people who figured out the way society really works and found backdoors, exploits, holes and other cheat codes. Of course hackers are then misunderstood and thought of as psychopaths when in reality the guy working a 9-5 selling insurance or the advertising exec do the same thing but people perceive that guy as having social skills because he wears a suit and tie, shaves his face, smiles more and speaks politely?
You're being used whether by the guy who speaks politely, or the guy who speaks rude. Hackers show how people get manipulated, conned, exploited for purposes of extracting information but hackers also in the process help show people how to protect themselves from this. Hackers find bugs but also build secure systems.
Why are you spreading this false meme? Hackers don't lack social skills. If hacker can socially engineer people via the internet or in person how is that lacking social skills? Hackers have some of the most advanced social skills in society.
Treating a person as a tool to be used is much easier than actually interacting with them as a human being; what makes it easier is the very fact that in doing so, one ignores all social rules and norms one is supposed to follow and simply concentrates on the goal. And not all hackers can pull off social engineering.
If you had such social skills wouldn't you be able to determine when people are using you as a tool? Maybe you wouldn't be tooled if you developed the hacker skill set. Why do ordinary people pay hackers to teach them all this stuff? Because hackers think differently and actually have more advanced social skills and if that were not the case Mitnick wouldn't have been so successful and Adrian Lamo wouldn't have been able to do what he did.
I'm not saying it's pretty or that people don't get hurt dealing with hackers, I'm saying that's how the real world works and hackers operating in the real world where people get hurt.
Finally not every hacker is bad or a psychopath. It takes years to develop the skill sets that many hackers develop. Why not respect hackers for their skills and try to understand them rather than condemn?
Why are you spreading this false meme? Hackers don't lack social skills. If hacker can socially engineer people via the internet or in person how is that lacking social skills?
Those are not social skills. They are sociopath skills. Which probably explains the misogyny in the rest of your post.
Sociopath skills or empath skills, any skill which allows you to manipulate people is a social skill. Whether you use guilt trips and empathy tactics or you use fear and intimidation tactics these are how people control and manipulate and persuade others. All the other stuff you call social skills are completely objective and cannot be measured so they don't really count.
How your smile looks on your face is not a social skill, you're born with a nice smile or not. How pretty you are is not a social skill, you're born pretty or not. How normal you look and sound is not a social skill, you're born normal looking and sounding or not. People who have real social skills find ways to get what they want without any natural advantages and without resorting to violence.
If you can talk someone into buying something or doing something or make a person think a certain way you've got social skills. Manners aren't social skills those are cultural norms which can change depending on the culture, they are subjective. But manipulating peoples emotions crosses cultures which is why mail order bride and nigerian scams work globally.
Compared to non-hackers, statistically, YES THEY DO.
Street intelligence vs book intelligence. Hackers have far greater street intelligence. Social skills includes the ability to socially engineer and manipulate. If ordinary people had such good social skills why are they so easy to socially engineer, trick, brainwash, talk into doing stupid shit, etc? Ordinary people have the least social skills, I'd wager their social skills are so bad that they only know how to seek to conform, fit in and look like everybody else so they never had to develop real social skills which can only be developed when you can't fit in naturally. I'm proposing a hypothesis that ordinary people have ordinary social skills which don't apply to anything besides their 9-5 day job. Fitting into a crowd is not a skill it's a natural tendency which some people are born with more than others.
Lol. Sure. I would say that they have advance skills of affecting society, but the term 'social skills' has a widely accepted connotation for which your use of the word does not apply.
The people in society with the best social skills are the social engineers capable of manipulating the most people. That is the objective measure. Just being "ordinary" or appearing "normal" is not a skill, that's just keeping your head down. A skill requires you to actually use your social "skills" to make things happen rather than merely not stand out.
A better statistic would be to say hackers aren't socially connected, but in my life the most socially skilled people I've ever known were all hackers. They are the most manipulative, slick, adaptable people I know. It's no accident that they can manipulate people out of their passwords, being manipulative is a social skill and one of the most important of all social skills. Having manners is also important but you can get away with being rude if you're manipulative enough to make being rude cool.
No. These are human beings in a physical place in a society that has laws and expectations that will not be ignored by subculture (ignore it all day and you will end up in jail or fired or both). The reality of that subculture's dysfunctional facets does *not* provide 'reason', nor does it justify the complete bullshit you're spewing here. You're using the 'she asked for it' argument,
No I'm not using the she asked for it argument. You're using a strawman to pick apart an argument I never made. I'm making the argument that it benefits those who hate hackers and the hacker community and all it's members male and female to start a gender war among hackers. I'm making the audacious argument that this is divide and conquer. If you can't figure out what is going on then you need to read Sun Tzu and develop more advanced social skills.
