about to be. First and foremost, who left their cell phone here? Free phone calls for me.
Okay, I'm going to do a quick introduction. I'm Agent X, aka Jesse Krems. I'm the president
and co-founder of the Hacker Foundation. And let me talk to you about some of the people
that are here. This is Jim Schuyler. He's from, he's our operative in Uganda right now. This is
Nick Farr. He's our accountant and registered CPA. Or he's working on it very hard. That's
uh, Fraser Cunningham. You've probably seen him around, aka Null Tone. He's our secretary
and I think I just outed him. Uh, that's Locke. Can I use a real name? Okay, that's Stephen
Kirk. He runs all the networks here at DEF CON. You got Wi-Fi? It's because you got Locke.
This man right here, he works for, uh, I, no, that's not Louise. That's Christian. I'm just
going to give this cell phone to some guy. So, uh, and then that's Jennifer at the end and that
man in between who I haven't talked to a lot. Uh, he's going to be talking about one of our
projects in Chicago. And this man bringing me water here is Code24, who's a stalwart friend.
Thank you very much. So here's our quick history of the Hacker Foundation, um, and where we've
been and where we're going kind of thing. In a, in 1996, Major Malfunction, one of the head
speaker goons, or one of the head goons, and who's currently speaking another track and can't
be here, went to Sarajevo to set up a BBS, uh, to help the people that were trapped in their
apartments by snipers. A BBS in a war-torn area is a pretty useful tool because, you know,
you need to know where you can get water, where you can get, you know, it's safe to travel and
so on and so forth. He's the one in the middle. Uh, and so he, he told me about this, uh, prior
to DEFCON 9. It's been rattling around in my head. I'm like, whoa, that's so cool. Flying to
war-torn areas. Set up network equipment. Yeah! So the, um, so that rattled around in my head
and I thought about that for a while. And then Nick and I were attending bar over at Caesar's
one night and I, this is how I met Nick and he was, he was helping me out and I was like, wow,
Nick's a really cool guy. He's really on it and he's way more organized than me. And the next
day we were up on top of the, uh, Alexis Park playing with one of Uncle Iris' sat phones. The,
um, and, uh, so the, uh, and we were talking about that and we thought this was a great tool.
It's really awesome. The, um, the, uh, wait a second. Cue it for me. So we were playing with
the satellite equipment. We thought this was really awesome. We were like, what could we do
with this? And we were thinking about something called Medici Sans Frontier at the time. Doctors
without borders. And Nick was like, yeah, hackers without borders. That won't scare anyone. Um,
and so we kind of toned it down a little at that time and we decided to call it Hackers for
Humanity. And we talked about it a little and that was about where we left it. And then at
Defcon 10, uh, I sent out a mailing to DC forums and we got a bunch of people together. He's one
of them. To, uh, talk about what Hackers for Humanity is going to be. What it, you know, what
this means. Um, and we went over to Metro Pizza which has these huge white paper tablecloths
and ideas were flying just fast and furious about what Hackers for Humanity should be.
Should be this, should be that. We really came out of this meeting with two things. Or three
things. A long possible list of activities. A lot of energy. And Priest said something that
was really important. Which was, if you want to make it real, you got to make it formal. So,
uh, we started to do that. Uh, Nick and I, before Defcon 11, exchanged boatloads of email
talking about what Hackers for Humanity should be and how we could help all these people.
