defcon II held in las vegas, nevada, on july 22-24, at the sahara hotel was organised by law school student Jeff Moss (who also calls himself Dark Tangent). The well-run event, brought together over 300 hackers, phreaks, security specialists, law enforcement personnel and journalists. the conference featured speakers on a wide variety of topics, as well as practical demonstrations of technology. the keynote speech was given by phil zimmerman, the author of PGP. zimmerman discussed the political problems surrounding encryption technology, with an emphasis on his own expertise. former arizona state prosecutor gail thackeray spoke on the need for law enforcement to access new communication systems. the mostly polite audience was skeptical, questioning her on the privacy implications of the us governments EES (Clipper) standard and the FBI developed digital telephony bill, both of which she supports. sara gordon led a panel discussion on privacy and anonymity on the internet, with phil zimmerman talking on how to use PGP correctly. many users, he said, are lulled into a false sense of security, and fail to read the program documentation. typing PGP pass phrases on-line or on multi-user networks can compromise PGP's security. "The presence" discussed how easy it is to compromise privacy on the internet via packet sniffers. panellist mark aldrich from general research corporation talked on the need for individuals to pay attention to the possible intrusion by government, via methods like the Clipper chip. he called for activism on the part of the hacking community, to lean away from the activities such as writing the most "Politically Incorrect Virus", and use their talents to affect positive change in Cyberspace. a discussion of european hacking took place at one late night session, including brief talks by a member of the german based CCC. security expert padgett peterson of martin marietta gave an informative and entertaining talk on how the design implementation of internet email makes it impossible to be "secure". winn schwartau gave a rousing speech on terrorism on the information superhighway, and promoted his book "Information Warfare -- Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway". one of the more unusual activities of the conference was the "spot the fed" contest. this was an on-going event through the weekend, with T-shirts awarded to both the spotter (saying "i spotted the fed") and the spottee (I am the Fed). several shirts were given out, with members of the intelligence community taking part in the good-natured fun. each night after the last speaker there was a showing of assorted videos, including several repeated showings of Computer Warriors, an animated science fiction feature about a war against viruses inside a computer. Virus CDs were offered for sale, as well as T-shirts and several underground magazines and newsletters. for various reasons, several planned speakers did not give their presenations. internet hacker legend grok also failed to speak for unknown reasons. mark ludwig, quthor of "the little black book of computer viruses 1 and 2" did not speak at his scheduled time, or at his rescheduled time. he did, however, speak on the final day on "How to Laugh when the Feds Knock on Your Door", an interesting discussion on how to keep money in foreign countries and maintain anonymity. first place in ludwig's virus creation awards contest was awarded not to a virus program or programmer, but to bob bales of the NCSA. according to ludwig, there was low turn-out for his contest, with only one actual virus qualifying for an award. the Pro-AL virus, by phalcon/skism member stormbringer won second place in the contest, and an imaginary non-existent virus for modifying income tax returns took third place. Theora