ISTF

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I missed DEFCON. I couldn’t afford to go. I couldn’t justify spending the money to fly from Africa. It made me feel unplugged from things… or should I say MORE unplugged. I’ve tried for years to connect the skill of the hacking community to unmet needs in the NGO / charity world. I’ve yet to figure out how to do it, and that frustrates the crap out of me.
I’ve had hundreds of people tell me that HFC is a “great idea” and that they want to help, and short of bringing them to Uganda to work with me on the ground, I have nothing to offer them. My stock answer is “send money, get on the mailing list, and spread the word”. I get asked all the time if we can use excess gear. Here in Africa, I can use it, but taxes and shipping stress our tiny budget to the limit. I’ve often said, “Yeah, hold on to that gear. I’m going to find a way to get it to local charities that need it.” Somewhere, I imagine people are hoarding equipment in the hopes that I’ll come through on that statement, but I haven’t. I don’t even remember who had what or where they were.
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They have none other than Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, NASA and the World Bank as “founding partners” and these organizations have put their collective weight behind a “hacker” charity.

Don’t get me wrong. It seems they are doing good stuff. “Well done,” I say. But their success is somehow like sand in my underpants. Technically speaking, they’re using the word “hacker” properly. So that’s not what bugs me. It’s just that their success shines a bright light on the fact that despite our (my?) popularity in the “real” hacker community, HFC has done little relative to our collective capability.

We can throw an 802.11 signal a world-record distance of 275km using junk hardware. We can rootkit Android before it’s released, hack GSM, hijack global DNS, pick every lock on the planet, beat international news agencies to the punch, and weed our way into previously untrodden shadows of the digital world. There is amazing skill in our community. We build robots just because we can, and tweak just about every technology on the planet to unbelievable ends. We are motivated and brilliant. We are self-organizing and ultra-productive when assaulting “impossible” projects. We break, bend, and then re-create the rules. But can we really, honestly do some good in the world? My answer used to be a resounding “YES!” Now, my answer is a much-too-passive “Maybe”.