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Here’s a Documentary on the World’s Largest Hacker Convention


August 8, 2013 | Andy Cush

We haven’t gotten a chance to watch DEFCON: The Documentarybut given its circumstances and pedigree, it’s almost certainly worth a viewing. Directed by longtime technology historian and filmmaker Jason Scott, the film focuses on DEF CON, the enormous and enormously influential Las Vegas convention (the latest iteration of which went down last week). According to Scott, he was the first person to be given “unfettered access” to document the con, “because they had an iron-clad policy for two decades against” it.

Best of all, you can grab a free (720p!) torrent of the nearly 2-hour film here.

Scott explains what to expect on his blog.

It’d be redundant to describe the event, since, you know, I made a movie about it, but suffice to say that it’s not just a bunch of presentations inside conference rooms and a strict agenda with a keynote each morning and bagels and butter waiting on tables for lunch. DEF CON is a massive, thriving, varied and strange gathering of people, one I’ve been part of for over a decade and which brings the stories by the bushel. My problem wasn’t having us film interesting things – it was trying to figure out how to shove all those interesting things into one single block of movie.