defcon II held in las vegas, nevada, on july 22-24, at the
sahara hotel was organised by law school student Jeff Moss (who
also calls himself Dark Tangent). The well-run event, brought
together over 300 hackers, phreaks, security specialists, law
enforcement personnel and journalists.

the conference featured speakers on a wide variety of topics,
as well as practical demonstrations of technology. the keynote speech
was given by phil zimmerman, the author of PGP. zimmerman discussed
the political problems surrounding encryption technology, with an
emphasis on his own expertise.

former arizona state prosecutor gail thackeray spoke on the need for
law enforcement to access new communication systems. the mostly
polite audience was skeptical, questioning her on the privacy implications
of the us governments EES (Clipper) standard and the FBI developed
digital telephony bill, both of which she supports.

sara gordon led a panel discussion on privacy and anonymity on the
internet, with phil zimmerman talking on how to use PGP correctly. many users,
he said, are lulled into a false sense of security, and fail to
read the program documentation. typing PGP pass phrases on-line
or on multi-user networks can compromise PGP's security.

"The presence" discussed how easy it is to compromise privacy on
the internet via packet sniffers. panellist mark aldrich from general
research corporation talked on the need for individuals to pay
attention to the possible intrusion by government, via methods like
the Clipper chip. he called for activism on the part of the hacking
community, to lean away from the activities such as writing the
most "Politically Incorrect Virus", and use their talents to
affect positive change in Cyberspace.

a discussion of european hacking took place at one late night session,
including brief talks by a member of the german based CCC. security
expert padgett peterson of martin marietta gave an informative and
entertaining talk on how the design implementation of internet
email makes it impossible to be "secure". winn schwartau gave a 
rousing speech on terrorism on the information superhighway, and
promoted his book "Information Warfare -- Chaos on the Electronic
Superhighway".


one of the more unusual activities of the conference was the "spot
the fed" contest. this was an on-going event through the weekend,
with T-shirts awarded to both the spotter (saying "i spotted the fed")
and the spottee (I am the Fed). several shirts were given out, with
members of the intelligence community taking part in the good-natured
fun.

each night after the last speaker there was a showing of assorted videos,
including several repeated showings of Computer Warriors, an animated
science fiction feature about a war against viruses inside a computer.
Virus CDs were offered for sale, as well as T-shirts and several
underground magazines and newsletters.

for various reasons, several planned speakers did not give their
presenations. internet hacker legend grok also failed to
speak for unknown reasons. mark ludwig, quthor of "the little
black book of computer viruses 1 and 2" did not speak
at his scheduled time, or at his rescheduled time. he did, however,
speak on the final day on "How to Laugh when the Feds Knock on
Your Door", an interesting discussion on how to keep money
in foreign countries and maintain anonymity.

first place in ludwig's virus creation awards contest was awarded not
to a virus program or programmer, but to bob bales of the NCSA.
according to ludwig, there was low turn-out for his
contest, with only one actual virus qualifying for an award. the
Pro-AL virus, by phalcon/skism member stormbringer won second
place in the contest, and an imaginary non-existent virus for modifying
income tax returns took third place.

Theora