HRF staff will participate from July 27-31 to recruit technologists and encryption experts to the human rights movement.
“Members of the DEF CON community are equipped with skills and tools that can help activists, journalists, and civil society organizations push back against repressive regimes across the globe,” said HRF president Thor Halvorssen. “Hackers and IT professionals can play a key role in helping us protect and advance our personal freedoms against an ever-encroaching surveillance state – especially in countries that lack rule of law and freedom of expression.”
HRF will meet DEF CON participants at an exhibit in the Vendors area on the Promenade Level of the convention center. Due to popular demand during last year's conference, HRF is bringing its Flash Drives for Freedom exhibit back to the exhibition hall. Flash Drives for Freedom is an initiative to send information into North Korea using donated USB drives packed with media that can act as windows to the outside world.
Kasparov’s talk, “The Brain’s Last Stand,” starts at 10:00 a.m. on Friday in Promenade South, and will present ideas from his latest book, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. He will also discuss the intersection between human rights, security, and technology.
DEF CON is one of the oldest and largest hacker conventions in the world, and is held every summer in Las Vegas. 20,000 people are expected to attend this year. To learn more about DEF CON, visit the conference website. To learn more about HRF’s work at the intersection of technology and human rights click here.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.
Contact: Andrea Austin, andrea@humanrightsfdn.wpengine.com, (212) 246-8486