The 23rd Chaos Communication Congress has just kicked off this morning at the Berliner Congress Center in Berlin.

I arrived a bit late but when i finally got into the conference room Tim Pritlove was explaining the highlights of the events.

There will be a Powerpoint Karaoke (the speaker sees the slides of his presentation for the first time as his talk starts!), a Hacker Jeopardy (The one and only hacker quizshow), a second iteration of Biometrics in Science Fiction with short film scenes from movies and a Capture the Flag Hacking Contest.

The international VJ Conference AVIT>C23 is taking place at the BCC as well. They are located in the Art&Beauty area. The programme includes more than 20 presentations, performances, VJ-talks, techniques and technology lectures, and workshops.

Because one of the goals of the congress is to express concerns about a series of issues, including surveillance, Tim introduced a DIY surveillance system, a pretty badge complete with a blinking LED light, batteries and an active RFID tag. Project Sputnik is the real-time in-building location tracking system present at the 23C3. The signal is picked up by one or multiple of the 20+ readers installed throughout the venue. You can switch it off whenever you don’t want your data to be visible.

Sputnik is an open project: CC-BY-SA Hardware and GPL Software (part of OpenBeacon). The hardware schematics and firmware source code will be published during 23C3, enabling hackers to enhance/replace the existing firmware, and to add new applications such as p2p communication between multiple devices. Or you can buy one for 10 euros at the entrance (there are only 1000 available!)

The main objective is to demonstrate what kind of surveillance is possible using off-the-shelf inexpensive technology, and to make hackers interested into exploring potential positive use cases for it.

To the delight of the audience, a Camp was announced for next year. It is scheduled on August 8-12 near Berlin (max. 1,30 hour drive.)

The theme of the conference this year is Who Can You Trust?

We are afraid of reality. Reality is: privacy fading away and almost gone by now; loosing control over our data, etc. While fighting the war, we have to adapt to reality and it’s all about trust. What is trust? Something that takes a very long time to establish, it thrives on openness and discussion. Trust is the absence of fear. Trust creates security.

We can create security in our society only if we can establish trust.

Check also the CCC Events Blog and get the images.