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Privacy Advocate Jacob Appelbaum Reports Break-In Of Berlin Apartment

Jacob Appelbaum isn't shy about his role as a pro-privacy (and anti-secrecy) activist and hacker. A long-time contributor to the Tor project, and security researcher more generally, Appelbaum stood in for the strategically absent Julian Assange at HOPE in 2010, and more recently delivered Edward Snowden's acceptance speech when Snowden was awarded the Government Accountability Project's Whistleblower Prize. Now, he reports, his Berlin apartment appears to have been burglarized, and his computers tampered with. As reported by Deutsche Welle, "Appelbaum told [newspaper the Berliner Zeitung] that somebody had broken into his apartment and used his computer in his absence. 'When I flew away for an appointment, I installed four alarm systems in my apartment,' Appelbaum told the paper after discussing other situations which he said made him feel uneasy. 'When I returned, three of them had been turned off. The fourth, however, had registered that somebody was in my flat - although I'm the only one with a key. And some of my effects, whose positions I carefully note, were indeed askew. My computers had been turned on and off.'" It's not the first time by any means that Appelbaum's technical and political pursuits have drawn attention of the unpleasant variety.

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:For the Lulz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Common tactic of the German Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung

  2. He must be doing something right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    By the sound of it, he's doing a lot of things right. Read his bio. I'm very glad and thankful there are still brave men left.

  3. Re:Four alarm systems and not a single camera? by spacefight · · Score: 5, Informative