Clearing up a few points from Valerie and Violet's account of  the situation

 

Both Valerie Aurora and Violet Blue has posted their recollection of the events that transpired. I didn't want to get into a "he said, she said" game, but here we are. There has been too many inaccuracies in my opinion to remain silent, even at the risk of continuing the drama.

 

In Valerie's clarification post there are a few things that I have to point out.

1. In both the original and clarification post, Valerie starts her recollection of the events by say the BSides SF organizer requested the Ada Initiative's advice on the talk. While this is true, that it implies I had originally reached out to her on my own. The omitted information that I feel is pertinent here is that Valerie had sent complaints to co-founders of Secuirty BSides and organizers of various BSides events saying "This is total bullshit even if it somehow ends up giving an anti-rape, pro-consent message. Framing a talk about sex in the vocabulary of computer security does not magically make it on-topic, and it definitely doesn't stop it from being a giant 'You are not welcome or even safe' sign for women." I then replied saying that "I would love to talk to you about this. As I am obviously not a woman, I am lacking a female's perspective on this. It would be really appreciated if you could let me know your thoughts. I am not sure about the exact contents of Violet's talk, but if the past is any indication, it should not alienate women." 
2. Valerie said "At this point, Ian told Valerie that he would cancel the talk if it included discussion of rape, but not otherwise." From my recollection, I told Valerie that I would cancel the talk if it taught people how to date rape someone.
3. Valerie said "Ian returned a few minutes later and told Valerie that the talk did include discussion of rape, and that Violet Blue had agreed to cancel it." I had returned to tell Valerie that the talk included "discussion of date rape drugs" (not rape), but we're going to cancel it anyway. I did not mention Violet's response or reaction to the situation. 

 

In Violet's post, she recalled the conversation she had with me after I had talked to Valerie.

1. Violet had offered alternative solutions to not giving the talk in Track 1 as scheduled, the last being "[m]aybe I can do a video of the talk and BSides can have it as an after-con talk."Then her interpretation of my reaction was, "[t]he way the organizer looked at me, I knew that wouldn’t happen, either." I would like to point out that I am fully in support of making this happen. At the time, I was mentally making sure we would have enough left in the budget to record the talk at a later time. Maybe thats why she thought I was against it. I'm not sure. I have since reached out to Violet about recording her talk so we can put it up on our video site.
2. At the end of her post, she says "[i]t’s now apparent that Security BSides SF feels my talk was inappropriate for its conference and community." This is not how I or anyone at BSides SF feel. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The reasons I had decided to cancel the talk were a) it was expressed to me that the talk would have a negative effect on many women, and b) Violet had offered to not give the talk in the interest of not causing more problems for me and BSides SF. We donot agree with the Ada Initiative's belief that the discussion of sex at tech conferences is harmful to women.

 

Lastly, I want to reiterate that this decision was an isolated incident that happened in about 20 mins. There was no deliberation, no discussion, and was definitely not based on any policy. Even if you attribute this decision to BSides SF and myself, I want to stress that it should not be a reflection on any other Security BSides event.

 

-verbal 

 

 

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Update:

 

I have been following twitter tonight, read your concerns, and have replied to some of them. A large number of you have requested more information on the events of today. Here are the chain of events from my perspective.

 

1. I was cc'ed on an email from @vaurora originally sent to other BSides organizers about the content of @violetblue's talk. She said if I was interested in more information about it, she would be happy to give me her perspective and advice.
2. I replied and invited her to give me feedback so that I may address any questions or concerns she had.
3. We talked in person at the conference and @vaurora told me why she thought "this talk is part of a pattern of behavior that results in extremely few women attending BSidesSF".
4. I spoke with @violetblue about these concerns and she offered to not give the talk to mitigate any unnecessary drama and ill-will towards BSides SF.
5. I then made the decision to cancel the talk.

