Homeland Security Advisory Council Has Hacker Member

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» 07 June 2009

On Friday, Jeff Moss and fifteen other people were sworn in to be part of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HASC). However, Moss isn't the type of person you'd expect to be part of the HASC. He isn't a "suit" or a White House insider. He's not even a member of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, or the Carnegie Mellon Computer Emergency Response Team (even though he did once work at Ernst & Young in the information security system security division).

What makes Moss's inclusion with the HASC—the group who will give timely advice and recommendations to Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security—notable is the fact that he's one of "them". He is actually a true-blue, bona fide hacker, and the fact that he's the founder of the Black Hat and Defcon computer hacker conferences lends a lot of credence to his hacker credibility.

Moss, a.k.a. "Dark Tangent", seems like a strange choice to be part of a security advisory council tasked to directly combat his own kind—but then again, why not? Who best to know a hacker's next move than a fellow hacker? The fact that he's almost like a celebrity amongst young hackers everywhere who congregate to the Vegas-based Defcon every summer makes him the perfect candidate to swear allegiance to the new cyber-security-conscious administration.

During an interview on Friday, Moss confessed that he was quite surprised by the call from the White House that invited him to join the group. He acknowledges the federal government's "newfound emphasis" on cyber security matters and the fact that they're attempting to diversify their ranks in order to gain different points of view.

When questioned if there was anything he would like to campaign for during his tenure in the HASC, Moss replied that he's waiting for more announcements first in order to clarify his role in the group. He informs that their last meeting emphasized the need to protect the Southwest border. According to him, with the Safe Flight and Fastpass technology in the government's hands, it's clear that "everything they (the members of the administration) are doing has some kind of technology component."

One can only wonder what sort of conversations the 39-year-old Defcon founder will have once he mingles with the likes of ex-FBI director Louis Freech, former CIA members Bill Webster, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, the president of the Navajo Nation, the governors of Georgia and Maryland, a New York police commissioner, and a Los Angeles County sheriff.

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