STEaPP @ 34c3

ccc.de/congress/2017/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" target="_blank">34c3) took place in Leipzig, Germany. This annual hacker conference organised by the German Chaos Computer Club (CCC) brings together various communities and features a variety of lectures, workshops, and self-organised sessions on diverse technical and socio-political topics.

Leonie Tanczer, Research Associate at STEaPP and part of the PETRAS IoT Hub, attended this unique event (because hey! - who can resist tons of blinking LED lights, Tschunk & and four days of tech-talks, privacy-debates and discussions on recent political and security failures).

Leonie has chosen her top five presentations which she considers worth (re-) watching: 

1. Protecting Your Privacy at the Border

This talk by Kurt Opsahl and William Budington from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) outlines legal and technical protections individuals have when crossing borders. The content is extremely helpful for academics who are planning to conduct fieldwork and/or have to travel with their research data. The content relates to some of the issues Leonie and two of her colleagues reviewed in a publication for the Journal of Global Policy and highlights the importance of digital skills in academia. For those of you who attend the ISA Conference 2018 in San Francisco, come along to Leonie's annual CryptoParty there and get some f2f help with securing your research data.

2. Internet of Fails

Barbara Wimmer, an Austrian journalist and author, discussed current privacy and security issues of the emerging Internet of Things ecosystem. In her talk, which is helpful to anyone new to the topic, Wimmer illustrated some of the biggest failures when it comes to the design and maintenance of current IoT appliances.

3. Financial surveillance

Surveillance can come in many shapes and sizes, including in the form of a global banking watch list. Jasmin Klofta and Tom Wills, two investigative journalists, demonstrated this in the course of their talk on World-Check, a privately-run watch list. The latter is at the heart of a surveillance infrastructure which is sweeping up millions of innocent people in an incredibly non-transparent manner.

4. Science is Broken

This talk by Hanno Böck is essential for anyone currently critical of the status quo in academia. Böck criticises some of the fundamental shortcomings of contemporary research practices, including the replication crisis, the emphasis on "TedTalk" science and the "publish or perish" mentality. He debunks the consistent drive to achieve impact, which basically has come to imply publicity rather than actual societal/scientific significance.

5. Tightening the Net in Iran

Mahsa Alimardani provides insights into her research on the situation of censorship and surveillance in Iran. She critically assesses the policies and relationships of foreign technology companies like Apple, Twitter and Telegram and also provides some pointers on what efforts are and can be undertaken in order to make the Iranian Internet a more accessible and secure space.

Oh, and Leonie strongly recommends anyone interested in these topics to browse CCC's media portal which provides access to all recorded lectures of 2017 and presentations done in previous years - including a talk of her own! Have fun watching!