 

In addition there are a few points I wanted to clarify

1.  I made the decision myself and did not consult anyone except for @vaurora and @violetblue.
2.  This decision does not reflect any policy of any other BSides conference or any BSides SF in the past.
3.  No policy on this matter has been set for any future BSides SF. 

 

-verbal 

 

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As many of you know,  @violetblue's talk today was cancelled because of a serious complaint we had. Many of you have asked for the abstract to her talk. Here it is below:

 

talk name: sex +/- drugs: known vulns and exploits

 

talk description:

 

What drugs do to sexual performance, physiological reaction and pleasure is rarely discussed in - or out of - clinical or academic settings. Yet most people have sex under the influence of something (or many somethings) at some point in their lives. 

 

In this underground talk, Violet Blue shares what sex-positive doctors, nurses, MFT's, clinic workers and crisis counselors have learned and compiled about the interactions of drugs and sex from over three decades of unofficial curriculum for use in peer-to-peer (and emergency) counseling. Whether you're curious about the effects of caffeine or street drugs on sex, or are the kind of person that keeps your fuzzy handcuffs next to a copy of The Pocket Pharmacopeia, this overview will help you engineer your sex life in our chemical soaked world. Or, it'll at least give you great party conversation fodder. 

 

---

 

I just want to do a quick recap of whats been said on twitter about the situation. I was approached by @vaurora (@adainitiative) about the inappropriate and alienating nature of @violetblue's talk that was scheduled at BSides SF. After listening to @vaurora's concerns, I brought them up with @violetblue and she graciously offered to not speak in the interest of mitigating any unnecessary drama and ill-will towards BSides SF. I then made the call to cancel the talk. I understand this is a very polarizing decision and many of you may be upset, for which I apologize. As an organizer of a conference, the last thing I want is to accept a talk only to later have it pulled. Given the situation at that time, it seemed like the correct call to make. If you have any feedback for me, please @-me on twitter or send me an email and I will do my best to address your concerns.

 

@verbal, verbal@bsidessf.org

 

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Details

 

When: Sun-Mon, Feb 24th-25th, 2013

Where: DNA Lounge

375 Eleventh Street 
San Francisco, CA 94103

Contact: @bsidessf

Email: ian@bsidessf.org

 

Short link for this page: http://bit.ly/BSidesSF

 

Keynotes by Dan Kaminsky and Josh Corman

 

Shuttle

• Sunday: 8:30am - 7:00pm between DNA Lounge and Moscone Center West
• Monday: 9am - 7:30pm between DNA Lounge and Moscone Center West
• Monday: 6:00pm - 7:30pm will also stop at 1015 Folsom 

Workshops

• LockSport Lounge by College Of Lockpicking
• CTF by Mad Security. You can sign up for this during registration. Please read the FAQ.

 

Closing Ceremonies

 

 

• Monday @ 5:30pm 
• "We Quit" - A Roast of the Infosec Business 

 

Party on Monday (21+)

• Featuring crashfaster, dale chase, dualcore, and kidhack
• All BSidesSF attendees are invited
• Party is at 1015 Folsom, a few blocks from the conference venue. 
• Sponsored by OpenDNS 

 

Sponsors

We are still looking for more sponsors. For more information, please look at our sponsorship kit. BSides Sponsorship Kit_BSIDESSF2013.pdf and contact ian@bsidessf.org

 

CFP (Closed)

Call for papers: BSides San Francisco is accepting 50 min talks plus 10 mins Q/A, 30 min talks, classes, workshops, and activities.