Yeah. And it was like, oh, this is really confusing. Totally nuts. So what we did was we,
um, we kind of came up with this idea of a Hacker Foundation. And that's a overarching
organization. It's an umbrella for all other activities that you want to do. And we call
these activities projects. Yeah, so we're that kind of umbrella. Um, and then, so we get
together, Defcon 11, we talk, and then immediately afterward, uh, Nick goes back to
California and files the paperwork to make us a California benefit corporation. Uh, public
benefit corporation in California. This is really important. This is the state level exempt
status. And then we go, okay, this is great. We get that, we file that in August. We get
that on Christmas of 2003. Christmas Eve to be specific. A nice little gift from the
government. Well, that's a long time. That's just an idea about how slow this bureaucracy
moves. And then we decide, okay, we're going to go for the big kahuna. 501c3 status, tax
exempt, federal government, our friends, the IRS. Yeah, they're actually really great. Um,
because they're like, yeah, we can do that for you. So we file our paperwork with them
shortly before our first presentation at Defcon 12. And at Defcon 12, we kind of gave a
lot of people a little 20 minute TurboTalk hint about what we were going to be doing and
where we were at, which was in waiting mode. Shortly thereafter, we, uh, we got our
paperwork. It's in process. In April, we get a call back from the IRS. Yeah, that's a fair
ways off. It's like 10 months roughly after we filed our paperwork before we heard from
them. And they had some questions about us and they talked to us about, you know, we had
some very idealistic ideas about what our goals should be. And, you know, we thought it
would be really easy. You know, we'd, we'd get all this money from Cisco. Um, we'd get all
this money from everybody and we'd get networking equipment. We'd load it on a plane. We'd
fly to some godforsaken place that needs help. We'd help them and then we'd be back by, you
know, Friday afternoon for beer. I mean, come on, that's what every NGO and non-profit
agency does, right? Well, it's not that sexy. And Nick's going to talk about not that sexy
for me. Um. Thanks Jesse. Um, one of the things the IRS asked us to do when they sent a
letter back in response to our initial application was outline, uh, some of the things
we're going to do. There, the tax law here is very specific. Um, there are very certain
things that you can do. There's structures for churches, structures for schools. Um, and
what we want to do is we want to be the non-profit organization for the community. Uh,
coming up in the speech a little bit later, you're going to hear a lot about, um, some
really exciting projects, things going on in Uganda, things going on in Chicago. And
Fraser's going to do a little brief about how we want to get you involved, um, and how we'd
like to give your projects, um, a little bit of legitimacy in terms of federal tax law to
be able to offer, uh, tax deductible status for donations that people give to your products,
projects. Uh, the first goal that we have, of course, to get the ball rolling, and we've
started doing it at StepCon, is to raise money. Over the past year, the Hacker Foundation
has been running largely through the generosity of the people on our board, the directors,
the people who are here from day one. Um, and raising money is hard. You know, when we
thought, oh, it's going to be gloriful, it's going to be great, just like Jesse was saying,
um, the first step to any project that you want to do is raising the funds to be able to go
do it. And that's hard. It's hard to ask people for money. Uh, they're wondering what are
they getting in exchange. Um, in exchange, what we'd like to be able to do is involve the
community more. We have an application on our website, hackerfoundation.org. Basically
any, almost any open source coding project, almost any robotics project, almost anything
that has some kind of charitable aspect or some kind of, uh, charitable bent to it, can get
tax-exempt status through the Hacker Foundation. And one of our goals is to be able to
envelop and to take anybody in the community who's interested in that, interested in raising
more money, interested in building capacity, uh, and get them involved and get people
networking. And that's, that leads into the third goal of what we're doing, uh, building
infrastructure for the future. Getting everybody networked, getting everybody together,
Hacker Foundation handling the paperwork to free you guys up, uh, to do the intellectual
things. But, uh, I'd like to get, uh, right now to Jim's project, uh, the Ugandan Computer
Initiative. It's a really exciting talk. Uh, hi. Um, good afternoon. Uh, I'm Jim Skyler
and I'm the East Africa Regional Coordinator for the, uh, Hacker Foundation. And my project
is UCI, uh, or the Ugandan Computer Initiative. Uh, this is the prototype project of Hackers
for Humanity, which is the humanitarian arm of the Hacker Foundation. Uh, just about a
month ago, I returned from a three month long stay in, uh, Hoima, Uganda, uh, where I was
working as an open volunteer with local and international aid organizations, providing
technical support and, uh, training at health clinics, community based organizations, and
internally displaced people's camps. Uganda is, in a word, paradise. In seven words,
paradise with a bomb strapped to it. When I first traveled to Uganda in 1999, I was
captivated. Uh, the landscape was lush, green, perfect. Um, the people were warm, generous,
hospitable kinds. With what little they had, they would give me food and welcome me into
their homes. You know, the British actually have called Uganda the Pearl of Africa, uh, which
is ironic because you won't find a single damn oyster in the entire country. Um, and
Tanzania's got diamonds, but they didn't get a sweet nickname. My godparents are Ugandan, and
they met my father and mother, uh, while they were studying in Pennsylvania in the late 80s.