You are implying that the victims of harassment had partial responsibility --- no. A naked woman rubbing herself all over the guy next to you is *NOT* required to accept harassment from you of any kind -- to assume you are welcome to the same without her permission is absurd. If you can't control yourself when you see attractive women, you need a psychiatrist.
When did I say any of that. Quote me otherwise you're being delusional arguing with yourself here. No one is defending sexual assault and in none of my posts do I defend sexual assault. I'm defending the community itself. If there are sexual assaults then kick the perps out, they damage the community by making the community look bad and by bringing unnecessary negative attention.
Women at Defcon are just "attractive young fangirl/cheerleader type women who seem to think hackers are cool for some reason but who don't even care about hacking." You heard it here first, everyone. There's no way for a woman to be a hacker. If you think you are, you just think it's cool for some reason.
We need new rules so that immature men who innocently provoke attractive young fangirls into believing they have been harassed can feel safe. That's really what gets lost in these conversations: men need to feel safe from false accusations of harassment.
(If you're being sarcastic, I apologize, because you're clearly several levels better at it than I am. If not, fuck right off.)
See you missed my entire point. I care more about the community than the men or the women. The community itself is what it's all about. Yes there are a lot of women who hang around hackers but who don't really seem to care about computers other than to take pictures with, meet, or be around hackers. Those sorts of women are the cheerleaders I was talking about and they include journalists who don't know a thing about hacking, or computer science in general but who somehow find their way in the mix. I'm calling them groupies and while I have no problem with this element of the scene it's a part of the scene that has to be understood.
Of course there are female hackers in the scene. Everyone who is part of the scene or who has any involvement knows that. I clearly was trying to distinguish the difference between people who genuinely love computers, the internet, and problem solving and the people who just want to look cool or be around celebrity hackers or meet guys like Julian Assange.
I'm not saying that assaults aren't taking place I'm just setting the proper context so we can solve this problem. We gotta be honest about the sociology/anthropology to solve this problem.
Unfortunately that's a hard thing to do: the protocol isn't universal. Some people feel that even light verbal flirting is inappropriate among strangers in a large social setting like a con, let alone actual contact. On the other side, there ARE people who want to be a public playing. Clearly no protocol is going to satisfy both of them.
So it's kind of dependent on the culture of a particular crowd. I attend some geeky events where greeting complete strangers with a hug is customary, though there's a very subtle pause with open arms to make sure they accept the invitation (the other person move INTO the hug). That's not mainstream social custom, but almost everyone in that crowd understands that nonverbal protocol.
Could we create a rather large wiki to try to document the standards of various subcultures? Would consensus be possible?
A wiki would be a good start. Let people learn some rules as in what to say and not to say to a woman. These men need to learn manners and many of them may not have been taught or had the experience to teach themselves.
There were a lot of great hackers coming up with stuff 20 or 30 years ago, but it seems like it's fallen to shit. And it's not just because of Hollywood, it just didn't survive the transition from an exclusive club to the huge amorphous "community" it is now.
Every time I hear about hackers, I find it's a journalist talking about felons, or some smart kid who learned how to program his microwave, or some guys who are marginally skilled in computers and seriously in need of therapy. Or just yet another fucking poser.
And they're worse in numbers, like these security conferences. These conferences are basically all about security theater, so you're starting off with a bunch of losers to begin with. Add in all the hacker wannabes, and the fact that freaks go there to grope women doesn't seem particularly surprising.
The real communities are professional organizations that are full of people who actually make things, and, frankly, it's pretty stupid to constantly worship hackers who don't make anything.
Why does anyone want to be good at anything? Some people are good at computers but how do they discover they are good if they weren't hacking around? See? A hacker is just an amateur computer enthusiast.
You asked, How is an undercover cop arresting someone who gropes her not entrapment? I said, it's not, because she wouldn't be forcing men to grope her.
You're worried that hackers aren't going to feel safe if the police are there, which is fair enough, I guess, but you might also spare a tear for the woman who was groped. She might feel safer if gropers would get arrested.
Gropers should be banned for life from Defcon. I'm not so quick to say arrest them all because that kind of offense can ruin their life and also the victim of that kind of groping is going to likely be pissed at that moment in time and seek to ruin their life. The best solution is to kick them out immediately, ban them for life, and try to resolve it that way than to have arrests, court and legal cases, and ruin the image of Defcon for both hackers and mainstream society.
