Welcome to the Crypto & Privacy Village. Come and learn all about the Village and the humans behind the scenes. We will announce some cool crypto puzzles we have planned and talk about our first electronic badge. Come and learn how you can participate and get involved.
Whitney Merrill is an attorney and graduate student in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign specializing in information security, computer crime, privacy, surveillance, and Internet law. Her current research focuses on Android privacy, digital forensics, and the legal and usability issues surrounding encryption. She is a member of the Illinois Security Lab, and in her spare time Whitney runs the Crypto & Privacy Village. She loves solving puzzles and recently staying up late creating them.
Justin, aka Neon, helps run the Crypto & Privacy Village from the website to puzzles. He is also a DC DarkNet Operative and a member of the defcoin community! Come say hi to get a taste of those decentralized, digital hacker coins.
Peter Teoh leads the software security and compliance function for his current employer. He has worked in the tech industry since the last century in a variety of roles from network security, to data protection and privacy. Pete has been attending DEF CON since DC19 and was a speaker at DC22. In his spare time he hoards electronic gadgets and is an honorary cat lady.
Tony Arcieri works on the Platform Security Team at Square. These days he dabbles in cryptography. In the past he made the Celluloid actor framework for Ruby and the Reia programming language.
Jorge Lacoste swizzles bits and harvests blue smoke from ICs. This is his 6th DEF CON. Say hello if you see him. Jorge is also the principle designer of the first ever CPV electronic badge.
Nadia Kayyali got the opportunity to work with Crypto & Privacy Village as a member of EFF’s activism team. Nadia's work at EFF focuses on surveillance, national security policy, and the intersection of criminal justice, racial justice, and digital civil liberties issues. Nadia has given privacy trainings to a wide variety of audiences in the U.S., from artists to Black Lives Matter activists. Nadia previously served as the 2012 Bill of Rights Defense Committee Legal Fellow where they worked with grassroots groups to restrict the reach of overbroad national security policies. They earned their B.A. from UC Berkeley, where they majored in Cultural Anthropology and minored in Public Policy. They received their J.D. from UC Hastings.