Hack the Law

My presentation on why more hackers should go to law school, delivered at HOPE Number Nine on Sunday, July 15, 2012. Slides and blog post at http://blog.ussjoin.com/2012/07/hack-the-law.html .

Abstract:

Recent bills such as ACTA, COICA, and SOPA in legislatures worldwide demonstrate that there exists a fundamental disconnect between hackers and politicians. Worse, the people charged with dealing with law on the ground, the lawyers, rarely have any significant technical background obtained within the last few decades. This must change. It’s all well and good to write your congressperson or donate to the EFF, but it’s not enough; we need hackers to go to law school. Lawyers - whether they work as attorneys, or bring their knowledge of the law back to other fields - are uniquely situated to effect direct change on politics, social issues, and the law on the ground (where they arrest poor hackers) and, unlike many fields, it’s not enough to be self-taught. This presentation will focus on the utility of the hacking ethos within the law, as well as the “law school experience,” technical bits about actually getting in, and how to keep yourself from going nuts while spending three years surrounded by those who can’t tell their megabytes from their overbites (and are terrified by Wireshark, let alone the more subtle tools in existence). Expect stories, humorous anecdotes, and terrifying lapses in judgment.

Transcript

1. HACK THE LAW A rational and reasoned approach to completely losing your mind
2. BRENDAN O'CONNOR • CTO/DSS, Malice Afterthought, Inc • Rising 2L at the University of Wisconsin School of Law - IANAL,Y • I've done DARPA stuff (CFT and otherwise), security research, and even security, coding, and Net Warfare teaching (want to hire me? I'm always looking, so ping me!) • BTW, No One Authorized Me To Say ANYTHING! I speak for nobody.
3. HONESTLY, THEY DON'T GET IT!
4. *FACEPALM*
5. SERIOUSLY. I MEAN, COME ON.
6. WOW, VACCINES CAUSE SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME?
7. NOT JUST THE NINE ANGRY D00DS
8. THIS IS NOT OUR FAULT... • "They don't understand us!" • "They're scared of black t-shirts!" • "I'm too leet to talk to them." • "You can't fight The Man, man..." • "If God wanted us to talk to Congress, they would have given them un- firewalled computers." • ...no. We fail, as a community. It's not our fault, but it *is* our responsibility to fix.
9. WHAT DO LAWYERS DO?
10. CRIMINAL LAW
11. CIVIL LAW
12. LEGISLATIVE WORK
13. POLICY WORK
14. POLITICS
15. 204/535 OF CONGRESS ARE LAWYERS
16. GETTING IN TO LAW SCHOOL
17. THE LSAT
18. GPA: YET ANOTHER TLA
19. SOUL-KILLING CALCULATOR DEMO
20. ASIDE: WORST^H BEST INTERVIEW EVER
21. YOU GOT IN. NOW WHAT?
22. A NOTE ABOUT COST
23. READING - NOT JUST MAN PAGES
24. HIGH-STAKES "SECURE" TESTING
25. LAWYERS AND ALCOHOL
26. YOU WILL BE ODD
27. TYPICAL LAW STUDENT
28. WHAT THEY THINK WE ARE
29. SMALL DICTATORS
30. I'M NOT HELPING, REALLY
31. KEEP YOURSELF SANE
32. TIME TO BUY A SUIT
33. HACK THE LAW The law does have a hacker ethos. brendan@maliceafterthought.com