Feds asked to skip Defcon hacker conference

“This will give everybody time to think about how we got here, and what comes next,” Moss said.

{mosads}The federal government has viewed the hacking conference, which is held each summer in Las Vegas, as fertile ground for recruiting skilled hackers to work for the intelligence community.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander went to the conference last year in an effort to convince hackers to work for the spy agency. Alexander notably ditched his military uniform for jeans and a black T-shirt when speaking before the crowd of hackers.

This year’s conference is slated to be held the first week of August at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.

Alexander and the NSA have come under scrutiny after former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified documents about surveillance programs run by the spy agency that collect phone metadata on Americans and monitor the Internet traffic of foreign targets. The revelations over the programs have sparked international outcry, and the NSA has been criticized for allegedly snooping on people’s personal information.