I posed this question a few days ago, having seen a mail room rank, of a person who has caused some issues on one of the forums I partcipate in mind you, and the response was there is access to the HL forum via Google, and it was by design.

Agora is now concidering to restrict access to Presidents and HL's only, but if this is implimented, it may be a ways off. If a poster is not a HL and logged on to Agora, access is not available.

I'm sure they will reply, but this is a generic answer for now.