Security epic fail

Wow, just wow:

One of the more time-honored traditions at DEF CON — the massive hacker convention held each year in Las Vegas — is “Spot-the-Fed,” a playful and mostly harmless contest to out undercover government agents who attend the show.
But that game might be a bit tougher when the conference rolls around again next month: In an apparent reaction to recent revelations about far-reaching U.S. government surveillance programs, DEF CON organizers are asking feds to just stay away.

In a brief blog post published this evening at the DEF CON Web site titled, “Feds, We Need Some Time Apart,” DEF CON owner and hacker-in-chief Jeff Moss (a.k.a. “The Dark Tangent”) suggested it was probably in the best interests of the feds to make themselves scarce at this year’s con.

I wish I had a dollar for everyone who said I was a Fed ...

This is an interesting change.  The security community has a pretty broad spectrum of people, and it's been A Very Good Thing for the Feds and the DEFCON types to be rubbing shoulders.  There's absolutely no doubt that this has helped the Fed.Gov is ways big and small.  The fact that DEFCON is basically telling them "Don't come" is a big, big deal.

RTWT.