Do we put undercover cops in subway stations to catch guys who go around filming women without permission? These sorts of people are everywhere so why destroy Defcon over it?
Creating a minefield for male hackers creates additional risks for male hackers. Why should male hackers have to accept these risks when it wouldn't solve the problem? Arresting a bunch of drunk idiots doesn't decrease the probability of drug idiots. So what do you hope to accomplish? It's not worth the damage to the hacker community.
All this would do is increase paranoia in a demographic that is paranoid enough as it is, and it wont stop asshole idiots from sexually assaulting women.
For reasons that should be obvious, lots of social misfits wind up in computer security. Among the social misfits who wind up in computer security are people who fail to understand social boundaries. Those people harm others by their actions. Those harmful people have a disproportionately high representation in computer security populations.
It does not follow that most hackers fail to understand appropriate social boundaries or that the average hacker has a below-average understanding of social boundaries. In fact, all of the hackers I know (and I know a lot) are quite sensitive about violating the boundaries of others. In fact, being oversensitive is also disproportionately represented in computer security circles.
Beware of those who present a number of extreme individuals in a culture as a measure of the average mental makeup of the culture. It is bad math, and it is prejudice.
How do we know what she said?? Do you really think a convention of hackers are going to trust/feel safe in a scenario with undercover cops to handle this?
Let Defcon hire a security team of trusted people or let the hackers set the honeypot themselves to find out. If this is really a big problem why not let the females from within the hacker community act as bait and report to Defcon security if there are problems? If you're a victim call this number.
But to say you want undercover cops who probably don't like hackers very much to do it, that would be the worst possible option/scenario if you're trying to get actual hackers to go to Defcon.
No, it's not entrapment. Go look up what entrapment is and isn't.
So if we put male undercover cops in there to bait women into falsely accusing them, what would that solve?
The point is you're creating an environment which would be so toxic that male hackers wont want to show up at all. You actually want to turn Defcon into some sorta honeypot and you expect hackers to show up?
Oh bullshit! Assange was accused of sexual misbehavior because he treated women like dirt, apparently. OWS got accused of rape because rapes occur when you have a large number of people gathered for a long time in defiance of police and therefore without police protection. Such sitiuations draw rapists along with their intended participants.
You say it with zeal as if you were there and witnessed it all with your own eyes.
Maybe a better question is WHY is this harassment occurring? Is this specific to certain types of conferences?
Adopting a clear policy on the matter is completely sensible. But how does one come to believe that such creepy behavior would be tolerable in the first place?
Drug use, immaturity, and people who try to apply internet culture to the real flesh world.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault". I've been seeing considerably more of people being inappropriately aggressive, and not just in hacker cons. It's happening in sci fi cons too, and tech business cons, and plenty of other places. Sales conferences have always been bad, but it's new to see so much of this in geek culture.
I'm pretty sexually liberated (OK, I'm a fucking slut), but that doesn't mean free for all. No matter how much you think they want it, never assume they're interested unless they respond positively to some gentle verbal flirting... And if they don't, they're not interested, so please fuck off.
I know this sounds obvious to many, but I keep seeing rather horrifying examples of geeks completely failing to follow that basic protocol.
So why don't we make a community effort to teach basic protocol? Where is the basic protocol Wiki? I know it's common sense for most of us but there are probably some young kids who are brilliant but also autistic.
No idiot. He's implying they go undercover as plain clothes cops to bait gropers in the same way female officers stand on street corners baiting johns.
If you bait them that's even worse. How is that not entrapment? Honestly it all depends on who the female officers are and whether or not they are a legitimate part of the hacker community. Do you really want some cops who hate the community to be in that role? Also I don't see how entrapment really does anything but get people arrested which is exactly what we shouldn't want.
There is a strong association between hardcore anything (geek, programmer, whatever) towards being maladjusted to societal norms. So you naturally expect that these folks will be less politically correct than others. If they were closer to the norm socially, they probably wouldn't be so hardcore on the things they like. Its too bad that so many people can't have both normal socialization skills and supra-normal tech, geek, whatever skills. This isn't to say that there aren't outliers. There are. On both sides of the equation.
Social norm adaptation has nothing to do with sexual assault. Immature geeks who don't know how to act? They are actually the normal ones. The geeks who don't drink, who don't act immature and stupid, who don't use drugs, these are the unusual ones.
Ultimately none of that should matter. What matters is that everyone feels safe no matter how awkward, aloof, intelligent, dumb, normal or abnormal.
I would say that sexual harassment is a side effect of really awful social skills that most "hackers" have. That is to say they don't really understand what they're doing is sexual harassment, since they're pretty much social retards.
