Homes for Hackers gets a visit from the FBI | ideas, startups, tech: banterant

tl;dr:  Nobody gets arrested.

On Monday I received this text from one of the guys from Traveling Nuker (one of the startups in my hacker house as part of the Homes for Hackers program):

Hey when you get a free moment, you had a visitor that wants to get a hold of you. One Special Agent *** ****** of the FBI. Nothing to worry about though he's just reaching out, with great internet speeds comes a potential for higher cyber related crimes. So if we see anything fishy we have his number ***-***-****. He does still want to catch up at some point.  (Name & nbr obscured because I don't want to get in trouble)

Needless to say, I called the guy right away. Apparently he showed up at the hacker house, very casually wearing shorts and a T-shirt, introducing himself as an FBI agent, not flashing a badge or anything, just wanting to know more about the program, kind of like exploratory research.

We had a very nice conversation and he said maybe we could go to lunch sometime in a few weeks time, when his schedule calmed down. I said "sure" and we hung up.

On Wednesday, he called again, this time asking to take me to lunch the following day. He said he might bring another FBI agent along too. I said "sure".

On Thursday at 11am, I met three special agents for lunch at Cupini's, right opposite the Google FiberSpace. No, I don't have any pictures. Just take my word for it. And yes: I know they were FBI for sure because I called the KC FBI branch to confirm the meeting and was routed straight to my guy.

I mention the Google Fiberspace because a) it's cool and b) apparently the agents didn't know it even existed and asked me all about it. I was dumbfounded. I don't know if this was an ignorance play on their part to get me talking or if they honestly didn't know about it.

Anyway, I ended up telling them all about the Homes for Hackers program and the KC Startup Village. I hope they understood that I give free rent to entrepreneurs, not black-hat hackers, but one can never be too sure.

I ended up walking them down the street and showing them the hacker house in person.

Now, in retrospect, there's several things I showed them that have me a little worried:

• There's a big map on the wall, right as you walk in, of all the nuclear power plants in the US. 
• Traveling Nuker is the name of one of my startups in the house right now.
• TN has a small demo sample of naturally occurring Uranium, complete with Geiger counter, right there on a coffee table when you enter the house. 
• There's a small wireless bridge dish rigged up on the front of the house.