Vote for Papers: http://bit.ly/BSFVOTE13

 

2012 Nov 1st: CFP Open

2013 Dec 31st: CFP Deadline

2013 Jan 18th: Acceptance Notification

 

Volunteers

We are looking for volunteers to help with the event. If you are interested please fill out the google form at http://bit.ly/BSFCFV13

 

Organizers

• @verbal 
• @banasidhe
• @pinoles
• @jbferland
• @fionamiller
• @daravinne

 

Leading Sponsors

Contributing Sponsors

 

Supporting Sponsors

 

Media Partners

 

Special Thanks To

 

 

Schedule

Sunday - Feb 24th	Track 1	Track 2
9AM - 10AM	Coffee / Registration	Coffee / Registration
9:50AM - 10AM	Opening Remarks
10AM - 11AM	Name: Rohyt Belani @PhishMe, Brandon Dunlap @EnergySec Talk: SCADA Protection: Imminent Phishing Attacks and The U.S. Cyber Strategy	Name: @jimio Talk: SSL++ : Tales of Transport Layer Security at Twitter
11AM - 12PM	Name: Adam Kujawa @kujman5000, Jerome Segura @jeromesegura Talk: “I want my PC back!”: An in-depth look at ransomware	Name: Jasper van Woudenberg Talk: Why are we still vulnerable to side channel attacks? (and why should I care?)
12PM - 1PM	Lunch	Lunch
1PM - 2PM	Name: Dr. Jamo Limnéll Talk: Strategic Cyber Security & Warfare: If We Don’t Get It Right, People Die	Name: Dan Hubbard CTO OpenDNS, Frank Denis, @thinkumbrella Talk: Building a Security Graph
2PM - 3PM	Name: Christopher R. Lew, Ph.D Talk: Chinese Advanced Persistent Threats: Corporate Cyber Espionage Processes and Organizations	Name: Kyle Adams, Chief Software Architect for Mykonos, Juniper Networks @kadams_sec Talk: Sorry Your Princess is in Another Castle: Intrusion Deception to Protect the Web
3PM - 3:30PM	Name: headhntr (Twitter: @headhntr), Bill Marczak Talk: Cash Rules Everything Around Me: The Commercialization of Online Spying	Name: Adam J Kujawa @kujman5000 Talk: Press Start: The basics of malware analysis
3:30PM - 4PM	Name: headhntr (Twitter: @headhntr) Talk: Cash Rules Everything Around Me: The Commercialization of Online Spying	Name: Craig Young, nCircle VERT Talk: Google-jacking: A review of Google’s 2-Factor Authentication
4PM - 5:00PM	Name: @backtracesec Talk: RFID Credentials or (Cyber Pearl 9/11 Harbor of DOOM)	Name: chort @chort0 Talk: My First Incident Response Team: DFIR for Beginners
5:00PM - 7PM	Keynote: Dan Kaminsky @dakami

 

 

Monday - Feb 25th	Track 1	Track 2
9AM - 10AM	Coffee / Registration	Coffee / Registration
10AM - 11AM	Name: Valerie Thomas @hacktress09 and Harry Regan Talk: All Your Base Still Belong To Us: Physical Penetration Testing Tales From The Trenches	Name: Mike Shema @CodexWebSecurum Talk: JavaScript Security and HTML5
11AM - 12PM	Name: Andrew Hay, Chief Evangelist at CloudPassage / @andrewsmhay Talk: Facilitating Fluffy Forensics (a.k.a. Considerations for Cloud Forensics)	Name: Kevin McNamee Talk: Build your own Android botnet
12PM - 1PM	Lunch	Lunch
1PM - 2PM	Name: Ed Bellis @ebellis Talk: Hitting above the Security Mendoza Line	Name: Jason Andress Talk: An Anti-Forensics Primer
2PM - 3PM	Name: Violet Blue @violetblue Talk: sex +/- drugs: known vulns and exploits	Name: Dan Kuykendall @dan_kuykendall Talk: The Pineapple Express: Live mobile application hacking demonstration....A speeding bullet to the mobile backend
3PM - 4PM	Name: Brett Hardin @miscsecurity Talk: Penetration Testing is Stupid	Name: Chris Bream and Matt Hastings Talk: Stick Around - Windows Persistence from Weak Sauce to #Winning
4PM - 5:30PM	Keynote: Josh Corman @joshcorman
5:30PM - 7PM	We Quit - A Roast Of The Infosec Industry