Tor Developer Jacob Appelbaum Allegedly Intimidated Victims Into Silence and Anonymity (dailydot.com)

blottsie quotes a report from The Daily Dot: In the wake of programmer Jacob Appelbaum's abrupt departure from the Tor Project, rumors and accusations about both sexual misconduct and bullying have surfaced that extend back years. Now, four witnesses -- including a current senior Tor employee -- are stepping forward into the public eye, adding valuable insight into how Appelbaum allegedly intimidated those around him to keep accusations of sexual misconduct secret and pressure those who are speaking out to remain anonymous. [Late last week, a website was launched in which alleged victims of Appelbaum's sexual misconduct joined together to post their stories in an effort to publicize them without a much-feared wave of personalized and professional backlash. The stories are graphic and describe the ways Appelbaum allegedly assaulted people in public and in private. Three current Tor employees -- two of which agreed to be named on the record -- have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site's authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question. Appelbaum broke his silence on Monday, deriding the accounts of his former colleagues as "vague rumors." It was an "attack," he said, on his reputation, led by character-assassins spreading "vicious and spurious" allegations against him.] In May, one of Tor's core software developers dodged the FBI and left the U.S. for Germany to avoid testifying in a criminal hacking investigation.

Comments

Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, there is no way that this is anything other than an orchestrated take down of the TOR project since they can't eliminate it technically nor in the courts.

It's disgusting how obvious they are able to be about it, too.

So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprised by any of these developments......

Re:So many creeps in the world

[saloomy]

Neither am I It's a very effective tactic. It worked so well neutralizing Julian Assange. They (THEY) learn from their successes as well as their mistakes. //PUT ON TIN FOIL HAT NOW

Re:So many creeps in the world

[lucm]

That's how sociopaths like Appelbaum or Assange can get away with stuff that would make a rockstar lose his hardcore fanbase. Anyone who complains about those guys is crucified by legions of idiots. This is the same kind of uncompromising, full-on hate behavior of the Westboro baptist church or the abortion clinic bombers. Different dogma and cult leaders, same mindless worshipping and mob mentality.

Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole. You know why? Because he didn't harass, bully or walk over people for years. Yet he's a much bigger "target" than a developer on a government-funded security project or a pathetic has been whistleblower.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Shadow of Eternity]

Snowden's already been labelled a traitor and everything else under the sun. Assange had to be discredited because he's more dangerous, he runs the actual organization people like snowden go to.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole

Or, just perhaps, because unlike Assange and Appelbaum he's not a "rapist or overall asshole"?

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole. You know why?

He broke an actual law. No reason to bother accusing him of rape when the law he broke already carries a higher penalty.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how sociopaths like Appelbaum or Assange..

Oh, so you know them personally?
No?, so you're a qualified psychologist who has personally assessed them?
No?, so you're basing your layman's assessment on what you've been told and read?
I see...

Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole. You know why? Because he didn't harass, bully or walk over people for years

No, the reason they didn't throw any accusations of a sexual nature at him was they'd be bloody superfluous as they had him on treason, which is all they needed with the average USian being so indoctrinated in the 'my country, right or wrong' mindset, hyped up with the current paranoia, and,
a bonus from their viewpoint, as Snowden is in Russia they get to dust off the old 'commie enemy'
playbook as well.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[MightyMartian]

Which is to be expected, since technically Snowden is (not that what he did was wrong). But if accusations of sexual impropriety and abuse was the modus operandi of the US government when it came to those who revealed its secrets, then why has Snowden not been the victim of such an operation?

Is it remotely possible that people like Assange and Applebaum may simply be unpleasant people who do bad things?

Re:So many creeps in the world

[BitZtream]

Snowden is by definition a traitor. Deal with it. Doesn't mean that he was wrong for what he did, but thats separate.

Assange on the other hand is just a power hungry douche who manipulates the truth to further his own personal political agenda.

He's like the CIA, but REALLY FUCKING SHITTY at it, because most of us with more than 3 brain cells realizes that he's nothing more than a manipulative asshole rapist. And yes, he's a fucking rapist because he's hiding from fucking Sweden who would be one of the last fucking countries on the planet to give him to the US for some reason.

Snowden took the shit personally, fed it to the public media personally, came out and told the public he did it himself. Snowden is a traitor, but he's a man with honor.

Assange doesn't leak shit. He manipulates others into getting the data and giving it to him, and then only cares about them when it furthers his own personal political agenda. Assange didn't have to be discredited, the collateral murder video did it for him, with his intentional emotional manipulation for his own personal gain and fame.

