RSA Tried To Get TrustyCon Booted

from the petty-in-the-extreme dept

Mon, Mar 3rd 2014 8:04pm — Mike Masnick

Last week was the massive RSA conference, with an estimated 30,000 attendees at San Francisco's Moscone Center (the big local conference venue). As we had mentioned, to protest the news that the NSA had paid $10 million to RSA to promote a compromised crypto standard, a bunch of security experts canceled their appearance, with many then going on to set up Trustycon, a much smaller conference on technology and security, to be held right across the street from Moscone at the Metreon movie theater. Trustycon announced that it quickly sold out of the 400 tickets available, but apparently RSA decided to try to get them kicked out of their venue.

A report in the NYTimes notes that RSA officials called the Metreon to claim that Trustycon attendees would be involved in protests and that it shouldn't allow the event to go on:

The organizers of a rival conference, called TrustyCon, which was organized following revelations that RSA had been paid by the N.S.A., said they had spent much of the past weekend persuading executives from the Metreon — another big, downtown center next to the Moscone — not to kick them out of their conference space. The Metreon was set to house the TrustyCon conference on Thursday but Metreon’s management began to grow concerned after they received calls from RSA’s conference organizers.

The RSA organizers warned the Metreon that TrustyCon attendees were arranging a huge boycott on their premises. In the end, the TrustyCon conference was able to proceed Thursday without a hitch.

Talk about extreme pettiness. RSA is the giant in this situation, and despite pretending to address the controversy, it actually did little to deal with the reported claims at all. The least it could have done is been gracious to those who set up TrustyCon. Instead, it apparently chose to be vindictive and petty. It says a lot about the way in which RSA views the world.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: conference, rsa, security, trustycon

20 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:20pm

Wow, at one point RSA were crypto heroes to me. Phil Zimmerman was an inspiration to my studies. They've just burned the last tenuous bit of bridge remaining between us.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- ltlw0lf (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 9:01pm
  
  Re:
  Wow, at one point RSA were crypto heroes to me. Phil Zimmerman was an inspiration to my studies. They've just burned the last tenuous bit of bridge remaining between us.
  
  Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman and Phil Zimmerman are still crypto heroes. None of them currently have anything to do with the company RSA Security LLC (which is owned by EMC.) Zimmerman never had anything to do with RSA, except having RSA use the government goons to shut down PGP as "munitions" when PGP and RSA got into a little licensing spat.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:32pm

They were just trying to move them to the free speech zones that have become so common these days.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:40pm

Isn't that the sort of thing lawsuits are made of?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That One Guy (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:53pm

Petty, but promising
It may have been petty, but if they really didn't see TrustyCon as a threat, they likely would have ignored them, and trusted their own reputation to ensure that people continued to go to the RSA con, rather than the alternative.

The fact that they instead tried to get TrustyCon kicked out, and in such a pathetic manner though, shows that they do consider them to be a threat, and they're trying to get them shut down before they're able to grow.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:57pm
  
  Re: Petty, but promising
  any challenge has to be viewed as a threat to be wiped out.
  For all the talk of a free market and competition they hope that we will not notice these petty attacks.
  Anything that rocks the boat must be eliminated... in a country founded on rocking the boat.
  What have we become.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2014 @ 8:57pm

Mike, get your facts straight. The RSA Conference is not run or hosted by RSA, the Security Division of EMC. It's an entirely separate entity, and what you've reported is skewed so that you would have something to write about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Andy, 3 Mar 2014 @ 9:16pm
  
  Re:
  "Today, RSA Conference and related RSA Conference branded activities are still managed by RSA, with the support of the industry." [rsaconference.com]
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- ltlw0lf (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 9:20pm
  
  Re:
  The RSA Conference is not run or hosted by RSA, the Security Division of EMC. It's an entirely separate entity, and what you've reported is skewed so that you would have something to write about.
  
  Anonymous Coward, get your facts straight before you slam Mike for not getting his facts straight.
  
  RSA Conference *IS* run by EMC Corporation. While it is true that they use a couple contractors to provide support for the conference, they are very much behind the conference.
  
  Please feel free to visit the website, http://www.rsaconference.com.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 12:00am
  
  Re:
  Wow, with zero factual basis to back up your assertions.
  
  Are you Clapper in disguise?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - AricTheRed (profile), 4 Mar 2014 @ 8:05am
    
    Re: Re:
    The Clap is back!
    
    Takes more than a shot to get rid of it now-a-days I hear.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
techflaws (profile), 3 Mar 2014 @ 10:04pm

So protesting surveillance is becoming somehow illegal now? That was fast.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 1:10am

Perhaps they wanted the other conference shutdown because it would have been hostile to NSA agents.
/sarc
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 2:04am

RSA or NSA tried to get them booted out?
is that a typo?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That One Guy (profile), 4 Mar 2014 @ 10:58am
  
  Re: RSA or NSA tried to get them booted out?
  Eh, they're pretty much interchangeable these days, so either would work.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 2:39am

Surprised that RSA had time for that
Since apparently they spend much of their day on their knees servicing the NSA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 2:42am

the way it behaved here, is it any wonder how they were quickly agreeing to help the NSA? and people/companies trusted them with security? yeah, right!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
edpo, 4 Mar 2014 @ 7:26am

RSA
RSA have lost their credibility. No matter *what* they do in the future, they can't be trusted again. We're not talking about a personal disagreement. They're professional security products are manipulated and weakened, and it would not be "best practices" to incorporate their products in a corporate environment. My IT has been advised to look elsewhere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2014 @ 12:03pm

RSA sold out the entire human race, for 10 million dollars. It's a fact.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2014 @ 7:36am

Lies, damn lies and TrustyCon
This is the most ridiculous lie about RSAC...anyone who believes Alex Stamos on this is just buying into his self-generated hype to discredit RSAC and bolster his own image. C'mon people, do you really think a conference that attracts 29K people really gives a rat's butt about a 400-person sideshow in a movie theater? TrustyCon was never a threat to RSAC.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]