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Christmas was a sleepless affair this year (thanks lenny).

I left home shortly after 03:00 to catch a 03:30 bus. Hugh arrived in the airport shortly after I did, wondering if security would accept a boarding pass scribbled on the back of an exam paper (the printer was out of paper and ink). The flight flew by, mainly due to my comatose state.

The hostel we’re staying in (Heart of Gold Hostel – Berlin, in reference to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) is superb; the staff are friendly, movies on a projector, beds for €15 a night, beer on tap all night. How bad?

We called around to the BCC late in the afternoon to pick up tickets early, to avoid tomorrows queues. We met Mitch and went for dinner in a great, cheap Thai place, which had buckets of vegetarian options.

I’ve made a point of talking very little about the people I’ve met at previous conferences, out of respect for their privacy.

I remember one of the press rules at Defcon was that should a human want to attend anonymously then they should be free to do so. Defcon will not take your name or ask for ID. All participants are asked to respect all other participants, nobody should capture any other humans attribute without that humans express permission. So, no photos unless you get permission from everyone in the frame, no audio/video recordings unless every human recorded has given permission to be recorded. A quiet room is provided for recordings. Speakers are generally excluded from this privacy amnesty, they’ll generally already be associated with the con due to being a speaker. Just don’t harass the speakers.

I remember hearing stories from old Defcons where if a flash went off people would come over to you and insist the photo was deleted/film destroyed.

Despite the cons tagline being “nothing to hide” these people are very serious about the security of personal information relating to them and privacy too. With good reason