Why are you spreading this false meme? Hackers don't lack social skills. If hacker can socially engineer people via the internet or in person how is that lacking social skills? Hackers have some of the most advanced social skills in society.
The problem isn't lack of social skills, it's the addition of alcohol, drugs, and lots of attractive young fangirl/cheerleader type women who seem to think hackers are cool for some reason but who don't even care about hacking. A lot of these women are out of their element, but a lot of these hackers are immature. It's a combination of both, but this can only be fixed by educating the hacker community in security policy.
A better policy is needed so that everyone at these events can feel safe. The immature hacker has a right to feel just as safe as the attractive young fangirl/cheerleader. If we tip the scales too much it can bring bias which could shift the risk from one side to another which is what the hacker community does not want as that would result in the most skilled or talented hackers not attending Defcon at all but it would also result in the most attractive females not attending at all.
I would say that we need to promote Defcon and the community absolutely and never blame the community for the behavior of members of the community. We should change or modify the behavior of the membership through new policies.
Not trying to be conspiratorial, but why is it Occupy Wallstreet, Julian Assange, and now "hacker culture" all get accused of sexual assaults? What is the connection?
The connection is that people were sexually assaulted.
You're saying were as if it's a proven fact when it's more an accusation. An accusation is meaningless and could very well be a smear unless you have sufficient evidence. In my opinion we shouldn't blame hacker culture. Hacker culture has to be protected at all costs. We shouldn't blame dumb blokes for being dumb blokes, and we shouldn't blame the accusers for being victims.
We have to make it difficult for blokes to be dumb and we have to bring enough transparency to these sorts of events so that all behavior can be traced back if necessary. It's like a Casino, if you're at a Casino you can't easily cheat because your every move is being watched. This doesn't stop everyone but it stops most.
If women are being assaulted it could be because there are drugs, alcohol etc at these events with inadequate security. These are hackers, they have enough brains to figure out a solution to this problem which could empower the hacker community.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, a leatherman might be very confused indeed... :)
also, it just occurred to me that outside of a liberal sex-positive culture, that the victim was wearing a "flirt with me" hankie might be used as an excuse/defense for a harasser/rapist, a la the "she was dressed provocatively" tactic.
If someone is giving the signal that they are interested and then they get flirted with are you going to call that assault? If that is the case then any interaction could be called assault.
We need clarity, rules, codes, and they have to be consistent.
Something like this might work well in highly social events where some flirting is generally appreciated by most but some people don't want to have to fight off continuous advances. I'm not sure that it'd work in more mainstream contexts where the norm is a conservative approach - it might not be able to achieve critical mass.
I like the idea though. I'm going to give it some thought.
We'll need to create a separate namespace from hankies. They're long since out of colors and collisions would be highly unfortunate. :)
Like I said, go with a Wiki which can be continuously updated and slowly spread the memes through the 4chan and other networks until hackers accept the new code.
seems like this would be a pretty straight-forward solution and cut down on everyone's confusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code
admittedly you'd need to adapt it a bit; take out the fetishes and replace them with levels of acceptable social contact.
There you go. You just solved it. Now why don't we have articles on Slashdot about that instead of articles blaming the entire hacker community for several random assaults?
Sexual harassment is just plain old immature behavior. It isn't a part of Hack Culture .. its a part of immature people who associate with hacker culture .. hmm .. so maybe that should be a yes?
I'd go with correlation, not causation. "Hacker culture" typically comes from young introvert males with weak social antennas. "Sexual harassment" typically come from young introvert males with weak social antennas. That and how like-minded people in a crowd always stretch it further than any one person would individually. So it's a high risk event but I wouldn't say the hacker culture glorifies it in any way.
Cite your sources.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since you seem to mean well but that post was seriously fucked up on many levels. I kind of want to tear you a new one but I'm going to try and refrain since you seem to at least have your heart in sort of the right place.
First, social engineering skills != social skills. Not even close.
We disagree on the premise. In order for it to be a skill it has to be something which can be learned and it has to be objectively measurable. Conformity can be learned but are you really saying that fitting in with the pack is the most valuable social skill to you? That is really the only social skill missing in the hacker community, they don't want to conform but why should they have to?
Actual social skills that actual healthy adults
Healthy adults is just code word for "normal" adults. Once again why is it important to be normal?
have are a combination of understanding the motivations of others and having respect for them as individuals.
