Hacker/fed seeks hackspaces to give DARPA grants to

Pemdasi sez, "Peiter Zatko, aka mudge, a former member of both the Cult of the Dead Cow and l0pht now works for DARPA and wants to give out short term DARPA contracts to places like hackerspaces to find solutions to cybersecurity concerns. Maybe some lucky hackerspace will get some money to make drone swarms."

He spoke of creating "hacker incubators" and made it clear that the DoD would not request commercial rights to any innovations discovered.

Essentially, Zatko wants to sponsor researchers, rather than providing them with rewards if they do well. This is much more in thinking with typical hacker aspirations--getting somebody to pay the bills while they do the things they love. And, in any case, at the end of the process the hacker or team concerned is free to seek all the rewards they can get for the work.

Zatko merely wants to exploit the huge brain power and creativity of the hacker community, and as a former member, he knows exactly what makes it tick. Although his scheme will not go into operation for a few months yet, the signs are that it might produce results that improve security for all of us.

Government Employs Hackers in Brave New Scheme (Thanks, Pemdasi, via Submitterator!)

• [Lobster]

  Fascinating and all, but do you think we could shoehorn the word “hack” in there a few more times?

• [omnifrog]

  This sounds a lot like an SBIR type arrangement. SBIRs are government contracts for research conducted by small businesses. Generally the small business tries a creative approach to solve a problem and the business owns the rights to their solution.

• [Slant]

  He “…made it clear that the DoD would not request commercial rights to any innovations discovered”. HAHAHA! Hey all ye boneheads that believe this: go on believing it because this statement is completely true. DARPA won’t have any need to “REQUEST” IP rights, because the contract will stipulate that the researcher/so-called-hacker ASSIGNS the rights directly to DoD! Either the jerk that stated this knows exactly what he/she is slyly saying, or he/she has no experience whatsoever with DoD contracts.

  • [scolbath]

    DARPA won’t have any need to “REQUEST” IP rights, because the contract will stipulate that the researcher/so-called-hacker ASSIGNS the rights directly to DoD!

    Not sure how much experience YOU have with DoD contracts, but you need to look more closely at the FAR/DFAR. On 100% of the DARPA contracts I’ve worked on, and 100% of the OTHER DoD contracts I’ve worked on, the government gets a paid-up license to your technology, but they DO NOT OWN IT. This means they can use the system for whatever purpose the government needs, and in some cases give it to another company to maintain, but they conclusively CAN NOT give it to another company to benefit from commercially.

• [Pantograph]

  Two words: “Real Genius”

• [enkiv2]

  There are plenty of examples of DoD-funded projects that have never made their way into military use, and some of them are even useful. One of the upsides of having a political situation wherein both sides would prefer to cut education in favor of an already ridiculous defense budget is that a lot of that budget gets to go into either pie-in-the-sky or make-work type projects. As a side effect, it’s much easier to get the DoD to fund fairly ridiculous and non-military projects than it is to get any other agency to fund things that might actually be useful to them. That the US government blows money on mismanaged and frankly stupid projects on a regular basis is well-documented: take a look at the declassified and leaked MK-ULTRA documents for the ur-example.

  I have plenty of confidence that DARPA is willing to throw money at hackerspaces. I have very little confidence that they will collect on their investments, any moreso than Xerox did on the investments made at PARC. But, what else is one to do, with such a big white-budget pot and comparatively little to spend it on accountably that’s worthwhile?

• [Bill Albertson]

  Funding by DARPA has limitations- such as if you express a personal disapproval over the DoD bombing folks, you might find your funding slashed overnight… like with the OpenBSD hackathons.

• [Cowicide]

  Maybe some lucky hackerspace will get some money to make drone swarms

  Right, we need to make drones more efficient at vaporizing smaller humans like children so when we murder civilians it’s easier to call the bodies enemy combatants.

  I’ve been approached by the military and had a brush with homeland security for contracts. It would have been very lucrative to join the corrupt military-industrial complex that sucks so much money away from vital needs like health care in this country. But, I walked away from them because I’m not a bum who wants to go the sl-easy route. I’ll admit it’s a hard road, but I look myself in the mirror just fine.

  Nice Raytheon logo on that podium.

• [Cowicide]

  Why we fight

  • [Anonymous]

    yea yea I had trouble reading your response cuz I’m using the INTERNET which DARPA helped design and implement. blanket statements are blanket statements, I guess you don’t pay taxes either.

    • [Cowicide]

      yea yea I had trouble reading your response cuz I’m using the INTERNET which DARPA helped design and implement.

      yea yea I had trouble reading your response cuz I’m using the ELECTRICITY which TESLA helped design and implement.

      ya have any other red herrings, meatball?

      [by the way, not to embarrasses you or anything but it was ARPA with MIT in tow... not DARPA] derp… derp… derpa…

      blanket statements are blanket statements

      The only problem is I didn’t make blanket statements. Specific statements were specific.

      I guess you don’t pay taxes either.

      oh, look! meatball did have another red herring shoved down his drawers! good job with the follow-up red herring. All the people who can’t debate themselves out of a wet paper bag gotta have at least two of ‘em.

      Now maybe you can go back here and learn something, meatball.