Why do you idiots keep worshipping that fucking asshole?

Re: So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Edward Snowden is a good guy. It's a shame he doesn't have information to expose an even more troubling conspiracy. I wish Snowden had first hand knowledge about global warming research so he could go public with information that many of us have been aware of for a long time: humans are not causing global warming. The supposed research is really the creation of numbers for the purpose of justifying a massive wealth redistribution scheme while the scientists and politicians get rich. There is no such thing as global warming.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[AmiMoJo]

Besides which, sexual assault isn't the only thing they use to discredit or attack people. With Chelsea Manning it was her being transgender, particularly that one unflattering photo they published.

I think the big difference with Snowden is that his leaks created such a shitstorm, far greater than anything Manning or Assange did, that they were somewhat distracted with damage control and being investigated themselves that screams of traitor were the best they could come up with. They were also spread a bit thin, trying to smear and discredit and intimidate the journalists involved too.

Re: So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize scientifically illiterate people frequented Slashdot.

By the way, good job on making the world a dumber place.

A++++++, would kill brain cells again

Re: So many creeps in the world

[MightyMartian]

CO2 absorbs UV from solar radiation, and re-emits it as IR. This causes a net increase in temperature in the lower atmosphere. This is a simple physical fact. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more energy in the lower atmosphere. Unless you have some magic heat sink which dumps the additional back into space, AGW is inevitable where CO2 levels are increases. This is basic thermodynamics, and the properties of CO2 have been known for over a century.

I'm sorry this makes you want to deny reality, but the Universe wasn't designed just so humans could wantonly increase the amount of CO2 into the atmosphere without side-effects. The universe doesn't give one flying fuck about our economic system

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Look! It's the screaming, autism-hating Slashdot troll bitztream.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

but thats separate.

" that's "

Re: So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, I just don't know...

A year ago, I would have said someone like Trump being considered a serious presidential candidate was a very bad stupid scenario of a very unrealistic movie, now ...

Are these guys real, or just trolls ? Who knows.

Re: So many creeps in the world

[Rakarra]

massive wealth redistribution scheme while the scientists and politicians get rich

Oh yeah, pure research, that's the road to riches for sure!!

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Rakarra]

And yes, he's a fucking rapist because he's hiding from fucking Sweden who would be one of the last fucking countries on the planet to give him to the US for some reason.

Since Sweden has an extradition treaty with the US, that statement is, by definition, false.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[david_thornley]

The US has shown no interest in charging Assange with anything, or trying to get its hands on them. There were a few politicians yelling for his head, but that's just to be expected. The US has convicted the person responsible for the leak, and if Manning acted of his/her independent will, Assange did not break US law.

Assange apparently moved to Sweden with the intention of staying there. That's an odd thing to do if he thinks Sweden would hand him over to the CIA. He then went to the UK, which has a reputation as a US lapdog. He apparently had no fear of being sent to the US before it became a convenient excuse for dodging rape charges.

The UK courts determined that the rape Assange was accused of was rape by British standards, and that the extradition request was in order. At that point, he would have been sent to Sweden to stand trial, and extraditing him to the US would have required the permission of both the UK and Sweden.

Re: So many creeps in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

The most common cause of warming is water. 99%. The vast majority, in fact. CO2 is a small percentage. Man made CO2 is a small percentage of that small percentage.

But it's nice to hear a liberal admit to intelligent design.. because the alternative is that we can, in fact, do whatever the fuck we want, even whatever the fuck you don't want.

This is the basic law of the jungle. Get used to it.

Re: So many creeps in the world

[MightyMartian]

A small percentage over something as large as the earth's atmosphere has a significant t effect. No matter how you try to deny physics and reality, it's measurable and it's happening. You're just a fantasist and a moron

Re: So many creeps in the world

[MightyMartian]

http://www.scientificamerican....