Not every hacker has a complete disrespect for individuals. But all individuals manipulate each other. Watch apes or monkeys interact and see what I mean. If you cannot see that on the fundamental level humans manipulate each other then perhaps you have a lot to learn. Normal people manipulate guilt all the time, that is not seen as disrespectful but I'm sure you've heard the phrase "guilt tripping". Hackers manipulate more than just guilt and have the same goal that everyone else has, hackers want to find ways to get you to do what they want you to do just like everyone in society is trying to do. That is social skills, it's just the methods people use to get you to do what you're supposed to do.
If hackers use these social skills properly hackers can actually make the world safer.
People are not a set of walking stimulus/response sets for someone to manipulate.
Then what are people? Autonomous objects free to do anything they please? Apparently that can't be true if there are laws and governments, advertisements and corporations, churches and cults.
Instead of blaming the hacker for having a deep understanding of certain aspects of reality why don't you work with the hacker to change what you don't like about reality? Because blaming or attacking the hackers is only going to make things worse.
A failure to distinguish between the two is very common among intelligent, socially awkward types. Hacker types *are* socially awkward on average.
It's easy to distinguish between the two if you ask hackers. But if you ask government officials, professors, doctors and the people who actually run society they'd view you more as an object to be controlled. If you have a problem with that then maybe you should rethink capitalism, rethink organized religion and rethink government itself because that is where the culture is coming from and that is what produces the "social awkwardness" that you have a problem with. Hackers adapt to the environment they were in best, develop skills which you do not understand, and probably will never understand unless you actually become objective and study the hacker community without bias or labels or stereotypes of social awkwardness.
The thing is that most people in hacker circles manage to learn actual social skills at some point. Sadly a portion of them never grow out of the mindset that crude, non-consensual manipulation of others for entertainment or gain is somehow indicative that they have learned to interact with other people on a meaningful level.
Why are you blaming it on hacker circles? Your circle doesn't have these immature people? I've never been in any circle which didn't have assholes, jerks and immature people. These people are in every level of society from top to bottom. They are in every class, race and gender, yes there are immature females.
Oh, so Admiral Grace Hopper was a fangirl/cheerleader. Radia Perlman is clearly just a cheerleader, not an excellent hacker (far better than I'm ever likely to be.)
The problem is a lack of certain social skills, not a lack of all social skills. It's also an attitude problem, and alcohol contributes to it. Sexual harassment/assault should not be tolerated, they're not a necessary part of hacker culture.
Sexual harassment isn't lack of social skills it's just immaturity. You have guys who went to the best schools, in the best clubs and fraternities, all the best training and they get drunk and act like assholes yet we don't claim it's because they lack social skills because they are jocks or preps?
There are assholes in all communities. It doesn't mean the whole community lacks social skills or lacks anything it just means there are a few assholes.
Hackers know how to use tools but not people. Thus people get used like tools by tools.
Why are you acting as if only hackers are doing this? Everyone in society uses everyone else and hackers are just among the people who figured out the way society really works and found backdoors, exploits, holes and other cheat codes. Of course hackers are then misunderstood and thought of as psychopaths when in reality the guy working a 9-5 selling insurance or the advertising exec do the same thing but people perceive that guy as having social skills because he wears a suit and tie, shaves his face, smiles more and speaks politely?
You're being used whether by the guy who speaks politely, or the guy who speaks rude. Hackers show how people get manipulated, conned, exploited for purposes of extracting information but hackers also in the process help show people how to protect themselves from this. Hackers find bugs but also build secure systems.
Treating a person as a tool to be used is much easier than actually interacting with them as a human being; what makes it easier is the very fact that in doing so, one ignores all social rules and norms one is supposed to follow and simply concentrates on the goal. And not all hackers can pull off social engineering.
If you had such social skills wouldn't you be able to determine when people are using you as a tool? Maybe you wouldn't be tooled if you developed the hacker skill set. Why do ordinary people pay hackers to teach them all this stuff? Because hackers think differently and actually have more advanced social skills and if that were not the case Mitnick wouldn't have been so successful and Adrian Lamo wouldn't have been able to do what he did.
I'm not saying it's pretty or that people don't get hurt dealing with hackers, I'm saying that's how the real world works and hackers operating in the real world where people get hurt.
Finally not every hacker is bad or a psychopath. It takes years to develop the skill sets that many hackers develop. Why not respect hackers for their skills and try to understand them rather than condemn?
Those are not social skills. They are sociopath skills. Which probably explains the misogyny in the rest of your post.
Sociopath skills or empath skills, any skill which allows you to manipulate people is a social skill. Whether you use guilt trips and empathy tactics or you use fear and intimidation tactics these are how people control and manipulate and persuade others. All the other stuff you call social skills are completely objective and cannot be measured so they don't really count.
