The Indian "hacker-for-hire" operation, Appin, obtained an order from a court in New Delhi that forced the global newswire Reuters to remove investigative reporting about Appin's criminal enterprise. Users of Appin's services included American lawyers, Russian oligarchs, and Scandinavian businesses, among others. With that court order from New Delhi, Appin's American lawyers demanded that other media outlets remove their reporting, and many have complied. Appin's lawyers issued threats to the Internet Archive, the New Yorker, various podcasts, and many others. Litigation between Reuters and Appin is ongoing. What threats can this case pose to free speech and the integrity of cyber threat research?

As lockdowns and solitary confinement increase, an out of control private prison tech industry is profiteering off draconian new restrictions on access to communications: banning books, visits, and physical mail to sell a dystopian digital regime where every message is taxed and monitored on sandboxed tablets and kiosks. This talk will unpack the world of carceral technology: map out the major security corporations, what they have in store for us, and how we can fight back. In this era of police repression and imperialist genocide, how can technologists reject complicity and cooptation? How can hackers practice global solidarity instead, working to undermine and overcome the logic of borders and cages on both the net and in the streets?