Slashdot Mirror
Security Researcher Attacked While At Conference
New submitter fineous fingers writes "U.S. computer security researcher Georgia Weidman has revealed on her blog that a fellow speaker at the Confidence security conference in Krakow, Poland attempted to rape her. The attack occurred in her hotel room in the early morning hours of 28 May. Luckily, Georgia was able to fend her attacker off by clocking him in the head with a coffee mug. I was personally at this conference, but was staying at a different hotel and found out about it after the fact. It was Georgia herself that told me after she gave her fantastic talk on Leveraging Mobile Devices on Pentests. That she was able to give a flawless presentation later that day and had the courage to talk about the attack on her blog shows how awesome she really is."
If you were going to make a court case out of it, posting your evidence to a blog immediately might hurt your case more than help it. It's true that this is a very public accusation without much to substantiate it, but I don't think it's completely unreasonable to want to warn people without hurting your own chances for justice in your particular case. That public shaming requires both an unsubstantiated claim and people who take that as fact.
Thank you Georgia for your brave heart and your humanist approach. As a male I feel ashamed that such a male exists among us.
She claims attempted rape.
He claims "she's a poco loco, bitch gone crazy for my dick and now thinks she's gonna get famous by talking shit about an obscure researcher from south america LOL crazy bitch, I didn't do nothing!"
Yet she was clearly injured. And he was clearly injured. And stuff that was taken from her room magically appeared in his room, where it was recovered by conference staff.
Given that her allegations present a clear story explaining how these things happened, and his version of the story seems to contradict the actual facts and photographic evidence available - I'd say it's a good bet that he DID attempt to rape her.
But given that this is Slashdot, I understand that you're retardedly skeptical of her story.
Convincing? Of what? He didn't even deny anything. The closest he came to that was to condemn the method of propagation of the accusation, and didn't condemn the accusation or deny it at all, at least in the "rebuttal" I read.
Learn to love Alaska
Because there is no proof and there will never be? Sometimes, that's just the way it is. Maybe she prefers going public to shame him, since it is the only way she can actually get to him. Makes sense to me. Shows a lot of courage on her part, seeing how rape victims are treated by the public opinion.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Amongst security professionals, a reasonable person would assume images could have been created falsely in the absence of evidence to show images were not created falsely. The result is "more proof needed".
Gont's on camera going into her room. They both have injuries. Cops verified hers shortly after Gont left the scene. So you have a situation in which a guy goes into a woman's room, then gets into a brawl with her. I can't think of many ways that goes down without sexual assault being involved. Let's say he's totally in the clear and she attacked him for some unknown reason. Maybe she wanted sex and he didn't so she clocked him with a coffee mug. Okay. If a woman did that to me, I would probably not respond by punching her in the face. I'd just leave. Given Gont's and Weidman's relative builds, it's not like she could have stopped him.
While we don't have irrefutable proof that sexual assault occurred, it certainly fits the circumstances, and I'm at a loss to come up with an explanation in which Gont comes out clean.
If you're going to accuse somebody of a criminal act, it's always a good idea to get their side of the story. http://blog.gont.com.ar/
When she was contacted by the Consulate, I'm sure they informed her of this:
If you decide to pursue your case through the Polish judicial system, the initial step is
filing a police report. It is best to do this at the police station (komisariat policji) closest
to where the incident occurred, although a police report can be filed at any police station.
and
In Poland, police stations are required to take your report regardless of your nationality or
resident status. Police stations are also required to provide translators, although this can
take some time to arrange; the U.S. Embassy does not provide translators. If, for any
reason, you have difficulties filing your police report with a Polish official, please let us
know immediately.
Her blog states:
The US Consulate was great though. It was a night and day difference between dealing with them and the Polish police. I’d recommend getting in touch with them to anyone who has an incident in a foreign country. While ultimately they aren’t able to force charges against him, having someone on my side was nice.
So, was a police report filed? This seems pretty straight forward and that the Polish Police have to take a report. According to the blog they were "blah blah" So, according to the blog, no. If she had any discussion with a member of the US Consulate they would have had this discussion. If she felt so violated then why didn't she file a report? It's her right and the consulate would stand behind her. why? Also her comments "Blah blah" regarding the police and not being interested are contrary of the US government's position and own documents. Sorry, this looks like a he said/she said unless there's anything else that wants to put out there.
Speaking of putting this out there, without anybody else coming forward with something, a picture a copy of a police report a criminal court proceeding, maybe Fernando her getting hauled away in cuffs perhaps? No? Why not? There's camera phones, there's other people involved who are still not being named, maybe they don't exist? I'd love to see the video, where is the video that everybody supposedly has seen? Wait, only her word?
I'm sorry she got hurt, bruised... It sounds like she gave as good as she received though (bad choice of words?)
Again, don't put this guy on trial without evidence and statements from witnesses. Also, who here thought DSK was guilty of assault on that maid in NYC from just the press reports? Was he ever on trail for it? No. He was acquitted.
I'm going to now go get some popcorn and watch the twitterscape on this one. IMO, she's an intelligent person, well respected in her field and in terms of handling this episode, as traumatic as it sounds, she really didn't handle the situation well and now she's using the web to try her case. I haven't looked anywhere else but does anybody have something more than a twitter posting about this from somebody else that was there? How about some pictures.. I'm putting on my Don Henley music now.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"