And when I turned 16, my father told me that it was time for me to go visit them. So, uh,
30 or so hours of planes, trains, and automobiles, and we were in Africa. Uh, now, as will
happen with idealistic, wide-eyed young men, um, who see true beauty for the first time in their
lives, I fell in love. I was completely set. I had spent most of my youth in suburban America, uh,
playing video games, skateboarding, and, uh, heck, I never got caught. Um, and being in Africa
really changed me. It was, uh, it was sort of one of those times where you just know you're
going to wind up somewhere for the rest of your life, and as fate would have it, it looks like
I'll be able to. Um, you know, I, oh, yeah, well, it's under his shirt. I don't have a slide for
this one, sorry. Yeah. I'm bad at this. Um, yeah, actually, this is the largest group of
white people I have seen in about a year. I'm a little creeped out right now. I apologize. Um,
no, I mean, sure, uh, even when I went there at 16, there's been a civil war raging in the north
of the country for about 20 years. It's still going. Um, there were tanks upended in ditches,
uh, you know, kids running around with dirty shirts and bare feet, and, uh, somehow, you know,
even though you couldn't drink the water, it was perfect. It was just absolutely perfect. Um,
and, uh, you know, really, Uganda is a country in a state of flux. Uh, corruption, civil war,
hunger, and disease are realities in Uganda. During my first week of my recent stay, I got
malaria. Uh, and for those of you who have not had malaria yet, you are not missing out on
much. Just, uh, delete that from your list of priorities and move on to the next one, like
typhoid. Um, you know, and even most of the roads are still unpaved in Uganda. Uh, transport
is long, arduous, uh, power is intermittent, hardline data connections are unreliable, and,
uh, few and far between. But still, um, you know, it's kind of needless to say that my, uh,
blog missed an update for a week or two, uh, and I think I might have missed a couple of
MySpace invites. But, where those limitations might seem to create closed doors, uh,
wireless mesh networks are starting to pop up all across even the remote regions of the
country. Uh, expansive GSM coverage, uh, really is incredible. You see, because hardline
data connections are nearly impossible to keep active and running, what the Ugandans in,
uh, set up wireless towers all across the country. I mean, I could literally get a clear, I
could get a clearer signal in the middle of nowhere, in Hoima. I, I could get a clearer
signal than I could in downtown Chicago. It was incredible. And, so instead of just sort of
going with traditional methods of connectivity, they're really branching out into new and
incredibly, just exciting, uh, means of creating communication. Um, you'll even see
internet cafes in little one room storefronts. Uh, they're, you know, on satellite phones,
they're irregularly connected, poor administration, doesn't matter, they're there. And
Ugandans are going through their very own electronic revolution. Uh, you'd be amazed by how
many are taught to type in their primary school education system, and they are now using
email. I, I don't think many of them have picked up on Friendster, but they definitely are,
uh, are communicating with each other within country. Um, now, as well as regular citizens,
non-government organizations like the Danish, uh, the Danish Cooperative for International
Development, MS, uh, the United Nations Humanitarian and Children's Relief Fund, and the
International Medical Corps, all, all three of whom I've worked with, are starting to take
advantage of these incredible new technologies, and, uh, to improve their communication and
really streamline their methods of just connectivity and, uh, productivity. Um, they're
also using them to preserve client records, which is a problem they've been really
struggling with for years. Um, the big problem that I discovered while I was working in
country was that, that the organizations are relying, the people on the ground, you know, in
the remote districts are relying on outdated hardware and software. I, I mean, woefully
outdated hardware and software. Uh, for example, I've been working with a community-based
organization, the Hoyma Nursery School, Nursery School Development Association, or HNSDA,
uh, extensively for the past two months or so. And HNSDA relies on its computers to create
teaching materials and keep both its financial and client records for hundreds of nursery
school teachers in western Uganda. Uh, that's two of them actually. And, um, when I first
started with HNSDA, only one of their three office machines was up and running. And what was
it running, you might ask? Uh, Windows 95 on a Pentium II with 48 megs of memory, a
completely shot hard drive, and no CD-ROM. And this was the best that they could get out to
them. I'm, I'm not kidding, this was the best. Uh, another example is HADFA, the Hoyma
District Farmers Association. Now, HADFA uses its computers to create databases of
clients, very remote clients. These people have no other means of connectivity except for
the sort of general addresses that are used. Um, I got a little click happy there, sorry.