How your smile looks on your face is not a social skill, you're born with a nice smile or not. How pretty you are is not a social skill, you're born pretty or not. How normal you look and sound is not a social skill, you're born normal looking and sounding or not. People who have real social skills find ways to get what they want without any natural advantages and without resorting to violence.
If you can talk someone into buying something or doing something or make a person think a certain way you've got social skills. Manners aren't social skills those are cultural norms which can change depending on the culture, they are subjective. But manipulating peoples emotions crosses cultures which is why mail order bride and nigerian scams work globally.
Compared to non-hackers, statistically, YES THEY DO.
Street intelligence vs book intelligence. Hackers have far greater street intelligence.
Social skills includes the ability to socially engineer and manipulate. If ordinary people had such good social skills why are they so easy to socially engineer, trick, brainwash, talk into doing stupid shit, etc? Ordinary people have the least social skills, I'd wager their social skills are so bad that they only know how to seek to conform, fit in and look like everybody else so they never had to develop real social skills which can only be developed when you can't fit in naturally. I'm proposing a hypothesis that ordinary people have ordinary social skills which don't apply to anything besides their 9-5 day job. Fitting into a crowd is not a skill it's a natural tendency which some people are born with more than others.
Lol. Sure. I would say that they have advance skills of affecting society, but the term 'social skills' has a widely accepted connotation for which your use of the word does not apply.
The people in society with the best social skills are the social engineers capable of manipulating the most people. That is the objective measure. Just being "ordinary" or appearing "normal" is not a skill, that's just keeping your head down. A skill requires you to actually use your social "skills" to make things happen rather than merely not stand out.
A better statistic would be to say hackers aren't socially connected, but in my life the most socially skilled people I've ever known were all hackers. They are the most manipulative, slick, adaptable people I know. It's no accident that they can manipulate people out of their passwords, being manipulative is a social skill and one of the most important of all social skills. Having manners is also important but you can get away with being rude if you're manipulative enough to make being rude cool.
No. These are human beings in a physical place in a society that has laws and expectations that will not be ignored by subculture (ignore it all day and you will end up in jail or fired or both). The reality of that subculture's dysfunctional facets does *not* provide 'reason', nor does it justify the complete bullshit you're spewing here. You're using the 'she asked for it' argument,
No I'm not using the she asked for it argument. You're using a strawman to pick apart an argument I never made. I'm making the argument that it benefits those who hate hackers and the hacker community and all it's members male and female to start a gender war among hackers. I'm making the audacious argument that this is divide and conquer. If you can't figure out what is going on then you need to read Sun Tzu and develop more advanced social skills.
You are implying that the victims of harassment had partial responsibility --- no. A naked woman rubbing herself all over the guy next to you is *NOT* required to accept harassment from you of any kind -- to assume you are welcome to the same without her permission is absurd. If you can't control yourself when you see attractive women, you need a psychiatrist.
When did I say any of that. Quote me otherwise you're being delusional arguing with yourself here. No one is defending sexual assault and in none of my posts do I defend sexual assault. I'm defending the community itself. If there are sexual assaults then kick the perps out, they damage the community by making the community look bad and by bringing unnecessary negative attention.
Women at Defcon are just "attractive young fangirl/cheerleader type women who seem to think hackers are cool for some reason but who don't even care about hacking." You heard it here first, everyone. There's no way for a woman to be a hacker. If you think you are, you just think it's cool for some reason.
We need new rules so that immature men who innocently provoke attractive young fangirls into believing they have been harassed can feel safe. That's really what gets lost in these conversations: men need to feel safe from false accusations of harassment.
(If you're being sarcastic, I apologize, because you're clearly several levels better at it than I am. If not, fuck right off.)
See you missed my entire point. I care more about the community than the men or the women. The community itself is what it's all about. Yes there are a lot of women who hang around hackers but who don't really seem to care about computers other than to take pictures with, meet, or be around hackers. Those sorts of women are the cheerleaders I was talking about and they include journalists who don't know a thing about hacking, or computer science in general but who somehow find their way in the mix. I'm calling them groupies and while I have no problem with this element of the scene it's a part of the scene that has to be understood.
Of course there are female hackers in the scene. Everyone who is part of the scene or who has any involvement knows that. I clearly was trying to distinguish the difference between people who genuinely love computers, the internet, and problem solving and the people who just want to look cool or be around celebrity hackers or meet guys like Julian Assange.
I'm not saying that assaults aren't taking place I'm just setting the proper context so we can solve this problem. We gotta be honest about the sociology/anthropology to solve this problem.
