CLOSING KEYNOTE: Ethical Considerations of Intelligence and Information Security
Presentation Abstract

An illumination of how the transformational engines of information technologies alter our psychological and spiritual frameworks and points of reference as we try to apply them to the new humanity, i.e. individuals and organizational structures all the way to the top of geo-political realities who are morphing as a result of their symbiotic relationship with those technologies. Not only what we see is changing but the lenses through which we see are changing too, because the eyes that see through them are also changing …

About Richard Thieme

Richard Thieme has published hundreds of articles, dozens of short stories, two books with more coming, and given several thousand speeches. He speaks professionally about the challenges posed by new technologies and the future, how to redesign ourselves to meet these challenges, and creativity in response to radical change. Many recent speeches have addressed security and intelligence issues for professionals around the world. He has keynoted conferences in Sydney and Brisbane, Wellington and Auckland, Dublin and Berlin, Amsterdam and Eilat Israel. Clients range from GE and Microsoft to the FBI, US Dept of the Treasury. and the US Secret Service.

His pre-blog column, “Islands in the Clickstream,” was distributed to thousands of subscribers in sixty countries before collection as a book by Syngress, a division of Elsevier. His most recent work, “Mind Games,” is a collection of nineteen short stories about anomalies and edgy realities. He returned to writing fiction when a friend at the NSA told him, “The only way you can tell the truth [about what we discuss] is through fiction.” His work has been taught at universities in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States.

At DefCon VIII, he moderated a panel that included the Assistant Secretary of Defense, who came to “dialogue” with 5000 computer hackers. He was invited to moderate because, according to a National Security Agency veteran, “You’re the only one in the room with the acceptance and respect of both the hacking community and the Feds.”