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Comment by pizzapill | Hacker News Reader

> One notable difference is a much closer connection to e.g. intelligence services.

Some CCC hackers had a pretty good relationship with the Russian KGB. They got information about a wide range of US military secrets including details about the Space Defense Initiative (SDI). They were so successful that they wound up dead and a movie was made about them. Since then the CCC has to be heavily infiltrated by all kinds of Intelligence Services.

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At least the CCC of today is actually much more loosely knit that what your comment implies. Much of the work being done to dismantle e.g. election counting systems, the covid apps etc comes from various corners of that community.

Infiltrating the CCC would be akin to infiltrating Antifa. Sure, you can get close to a group and learn their secrets, but you can't get close to the center of it because it has none.

> Since then the CCC has to be heavily infiltrated by all kinds of Intelligence Services.

I think this more served as a cautionary tale to not get involved with this kind of agencies at all.

I think the CCC has a strong ethos to not work for such agencies but I'm sure many members do it, either because they are agents or because of other incentives.

Yes the Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll recounts this story well.

However since then the CCC has been very honourable and I have nothing but respect for them.

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