Uh, and when I went to work with them, all four of their donated office computers were
completely shot. All four of them, completely shot by, does anyone remember the hurry virus?
I, I think McAfee 98 successfully took care of it for most of us? Two days. What happens is
that because so few Ugandans own computers, they take flash drives and floppy disks and can
keep all of their own records, all of their correspondence, all of their email logs,
everything. And they just carry them around with them in pockets on chain drives. And then
they go anywhere that they know there's a printer and plug it in. And so viruses are passed
around like crazy because they don't know how viruses are transmitted. Um, and because there
are so few IT professionals available in Uganda, these NGOs and CBOs suffer. This is not
to say that there are no IT professionals in Uganda, it's just that they're even more
expensive than they are here. And the more I worked with these organizations, I mean,
they're dedicated, incredible people who are doing good work, the more I realized that they
needed a durable, sustainable solution, uh, to their IT problems. And this is how the
Uganda Computer Initiative was born. The primary objective of UCI is to provide an open
source solution to the technological challenges NGOs and their subsidiary CBOs face on a
daily basis. We want to also simultaneously provide training and resource materials to
these staffers. We are talking about the Ugandans themselves so that they can become
self-reliant so they no longer have to rely on these IT professionals who are overcharging
them. You know, the cost just for transport from the major city of Kampala is ridiculous.
They cannot afford this. And furthermore, to empower all of the counterparts so that they can
network together and everyone can support each other in sort of a nationwide CBO and NGO
network. Now, UCI has five primary goals. First, to develop and deliver the stable and
workable open source option package for NGOs and CBOs, including an alternative and
continually customized Linux distro to replace whichever Windows system they are currently
using. Because these computers are donated and they are preloaded before they come to them,
they all have Windows in one form or another. Ugandans do not use Windows because their
corporate, you know, head honchos tell them they have to. This is not about market share.
Ugandans just don't have a choice. When the NGOs and CBOs receive these in bulk, in-kind
donations, they don't have the resources or the IT staff available to fix them, change them,
or provide a stable solution. Our next goal is to provide comprehensive training and support.
I mentioned this earlier. This is the training curricula package where we will bring them
into our classrooms and train them on a pro bono basis. The next is to provide donated
computer and networking hardware to these organizations on a proven need basis, as
determined by an application and approval process to be administered by the Hacker
Foundation, Hackers for Humanity, and UCI. Also to develop and follow a monitoring and
self-evaluation program to create quantifiable long-term and short-term goals. So that the
Hacker Foundation and its subsidiaries, the donors, anyone who chooses to donate to this
project, will know exactly what we are doing, what our goals are, and how we plan to achieve
them, if we achieve them and if we are being successful. And finally, to implement a long-term
sustainability program in which Ugandan nationals will train along UCI staffers to one day replace
them, being me, and become the directors of the organization. This is, if at any point, I
decide to come back to a country where I can still get a cheeseburger. And I have to admit
there really is a sixth goal, and that's to promote hacker ideals and open-source evangelism in
Uganda and East Africa. There is no counterculture in Uganda. There is no culture of closed
source or proprietary source activism. You would be amazed by how open to the idea of free
software, an NGO or a CBO, will be, even a regular user. The idea of not having to pay for
a Linux distro is revolutionary. The savings to international aid organizations and to
common individual users across the country who have connectivity will be immense. I'm
also proud to announce another project tied in with UCI and Hackers for Humanity, which
is Laptops for East Africa. This is not, of course, to be confused with the great program
being run by the good folks over at computersforafrica.org. They are doing good work. What we're
looking to do is target specifically Uganda and then Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi and Rwanda.
The deal is this. We need newer equipment. And just walking around this con for the past
three days, I see a lot of really nice laptops, and I got to tell you, I want them and I want
to give them to organizations who can use them. Actually, are we going to be doing Q&A
afterwards? We'll be doing Q&A afterwards. Laptops come with built-in UPS systems. When
the power goes out, instead of having to fire up a diesel generator, a laptop just keeps
running long enough to do what you need to do. They're small. They're portable. We can
transport them easily. It is easy to ship a number of laptops instead of one or two
desktops. And so what you do is you sign up with us. We give you a sticker to put on your
laptop. When you're ready to upgrade to that shiny new box that you've been saving up for
for the past few years, you donate the computer to us for a tax write-off, and we send it
where it needs to go and where it will be used. Now, again, I'd like to thank you for your
time and your patience. I'm really not very good at this, but remember, please, geeks do
come in all colors. And I'd really like to see some of my Ugandan friends here in a couple
of years. Thank you.
