The hacking conference Def Con has always had an adversarial relationship with government workers, or, as they’re commonly referred by the attendees, feds. After the revelations of government spying brought forth by documents leaked by Edward Snowden two years ago, Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, a little-known official who had nothing to do with the NSA, was repeatedly booed and heckled during his talk.
On Friday, another fed took the stage in front of hundreds of hackers, with two security guards sitting on the side of the stage. He opened his speech with a challenge.
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“I challenge you all to make my phone ring during my remarks.”
“I was instructed by my colleagues not to bring my government phone with me, because it might suffer an intrusion. And I said ‘I don’t believe it, let them take their best shot,’” Alejandro Mayorkas, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said on Friday during his keynote speech at Def Con.
“And I challenge you all to make my phone ring during my remarks. If you do, you’ll get a free job at the government,” he added smiling, as he hoisted an old flip phone in front of the audience. “Take a shot.”
There was no booing or heckling. Just laughs. And from then on, he gained the respect of the crowd.
Mayorkas went on to call on the hacker community to work more closely with the government to make the internet a better place. But was soon interrupted by a group of conference volunteers, also known as “goons.”
The goons came to fulfill one of Def Con’s longest tradition. If it’s your first time speaking at Def Con, you have to take a shot of whiskey.
Mayorkas seemed surprised at first. But then he took it in stride, telling told the story of his old landlord, a 94-year-old who was actually called Jack Daniels and had bacon in the morning and booze at night every day,
“Just goes to show you what the key of life is,” he joked, as he was handed a cup.
“It’s very difficult to talk about a trust deficit, and how to bridge that trust deficit, and build trust when I’m a fraud. This is actually water,” he said, asking for a real shot of whiskey, as long as it was small, since he was going to have a meeting with TSA officials after the speech.
He then took a shot to a rousing applause.
“That was my first of the day, by the way,” Mayorkas said, “but it won’t be my last.”
Mayorkas went on to woo the hacker community, asking them to partner with the government and build a “bridge of trust,” creating an “advisory council of hackers” to help the Department of Homeland Security.
When he finished his speech, and answered a series of questions from the crowd, he thanked everyone and, holding the old flip phone, he said, “by the way, it didn’t ring.”