Where is the basic protocol Wiki?
Unfortunately that's a hard thing to do: the protocol isn't universal. Some people feel that even light verbal flirting is inappropriate among strangers in a large social setting like a con, let alone actual contact. On the other side, there ARE people who want to be a public playing. Clearly no protocol is going to satisfy both of them.
So it's kind of dependent on the culture of a particular crowd. I attend some geeky events where greeting complete strangers with a hug is customary, though there's a very subtle pause with open arms to make sure they accept the invitation (the other person move INTO the hug). That's not mainstream social custom, but almost everyone in that crowd understands that nonverbal protocol.
Could we create a rather large wiki to try to document the standards of various subcultures? Would consensus be possible?
A wiki would be a good start. Let people learn some rules as in what to say and not to say to a woman. These men need to learn manners and many of them may not have been taught or had the experience to teach themselves.
There were a lot of great hackers coming up with stuff 20 or 30 years ago, but it seems like it's fallen to shit. And it's not just because of Hollywood, it just didn't survive the transition from an exclusive club to the huge amorphous "community" it is now.
Every time I hear about hackers, I find it's a journalist talking about felons, or some smart kid who learned how to program his microwave, or some guys who are marginally skilled in computers and seriously in need of therapy. Or just yet another fucking poser.
And they're worse in numbers, like these security conferences. These conferences are basically all about security theater, so you're starting off with a bunch of losers to begin with. Add in all the hacker wannabes, and the fact that freaks go there to grope women doesn't seem particularly surprising.
The real communities are professional organizations that are full of people who actually make things, and, frankly, it's pretty stupid to constantly worship hackers who don't make anything.
Why does anyone want to be good at anything? Some people are good at computers but how do they discover they are good if they weren't hacking around? See? A hacker is just an amateur computer enthusiast.
You asked, How is an undercover cop arresting someone who gropes her not entrapment? I said, it's not, because she wouldn't be forcing men to grope her.
You're worried that hackers aren't going to feel safe if the police are there, which is fair enough, I guess, but you might also spare a tear for the woman who was groped. She might feel safer if gropers would get arrested.
Gropers should be banned for life from Defcon. I'm not so quick to say arrest them all because that kind of offense can ruin their life and also the victim of that kind of groping is going to likely be pissed at that moment in time and seek to ruin their life. The best solution is to kick them out immediately, ban them for life, and try to resolve it that way than to have arrests, court and legal cases, and ruin the image of Defcon for both hackers and mainstream society.
Do we put undercover cops in subway stations to catch guys who go around filming women without permission? These sorts of people are everywhere so why destroy Defcon over it?
Creating a minefield for male hackers creates additional risks for male hackers. Why should male hackers have to accept these risks when it wouldn't solve the problem? Arresting a bunch of drunk idiots doesn't decrease the probability of drug idiots. So what do you hope to accomplish? It's not worth the damage to the hacker community.
All this would do is increase paranoia in a demographic that is paranoid enough as it is, and it wont stop asshole idiots from sexually assaulting women.
For reasons that should be obvious, lots of social misfits wind up in computer security. Among the social misfits who wind up in computer security are people who fail to understand social boundaries. Those people harm others by their actions. Those harmful people have a disproportionately high representation in computer security populations.
It does not follow that most hackers fail to understand appropriate social boundaries or that the average hacker has a below-average understanding of social boundaries. In fact, all of the hackers I know (and I know a lot) are quite sensitive about violating the boundaries of others. In fact, being oversensitive is also disproportionately represented in computer security circles.
Beware of those who present a number of extreme individuals in a culture as a measure of the average mental makeup of the culture. It is bad math, and it is prejudice.
What stats do you have other than stereotypes?
How do we know what she said?? Do you really think a convention of hackers are going to trust/feel safe in a scenario with undercover cops to handle this?
Let Defcon hire a security team of trusted people or let the hackers set the honeypot themselves to find out. If this is really a big problem why not let the females from within the hacker community act as bait and report to Defcon security if there are problems? If you're a victim call this number.
But to say you want undercover cops who probably don't like hackers very much to do it, that would be the worst possible option/scenario if you're trying to get actual hackers to go to Defcon.
No, it's not entrapment. Go look up what entrapment is and isn't.
So if we put male undercover cops in there to bait women into falsely accusing them, what would that solve?
The point is you're creating an environment which would be so toxic that male hackers wont want to show up at all. You actually want to turn Defcon into some sorta honeypot and you expect hackers to show up?