And please, definitely get some of those stickers, because I know I'm getting one. I would
love to see one of those Ugandans with, you know, talk nerdy to me and root me, and I would
love to see that. So send me some pictures, please. My name is Louis Sorows. I wasn't
announced in the beginning because I was taking care of something personal. But anyway, I'm
the systems administrator for the Chicago Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club. And the Chicago,
it's exactly what the name suggests. Kids come there, and they hang out with their friends,
they play sports, and they just chill out after school. But we wanted something more for
them. And in 2004, in March 2004, we set up for them a computer lab. And next slide,
please. And that computer lab consisted of these things. Five Dell computers, three
Emacs, a Clark Connect router, and some wireless access points and bridges. We were able to
do all this with a small donation of about $10,000 from a large financial institution. We
also have some office equipment as well for them, for the general staff, of five standalone
PCs, a Linux terminal server project, which is really cool if any of you have ever worked
with that. And Jim already spoke something about that. And another router. And we also
built for them a Athlon Debian file server and mail server. But I don't think that's too
safe. But when you're a non-profit, you do with what you got. Next slide, please. This is
what our lab looks like when we were first building it. It's pretty sparse, but it works
for what the kids need. Basically, IM, chat with their friends, that's about it. You know,
blogs every once in a while. They don't do much because they don't know much what's out
there with what they got. Next slide. Some of them having fun, opening day. Next. Next.
And this is our current state of funding. That $10,000 that we got from that financial
institution, it's all gone. The various hardware donations that we get from the community,
pretty much useless because they're Lexmark's printers that they get for free anyway when
they buy that other computer. Then they realize it's crap and then they give it to us. And
Packard Bell, they are still out there. I cannot believe it. And then the other one, we do
get some private financial funding. These are some of the people who fund. This woman is
the program director for the club. Next one. And that's me. And obviously you can tell we
need a lot of help if we're duct taping switches to the wall. So you know we need some help.
Next. So how are we going to use this really cool hardware that we can probably get from the
Hacker Foundation? Some of the things that we want to do, I mean because these guys, they're
getting together with some really big corporations and giving you that hardware that they're
not going to be using anyway. So you guys can have some fun with it. We want to build a
local database. What does that mean? There are so many community businesses that support
the club in many different ways. We want the kids to be able, once it's all set up, to go to
these different community businesses, get some interesting stories from them, get some
contact information, photos, and create a nice database that's online for the parents to go
research. Kind of like a good guy's yellow books where they say, hey, these people donate to
the club. I'm going to go support them first. That way, hey, some of that money will then
come back to the club. All is good. Maintaining the website. Some of these kids are pretty
good. They want to learn about website building, but right now our current webpage is a
static ask website that was donated to us for free from an alum. It's nice and all, but it's
not what we want. We want something that's live, maintainable, easy for them to use. We have
over 70 years of historical newsletters that these people have created on mimeographed paper
that are still in hard copy. We finally started digitizing some of them, but we want to be
able to create a database of them in PDF with OCR. Very nice. And I'll tell you why that's
important in a second. And also we want to create a photo archive. We have 70 years of photos
as well. The reason is this, because next year we have the 75th anniversary coming up.
