What the hack
This is the three-day “What The Hack” convention, a self-styled computer-security conference dealing such issues as digital passports, biometrics and cryptography.
Borrowing heavily from Woodstock and the more professionalized Def Con conference that begins Friday in Las Vegas, the event held every four years in the Netherlands draws an international array of experts and geeks. About 3,000 gathered Thursday for the opening.
Unlike better-known and better-funded industry meetings, “What the Hack” had to fight for its right to exist. The mayor of the southern Dutch town of Boxtel, who oversees the village of Liempde where the convention is held, initially tried to stop the event from pitching its hundreds of tents outside his town a reluctance stemming from the lingering public image of hackers as asocial, anarchistic and vaguely menacing.