Around 2000, or 2001, I got involved with Agora. The Agora meetings were one of the worst kept secrets of the security world. They were absolutely wonderful. This was not a conference, or any kind of formal organization. It had no legal or societal, or business standing. It didn't have a bank account. It had no money. There was no charge for the meetings.
However, I have never been to any conference where there was such a range of people attending. Security doesn't actually have a community, as such. Security has a bunch of siloed communities. The business people don't talk to the industry people, who don't talk to the military people, who don't talk to the academic people, who don't talk to the intelligence community: all of these different communities exist in isolation from each other. Even though they are all basically doing the same stuff. The Agora meetings were one of only two sets of meetings that I ever found where all of these different communities came together and shared information. The Agora meetings had one rule: a sort of variation on the Chatham House rules, meaning that what happened at Agora stayed at Agora, unless you contacted the person who told you something, and got their permission to tell somebody else.
So, I won't talk about specific Agora meetings. I will say that I got to meet people from the academic world, the business world, government, the military, and the intelligence community.
Okay, I suppose that one Agora story won't hurt. People came to the Agora meetings from government, and from fairly high up in government at times. Since the meetings were in the States, many of those came from Washington, DC, and flew across the country to attend the meetings. And, one of the things that I'm going to talk about here, is the great difficulties in crossing the world's longest undefended border. In the United States the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, amalgamated and has charge of a great many areas within the United States government. One of them is the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, and the border patrol guys. The Agora meetings took place in the mornings. It was very short. And, after the meetings, those who could stay frequently met over lunch. If I could stay for lunch after the Agora meetings, the DHS guys would always grab me for their table. And, once I was seated there, they wanted to know the latest border horror story. (Samples of which I will be recounting to you shortly.) The DHS guys, of course, were far above the level of the agents at the border. But, they were the ones responsible for writing the policies that the border agents supposedly carried out. My stories set them into fits of hysterics over the boneheaded interpretations that the agents, on the front lines, gave to the directives and policies which they, the DHS guys, had written and promulgated. I would tell them what I went through at the border crossings, and they would roll on the floor laughing.
This happened because the Agora meetings were in Seattle. A number of us from the Vancouver security Special Interest Group would carpool down in order to go to the Agora meetings. The Agora meetings were roughly quarterly. I, living in North Vancouver, was frequently the one delegated to rent a car, or a van, or drive my own car, and pick up people from the security group on my way driving south to the border.
And then we would get to the border. And then the fun would begin.
One of the things that we learned early on was that we didn't use the s-word. When we used the word "security," the border agents got weird. So the standard set of questions tended to go something like, "Where are you from?" "Vancouver area." "Where are you going?" "University of Washington." "What are you going to be doing there?" "Going to meetings." "What are the meetings about?" At this point we learned to say "computer assurance." I suppose that the border agents really didn't know what computer assurance *was*, but it didn't sound dangerous to them. Apparently saying "security" sounded dangerous. So, when we had a new person coming with us, who hadn't been to Agora before, and didn't know the process for getting through the border, we would warn them not to use the s-word.
So one time we had a new person along for the ride, and we hadn't told him about the s-word on the way down. As usual, I was driving, so I was the one answering the questions. We got through the usual ones until we got to the business about meetings. And what were the meetings about? said the border agent. I didn't have time to reply. The newbie, from the back seat, piped up "Security!" All of us cringed. We figured that we were in for the usual grilling whenever we used the s-word. Instead, this particular border agent laughed and said, "What does the University of Washington know about security?" This response was unexpected. I kind of looked at him, and he said, "When all the college computer facilities were being bombed, in the sixties, the University of Washington got bombed *twice!*"
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Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
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