We have people coming from all over the country. Some of these people are 80 years old, 90
years old, and they want to be able to see all the things that they remember in the past,
but everybody believes that they're lying about. So they want to be able to come in, see all
the photos up on a big LCD, and say, hey, that's me. Then they can take a little card,
write down that number, go over to another computer, and print it out. So that way they've
got a copy for themselves. And then what about for their little grandkid that they told,
remember I scored that goal during that game and you didn't believe me? Here, check this
out. They type in their name in the PDF archive and up comes every single PDF that they were
in. Boom. There you go. Print it out and go eat it, bitch. All right, anyway. Next, we've
got a digital jukebox of legal MP3s and Burns CD backups. There's this really cool software
called Tunes that, because I don't know if any of you have kids. Yeah, they all agree on the
same music all at the same time, definitely. But what this is, Tunes is a democratically
designed email, excuse me, email, MP3 server where they log on to the website for it as
long as they've got an account and they get to vote which song they want to hear. And
whichever song has the highest amount of votes, that's the one that gets played. So it's very,
very cool. That's what I want. Computer repair and donation. These kids, I mean, they see
something shiny and they're like, ooh, I want to touch. And they want to learn how to build
computers, they want to repair them. We want more computers that are either broken that
we can then, or people that send them in, repair them and give them back, or even better,
have donations of those dead computers, the kids can repair them. And one project we want
is that every sixth computer they build, they get to keep that seventh one. And then after
a while, you're going to be like, well, these kids are going to be stacking up with computers.
Are they going to have a cluster and stuff? Yeah, that's one option if they want to do
that. But the cool thing is, though, they get to then choose if they want to, who they
actually donate that computer to, which is even more fun, I think, because then they get
to see and actually affect somebody else's life. Next. These sound like some good ideas
you guys might use also in your community? Okay, cool. Linux terminal server project.
You saw that lab, okay? It was pretty sparse. It was about eight total computers in there
plus the router. Well, we've got it right now where if you connect two Playstations in the
room next to us, it blows out half the computers. Not too much fun. So what we want to do is
set up a terminal server project where we can have lightweight, like Jim spoke about,
lightweight laptops which have their own power supply, so on and so forth, and be able to
run at least 20, 25 computers for all these kids to then run those previous projects you
saw. Also the web server to host all our online projects. Events registration. You guys probably
have some kids, okay? You can't always make your time to go out and sign them up for all
these different things. Go online, register them, and you're done. Timesheets. Timesheets
for the staff so that way they can just sign in and the administration doesn't have to do
all this stuff by hand. It's really sad. Next, please. Wi-Fi for the park. We've got a really
nice park out there and we want to be able to broadcast Wi-Fi out there and just for the
people to come in and use, have the laptops, have a good time. If we can, which would be
really great, is to be able to track the scores online, live. Once again, you guys can't
always get to your kids' games. You can at least check the scores online and RSS feed would
be great. But anyway, you can check the scores online and then say, hey, when the kid comes
home, I saw your game, you had a great time, I saw what you scored, that's excellent, and
talk about it. Wireless video cams to watch the games online. Secured and password protected
so that only the parents, well, and you guys, can watch the kids play, alright? Same thing.
You want to be able to see your kids play, score that one home run. And finally, be able
to provide the classes that the community and these kids have been looking for. I repair
computers all day. Generally, all spam, viruses, pop-up blockers, all that stuff. And it's
the same thing every time, asking the exact same questions every single time, and I feel
like I should just have a tape recorder of myself right there and just play it. So I
want to be able to provide those classes for them so they can actually learn. And on
those eight computers, it's not going to happen, but with what we want to do and with the help
of the Hacker Foundation, I think it's pretty possible. Next slide. And finally, just, you
know, thanks to the Hacker Foundation because hopefully together we can show the community
and these kids that there's a lot more to tech and computers than just IMs and blogs.
And that's my speech. Thanks guys. So by now you can see that the Hacker Foundation is
an official 501C non-profit with a definite presence here at DEF CON. So that brings up
the next question. What does that mean for you guys? How can the Hacker Foundation help
your projects? What can the Hacker Foundation do for the entire hacker community? Basically,
as an umbrella non-profit, we can provide you with three things. Funding, advocacy,
and non-profit status. Funding is often the largest obstacle for a non-profit initiative.
In order to receive adequate funding, some projects will simply work under another organization.
For instance, a great plan would become just another university project or government project,
receiving nearly all of its funding from just one source. While that might seem like an
okay idea, the project loses autonomy. Even though universities have great intentions,
they're at the mercy of the school's budget, policy, and agenda. If a project chooses to
work with the Hacker Foundation, funding can come from a wide variety of sources. And we
can work with you to develop those. The Hacker Foundation will work to keep projects connected
to organizations that provide funding. And also, having IRS 501C tax exempt status means
that your project can receive donations just like any other. The next issue is advocacy.