Oh bullshit! Assange was accused of sexual misbehavior because he treated women like dirt, apparently. OWS got accused of rape because rapes occur when you have a large number of people gathered for a long time in defiance of police and therefore without police protection. Such sitiuations draw rapists along with their intended participants.
You say it with zeal as if you were there and witnessed it all with your own eyes.
Maybe a better question is WHY is this harassment occurring? Is this specific to certain types of conferences?
Adopting a clear policy on the matter is completely sensible. But how does one come to believe that such creepy behavior would be tolerable in the first place?
Drug use, immaturity, and people who try to apply internet culture to the real flesh world.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault". I've been seeing considerably more of people being inappropriately aggressive, and not just in hacker cons. It's happening in sci fi cons too, and tech business cons, and plenty of other places. Sales conferences have always been bad, but it's new to see so much of this in geek culture.
I'm pretty sexually liberated (OK, I'm a fucking slut), but that doesn't mean free for all. No matter how much you think they want it, never assume they're interested unless they respond positively to some gentle verbal flirting... And if they don't, they're not interested, so please fuck off.
I know this sounds obvious to many, but I keep seeing rather horrifying examples of geeks completely failing to follow that basic protocol.
So why don't we make a community effort to teach basic protocol? Where is the basic protocol Wiki? I know it's common sense for most of us but there are probably some young kids who are brilliant but also autistic.
No idiot. He's implying they go undercover as plain clothes cops to bait gropers in the same way female officers stand on street corners baiting johns.
If you bait them that's even worse. How is that not entrapment? Honestly it all depends on who the female officers are and whether or not they are a legitimate part of the hacker community. Do you really want some cops who hate the community to be in that role? Also I don't see how entrapment really does anything but get people arrested which is exactly what we shouldn't want.
There is a strong association between hardcore anything (geek, programmer, whatever) towards being maladjusted to societal norms. So you naturally expect that these folks will be less politically correct than others. If they were closer to the norm socially, they probably wouldn't be so hardcore on the things they like. Its too bad that so many people can't have both normal socialization skills and supra-normal tech, geek, whatever skills. This isn't to say that there aren't outliers. There are. On both sides of the equation.
Social norm adaptation has nothing to do with sexual assault. Immature geeks who don't know how to act? They are actually the normal ones. The geeks who don't drink, who don't act immature and stupid, who don't use drugs, these are the unusual ones.
Ultimately none of that should matter. What matters is that everyone feels safe no matter how awkward, aloof, intelligent, dumb, normal or abnormal.
I would say that sexual harassment is a side effect of really awful social skills that most "hackers" have. That is to say they don't really understand what they're doing is sexual harassment, since they're pretty much social retards.
Why are you spreading this false meme? Hackers don't lack social skills. If hacker can socially engineer people via the internet or in person how is that lacking social skills? Hackers have some of the most advanced social skills in society.
The problem isn't lack of social skills, it's the addition of alcohol, drugs, and lots of attractive young fangirl/cheerleader type women who seem to think hackers are cool for some reason but who don't even care about hacking. A lot of these women are out of their element, but a lot of these hackers are immature. It's a combination of both, but this can only be fixed by educating the hacker community in security policy.
A better policy is needed so that everyone at these events can feel safe. The immature hacker has a right to feel just as safe as the attractive young fangirl/cheerleader. If we tip the scales too much it can bring bias which could shift the risk from one side to another which is what the hacker community does not want as that would result in the most skilled or talented hackers not attending Defcon at all but it would also result in the most attractive females not attending at all.
I would say that we need to promote Defcon and the community absolutely and never blame the community for the behavior of members of the community. We should change or modify the behavior of the membership through new policies.
Not trying to be conspiratorial, but why is it Occupy Wallstreet, Julian Assange, and now "hacker culture" all get accused of sexual assaults? What is the connection?
The connection is that people were sexually assaulted.
You're saying were as if it's a proven fact when it's more an accusation. An accusation is meaningless and could very well be a smear unless you have sufficient evidence. In my opinion we shouldn't blame hacker culture. Hacker culture has to be protected at all costs. We shouldn't blame dumb blokes for being dumb blokes, and we shouldn't blame the accusers for being victims.
We have to make it difficult for blokes to be dumb and we have to bring enough transparency to these sorts of events so that all behavior can be traced back if necessary. It's like a Casino, if you're at a Casino you can't easily cheat because your every move is being watched. This doesn't stop everyone but it stops most.
If women are being assaulted it could be because there are drugs, alcohol etc at these events with inadequate security. These are hackers, they have enough brains to figure out a solution to this problem which could empower the hacker community.