Reporting from the CCC in Berlin
December 28th, 2007 by
gloriajw
To my great joy, I ended up in Berlin for the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin this year. I am staying in a flat with four friends I met in Austria this summer. It is walking distance to the event, and I’m getting to see a lot of Berlin.
The architecture is so vastly different between what used to be East and West Berlin that I feel as if I could trace the line where the wall used to be without much research. This is a great city, and a mind blowing gathering of geeks and hackers and phreaks from around the globe.
It feels like coming home, when I wander through the lounge where people have obviously been camped out for a few days and nights already. The atmosphere is just awe inspiring, and the variety of the people here is simply beautiful. It is probably the only place on earth where the casual enthusiast and the hard core geek can happily coexist.
On the second floor is a quantum encryption machine, which fires single photons across the room to a receiver, encrypting messages with these photons. There are RFID receivers everywhere. There is a wireless phone network set up by the event organizers, and people with compatible phones can acquire a phone number which will only work in the building.
There is no true beginning or end. Events happen around the clock, some official and some very unofficial. There is no reason to even leave the building. There is 24 hour coffee (yes!) and a never-closing, fully functional cafeteria, making pizzas and serving beers into the night. There is a Lego building station, where Lego gadgets are being built and programmed. Soldering, lock picking, heavy petting, programming, network packet sniffing, technical debates, and child care, are all happening around me as I stroll the corridors. It is genuinely beautiful. I could lose myself here. Good thing it’s temporary 
December 29th, 2007 at 4:51 am
“Soldering, lock picking, heavy petting, programming, network packet sniffing, technical debates, and child care, are all happening around me as I stroll the corridors. It is genuinely beautiful.”
That’s actually the funniest, most beautiful and best description of the CCC I have ever heard or read. Damn it, I have never been there yet… Enjoy it
December 31st, 2007 at 3:03 am
Hah! Everyone at the conference who had an active Bluetooth device got flashed! I went completely radio silent, with nothing more than a notebook, a pen, and a bottle of water.
People ran across the street to the Media Market to test their TV-B-Gone devices:
http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php
There was a very large protest held in front of the building against the German data retention law to be passed in 2009. There are some frightening things happening in German policy right now.
There was a little bit of everything at this conference. Truly beautiful. The one suggestion I have for next year is deodorant. If you’re not going to bathe, and you’re sleeping on a floor and eating and drinking nothing but beer for four days, you’re going to start to smell. Please don’t torture the rest of us.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Gloria, this sounds like an amazing experience! Thanks for sharing. I hadn’t heard of the CCC before and also wasn’t aware of the data retention law. This law is reminiscent of the Patriot Act in the USA. I’m amazed it passed so easily!
January 16th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Diona, sorry for the late response.
The data retention law was not yet passed in Germany, but is due to be passed in 2009. The beauty of this protest is that, geeks, people who understand how to encrypt and circumvent their traffic despite ANY data retention law, protoested to protect the common people, who do not know how to protect themselves with technology. That was beautiful.