The Hacker Foundation is all about security conscious individuals working together for
positive action. And I'm sure we're all tired of stereotypes and misrepresentation, and
this is our chance to fight that. Without a doubt, this will also provide more public
awareness, positive exposure for the hacker community as a whole. Finally, as I mentioned
before, the Hacker Foundation can provide 501C status for a project. The process to
achieve this status typically takes at least two years and an incredible amount of paperwork.
It's definitely a headache, and hackers aren't really good at paperwork. By eliminating the
headache, dealing with the IRS, and incorporation, hopefully more people will be encouraged to
turn their altruistic ideas into a reality. The bottom line is, the Hacker Foundation
is ready. It is ready to receive your applications. It's ready to hear your ideas. We provide
the networking for funding, 501C non-profit status, and we make it easy enough as just
submitting an application to us. So hopefully you've learned a little bit more about what
the Foundation is about, what we've been doing, if you haven't left. It's a long, hard
road to get over what I call the hacker hump, which is, oh, you're a hacker? Oh, God, you're
obviously a criminal. And that's not entirely undeserved, because you don't see a lot of
things that are like, hackers fly to, you know, bang after, or bam, after an earthquake
and do great works. You don't see that stuff a lot. So that's one of the things we're also
trying to take care of, and Fraser hit on that. So, I'm going to open it up for questions.
Yes, sir?
That's actually a really good question.
Yeah, yeah, let me touch it. So the main issue is, you're out in the bush somewhere, where
do you get the juice from? It's not as bad as you think, actually.
Well, there are a number of ways that we really tackle the power situation.
Our biggest problem was not in the cities. It was not in the even sort of developed rural
districts. It was in the internally displaced people's camps. In the IDP camps, there would
be about one government power line into the entire camp, and chances were pretty good
that it didn't have juice in it. And when it did, it would spike to about 350 and set
everything on fire. Yeah. I lost too many fridges that way.
What we do is, as you mentioned, the battery gang solution. The battery gang solution is
an incredibly effective way. You'll see this in a lot of, I guess, infomercials. It'll
be a group of car batteries ganged together and then inverted. I'm not really a tech geek,
but I know we do use the battery gang. We also have a lot of solar cells that have been
donated, but it's a very... solar technology is difficult. We are on the equator. We have
a lot of sunlight, but we also have... Uganda has two seasons, rainy and sunny. You can
guess which season is less effective for power from solar. Also, the weather gets pretty
volatile, and we have had solar racks, panels, just demolished overnight while we've been
sleeping, no matter how well we try to protect them. Right now, we are using primarily diesel
backup generators that we're lugging around. Petrol's expensive, but when you need it,
you need it. Especially when you've got IMC volunteers using their laptops, they really
need that connectivity, so we'll just fire up a diesel. You want to donate the fuel cells?
We want to use them. Yeah, we're not that well-funded yet. Yeah, that's one of the main
issues that you see is that, you know, the next... everyone's like, oh, China's the next
big market. Well, it is, but they're already really far ahead of the curve. Let's not worry
about the next market. Let's worry the market about the next one, the next next market.
And that's one of the reasons that you see a lot of talk about Africa in the NGO world,
but we don't want to focus too much on just Jim's project, as awesome as it is, because
that's not what the Hacker Foundation just does. If you've got something else in mind,
say mine detection equipment, our nice robotics challenge, and for a lot of reasons, we're
interested in that kind of stuff, too. Yes, you. No, no, it's actually the guy behind
you. Nick? He has the funding question about how you, like, manage the money. Can you repeat
the question real quickly? I still can't hear you. Could you stand up? Sorry, got a cold.
My understanding is that, as an individual, I can't call up the Hacker Foundation and
say, okay, I want to give organization to, say, the Apache organization, and then give
you money and take a tax deduction, and then you give it to the Apache organization or
to an individual. I have to give money to you, and then you, in theory, in a separate
process, give it to another organization. Have you figured out how that works with the
IRS tax deductions? What happens with organization open source projects, they go through an application
process. It's a more interactive process than a bureaucratic process. What we're doing is
determining and making sure that what the goals and aims of each project are, are charitable
and fall under our section of the Internal Revenue Code. Once that happens, it's not a
question of you're donating money and earmarking funds. You, as an organization, go out there,
directly solicit funds. You're working with the Hacker Foundation. The Hacker Foundation
cashes the checks and gives the money straight back to you. That's all we do. And, actually,
if I can add to that, the other thing you guys do is also the hardware as well, correct?
