About

About the Black Rock City Hacker Camp 2008.

With all the controversy over the 2007 burn, the early burn, anti-burn theme, the suicide, and misfires. 2008 will be an interesting year. This will be the first year for The BRCHC. The theme this year “The American Dream” inspired my new focus on this camp. The question “What happened to America, and what can we do to fix it?”, my answer, lets start simple, fix our rigged voting system, and get some better people in power. One of my biggest goals this year is to find someone to bring out our current electronic voting machines so we can show the country how easily manipulated they really are. Anyone with any connections/idea who would like to help, please create an account, and contact me.

Who, What, Why the BRCHC?

Lets start with, who started this? I go by kcaHack (kuh-Hack, kinda like a cough). I’m a tech guy, born to a graphic designer and an Intel Technician (both reformed hippies). I live, and was born in the heart of the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara/San Jose). My whole life always I’ve loved playing with technology. Burning Man always interested me. My first burn (2005), I came last minute, under prepared, with almost no idea what BM really was. No bike, no shelter, and only knowing 2 people on the entire playa. I ended up learning a lot, and meeting a lot of interesting people.

Near the end of the festival, i became good friends with the bike god. He gifted me a bike (for anyone who has never been, you need a bike!). Wireless network technology(WiFi) has always been something i followed very closely. I decided to strap my laptop to a bike i was given and use the cantenna i made to see what I could find. To my surprise I found over 20 wireless networks.

The next year (2006) I decided to step it up a notch and take out a real directional antenna. My original plan was to strap my two laptops to two bikes and do a war ride of the whole playa. Unfortunately the connector for my Orinoco card broke, and one of my laptops had a few problems that I didn’t feel like fixing (this was a vacation after all, i wasn’t really into working). I did manage to get in a little war ride and was amazed. Within the 6 blocks I rode I found 24 wifi networks. I really wanted to hook up my nice directional antenna and do a sniff of the area. So I went on the hunt for a soldering iron in order to solder the connector directly onto my card. Eventually I found someone and we soldered the connector on. The only problem was doing this made the card more fragile. Fortunately for me, my neighbors had built a 12 foot tower right behind my camp. After mentioning to a few of them what i was thinking of doing, they were all on board. I took my laptop and antenna to the top of the tower. First I tried to connect to the main wifi transmitter that was broadcasting the free wifi. Unfortunately there was so much interference I couldn’t hold a stable connection. I decided to run AiroPeek for an hour, to see what I could find. The results amazed me. In that hour I detected 340 MAC addresses, 2157 IP addresses, someone on EVERY wireless channel (1-11) and captured over 150mb of data. After sifting threw the data I found I had captured four full email logins (USER and PASS), one myspace username & password, countless emails and websites, and eight partial usernames or passwords.

The amount of technology on the playa is amazing. I only wish I had more like minded people to help me create art with it. That’s why I’m starting this camp. The idea is that if we all pool our resources we should be able to have some good fun.

    Anyone interested in this camp might want to read
    Analysis of open source principles in diverse collaborative communities By Jill Coffin

    Here’s a small excerpt
    “Why analyze Black Rock City and Burning Man through the framework of the free and open source software movements? Black Rock City is a society hack. In the spirit of the hacker ethic entry in the Jargon File, a glossary of hacker lingo dating back to 1975, Burning Man is exploratory “system-hacking” (Jargon File). As such, it exemplifies some traits of successful free software and open source movements, but fails to exemplify others. As mentioned above, using this framework to analyze Black Rock City and Burning Man may not tell the whole story of this community; regardless, lessons for collaborative community-building may emerge.”

    Also worth reading


    Camp Activities:
    I’m open to all suggestions

    • War-Biking


    Camp Projects

    • I’m open to all suggestions
    • Large Wireless Art Car
      (a bus, van or other large vehicle we can all ride on… with a mobile wifi station)
    • WiFi Black-ops golf cart(s).. One would work but the more the merrier.
      (used for war driving and wifi policy enforcement?)
    • The Hacker Bar (some kind of bar where people can stop by and drink)

    Camp Needs:

    • A DJ or two?
    • PRIVATE Port-A-Potties
    • Hackers
    • War Bikes (laptop strap to a bike, with a gps)
    • Car or bus shell for the Large Art Car
    • Carpenters
    • Mechanics
    • Techs
    • Welders
    • Several Generator
    • Shade Structure
    • The Bar
    • Wireless Antennas
    • An RV or two
    • Solar Panels
    • Golf Cart(s) for small art cars
    • Computers
    • Sound Equipment
    • Artists
    • Anyone into technology