[Cryptography] Boing Boing pushing an RSA Conference boycott

[Joshua Marpet]

As much as I respect Cory Doctorow's fiction (Little Brother was AWESOME!),
sometimes he rides a little off the rail in the name of publicity, in my
opinion.

Even if you want to boycott RSA, the fact is is that a lot of companies
have paid a lot of money to be at the conference, and sell their wares.
 It's an important con for lots of small and startup companies.  Do they
think they'll hurt RSA?  Maybe.  Will they hurt smaller groups that are
praying very hard to impress some likely buyers?  Probably.

Not cool.




On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com>wrote:

> Yes, we all know that RSA got punked by the NSA. But this boycott some
> folk are pushing seems like a terrible idea to me.
>
> What is important now is to get people to deploy and use defenses. Which
> means making the most of the communication platforms we already have.
>
> Even if a boycott of RSA was to work the best it could achieve is to
> damage the main industry trade show. It would take any replacement several
> years to recover. In the meantime we have no venue to sell security
> product. Black Hat is not RSA and does not want to turn into RSA. They have
> deliberately created a totally different value proposition.
>
> The boycott proposal is purely punitive. They have no demand. Which is a
> very weak position. We did not boycott Bigot-fil-a to punish them. We were
> demanding that they stopped being bigoted. What are the boycotters
> demanding of RSA?
>
>
> Unless someone shows evidence that RSA actually knew they were being
> punked, the boycott makes no sense. And I can't believe that evidence
> exists because there was absolutely no need to tell RSA they were being
> punked to get the outcome they wanted.
>
>
> --
> Website: http://hallambaker.com/
>
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