Right. And that's the other thing, is that the Hacker Foundation... I was just referring
to projects that apply that are looking for ways to be sort of non-profit in a box. I
hope there's nobody from the IRS here because... And in cases like mine, I'm actually hoping
for the hardware versus getting money because I'd love to see the money guys, you know,
give that out to the athletics department and have kids play basketball with the server.
I'd love to see it. I mean, it could be fun, but I don't think so. There's two separate
issues going on here. I think the issue that you were addressing is that if a group applies
to the Hacker Foundation, will it be sort of a United Way thing? No. It's a much more
streamlined, much more effective than that. But what the Hacker Foundation does as an
organization on itself is go out there and actively raise funds for all of its projects.
So we can make our own decisions about giving you money. And we'd love to do that. I mean,
if everybody at DEF CON gave us 60 bucks or 80 bucks, we could, A, throw a really sweet
gas party. And this might seem familiar. You're at that party. Or we could do a lot
of really great projects. You, sir, in the shiny lame. At this time, we have three, we
call these projects. We should have done a slide about this. If you think about the umbrella
like this, the Hacker Foundation sits at the top and does the money, and then we have projects
underneath it. Uganda, and in this case, the Chicago project. We also have another internal
project, which is capacity building. You know, we need infrastructure and money, because
that's how you make more money. And then we have, and then we're actively seeking more
projects. So is that what your question was, Mike? Yeah, I'm familiar. Oh, are we out talking
to other nerds about non-profit-y stuff? Yes. Yeah, we throw around words like capacity
and IDP and, you know, UNHCR and all that kind of stuff all the time, and we kind of
don't say it here, but we definitely, you know, we're definitely in on that world, or
we're getting more in on that world. Most of us are amateur non-profit workers. But
we're working up to pro. Yes, you. My personal biggest motivation behind the Hacker Foundation?
Um, I think I talked about this a little earlier in someone else's speech. There's, uh, two
ways you can solve really bad problems, like poverty, terrorism, and war. You can, uh, buy
them out, buy them in, or you can fight them. If we go to Africa, and I mean hackers go to
Africa, or hackers go to Chicago, and we're like, hey, we're really cool people, we want
to help you, and we raise them in our mental sphere, and get them trained in our mental
sphere, and say open source is a good thing, and they're used to using open source. When
Microsoft goes to visit in ten years, who's got more feet on the ground? That's the kind
of stuff, I mean, you want to see more hackers? Go where there aren't a lot already, and make
them. It's not that hard. Personally, I'm in it for the money. He's in it for the money.
Uh, but I can't speak to every, I, I've actually studiously avoided that. We don't try and
tell you why you should help other people. Everyone has those reasons. And, uh, yeah, we're
done. Let me take one more, because we're that good. Oh, he's giving me the, lookit, two
minutes. Yes. Yes, this is what we want to hear. Yes, I do, we are interested in talking to
you afterward about a political project, sir. Yeah. Any more questions? Yes.
Well, you can get a shirt for $20 and it's tax deductible. No, we have one right here. And I
also have an issue of frack. Now this I haven't figured out how to give away yet. How about
the biggest donation? It's an option, I mean, who's willing to buy this issue of frack and
write it off? 20 bucks? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can do better than 20 bucks. Oh, I have a bid
back there. Yes, sir. Huh? 30. Okay, a little bit more money. Oh, somebody's checking their
wallet. Excellent. I like ambition like that. And by the way, this is kind of our money
making strategy. I call it beg or torture. Or make Nick Farr eat a really, really big goddamn
hamburger. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. I'm also having some formal dinners with some rich people
tonight. That'll help too, hopefully. Jesse, you just got one more question, right? Yeah, one
more question? Well, actually, the idea is that we don't give them to individuals directly.
They'll be used in the offices of the NGOs and CBOs themselves. I keep using the acronym,
it's non-governmental organizations. They're international aid organizations. And the idea is
we give them to the organizations because they can then use that hardware to affect the most
people, or as many people as possible, more than a single individual could. Thank you.