Worries Over Defense Department Money for 'Hackerspaces'

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/us/worries-over-defense-dept-money-for-hackerspaces.html

By AMY O’LEARY
The New York Times
October 5, 2012

This fall, 16 high schools in California started experimental workshops, 
billed as a kind of "shop class for the 21st century," that were 
financed by the federal government. And over the next three years, the 
$10 million program plans to expand to 1,000 high schools, modeled on 
the growing phenomenon of "hackerspaces" -- community clubhouses where 
hackers gather to build, invent or take things apart in their spare 
time.

But the money has stirred some controversy. The financing for the 
schools program is one of several recent grants that the Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has made to build closer 
ties to hackers.

Unlike the hackers who cripple Web sites and steal data, the people the 
government is working with are more often computer professionals who 
indulge their curiosity at their local hackerspace. But the financing 
has prompted criticism that the military’s money could co-opt these 
workshops just as they are starting to spread quickly.

There are about 200 hackerspaces in the United States, a sharp jump from 
the handful that existed five years ago. The workshops, with names like 
the Hacktory, Jigsaw Renaissance and Hacker Dojo, have incubated 
successful businesses like Pinterest, the social networking site, and 
are seen as hotbeds for recruiting engineers and computer scientists.

"Magic comes from these places," said Peiter Zatko, a program manager at 
Darpa, who is reaching out to these workshops, looking for cutting-edge 
ideas in cybersecurity. His program has entered into 74 contracts, and 
about 40 projects have been completed, work that he said would have been 
stymied by traditional government bureaucracy. (Mr. Zatko made a name 
for himself as a respected hacker before joining the government -- he 
testified before a Senate committee in 1998, using the pseudonym Mudge, 
and told the panel that he could take down the Internet in 30 minutes.)

[...]

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