Peter Berghammer is a noted journalist, security vulnerability lecturer, and businessman. As the founder CEO of Copernioô (founded 2001) he is noted for the rapid expansion of The Copernio Holding Company ñ taking it from simply an IT solutions provider to an organization with divisions handling consulting, research, security and investment fund. Under his tenure, Copernio has expanded from a single location to an international corporation operating in over eighteen countries. Numerous aspects of the initial corporation have since grown to encompass companies ranging from consumer electronics (Future Formats TM) through advanced open source software security systems analysis (Open Source Warfare). The Copernio Holding Company is headquartered in Las Vegas, NV and Brussels, BE.

Topic:

This talk looks closely at both the strengths and weaknesses inherent in social networking advances while exploring numerous techniques currently employed at the local level (municipal and/or state level) to positively or negatively impact the electoral process. While explicitly not dealing with either voting machine or database vulnerabilities, the talk does make use of numerous real world examples of electorate manipulation - using techniques initially developed by spammers, phishers and hackers. It also explores the relationship between war memeing, blog memeing and political interference.It looks closely at the interplay between legal techniques and the grey-area that is on the borderline of legality and draws on state and local examples that flew under the radar during the 2008 elections. Finally the talk looks at the prognosis for 2010. The talk covers both generic examples, as well as a number of technical software deployment flaws, and how grey-area activities in some cases swung an election. Finally the talk uncovers parallels between these techniques and what corporations increasingly have begun to adopt in order to influence public opinion. All examples will be stripped of any identifiable information concerning candidates, parties and locals etc. - and the talk begins with a stern warning about only engaging in legal activities.