Claim 1: Anthropogenic CO2 can't be changing climate, because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere and the amount produced by humans is dwarfed by the amount from volcanoes and other natural sources. Water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas, so changes in CO2 are irrelevant.
Although CO2 makes up only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, that small number says nothing about its significance in climate dynamics. Even at that low concentration, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and acts as a greenhouse gas, as physicist John Tyndall demonstrated in 1859. The chemist Svante Arrhenius went further in 1896 by estimating the impact of CO2 on the climate; after painstaking hand calculations he concluded that doubling its concentration might cause almost 6 degrees Celsius of warming—an answer not much out of line with recent, far more rigorous computations.
Contrary to the contrarians, human activity is by far the largest contributor to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, anthropogenic CO2 amounts to about 30 billion tons annually—more than 130 times as much as volcanoes produce. True, 95 percent of the releases of CO2 to the atmosphere are natural, but natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the oceans pull the gas back out of the atmosphere and almost precisely offset them, leaving the human additions as a net surplus. Moreover, several sets of experimental measurements, including analyses of the shifting ratio of carbon isotopes in the air, further confirm that fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are the primary reasons that CO2 levels have risen 35 percent since 1832, from 284 parts per million (ppm) to 388 ppm—a remarkable jump to the highest levels seen in millions of years.
Contrarians frequently object that water vapor, not CO2, is the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas; they insist that climate scientists routinely leave it out of their models. The latter is simply untrue: from Arrhenius on, climatologists have incorporated water vapor into their models. In fact, water vapor is why rising CO2 has such a big effect on climate. CO2 absorbs some wavelengths of infrared that water does not so it independently adds heat to the atmosphere. As the temperature rises, more water vapor enters the atmosphere and multiplies CO2's greenhouse effect; the IPCC notes that water vapor (pdf) may “approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO2 alone.”
Nevertheless, within this dynamic, the CO2 remains the main driver (what climatologists call a "forcing") of the greenhouse effect. As NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt has explained, water vapor enters and leaves the atmosphere much more quickly than CO2, and tends to preserve a fairly constant level of relative humidity, which caps off its greenhouse effect. Climatologists therefore categorize water vapor as a feedback rather than a forcing factor. (Contrarians who don't see water vapor in climate models are looking for it in the wrong place.)
Because of CO2's inescapable greenhouse effect, contrarians holding out for a natural explanation for current global warming need to explain why, in their scenarios, CO2 is not compounding the problem.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[Shadow of Eternity]

Sexual assault is the big one though, particular for the western world. We live in a world where a rape doesn't even need to exist to stir up an enormous nationwide mob and fill the airwaves with calls for "Something" to be done.

Re:So many creeps in the world

[lucm]

Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole

Or, just perhaps, because unlike Assange and Appelbaum he's not a "rapist or overall asshole"?

That's the tldr

I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we posting nasty things like this with no effort to investigate their veracity? I'm sure we'll all just bandwagon onto whoever we believe is more credible, evidence be damned, whoever I identify with or whatever story I hear first is clearly right. I'm sure this will end up just as reasonably argued (with no evidence or investigation) as the case against Assange. Half the people will think he was set up by the NSA and the commies and the other half will say that he's some kind of pedoraper mysogynist.

Wake me when there's a court judgement and actual investigation has been done, not someone badmouthing people online and calling attention to rumors like some trashy tabloid.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[XXongo]

Why are we posting nasty things like this with no effort to investigate their veracity?

Posting it because it's news. There are a bunch of creeps in the software business; this is not really out of line with what's reported elsewhere. With multiple people now coming up and vouching for the veracity of the complaints, this is beginning to sound pretty plausible.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[PopeRatzo]

Why are we posting nasty things like this with no effort to investigate their veracity?

Here is some evidence: Four witnesses. Not anonymous sources, but actual witnesses with names who have stepped forward

Now, four witnesses -- including a current senior Tor employee -- are stepping forward into the public eye, adding valuable insight into how Appelbaum allegedly intimidated those around him to keep accusations of sexual misconduct secret and pressure those who are speaking out to remain anonymous

Jacob Applebaum is not Tor. His departure will not sink Tor. Tor will continue on without this douche. The NSA isn't taking down Tor by having one programmer resign in shame.

In the wake of what happened to an actual convicted rapist Brock Turner, it's no wonder that victims are afraid to step forward. Depending on the color and social level of the perpetrator, there's almost no chance of justice and a very large chance that the victim's life will be further destroyed.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[rtb61]

The only problem with the reporting is, tech people tend to be well educated and understand the law, not people who can be readily victimised. The more claimed victims, the more improbable it becomes that they did not inform the authorities and seek prosecution for that activity. Geeks and nerds tend to be pretty active and vocal complainers and whilst predators do actively seek out people who share a victim profile in terms of behaviour, the over confidence of the predator in short order puts them into conflict with people who will aggressively defend themselves and even others.

One thing victims should always bear in mind, failure to act means you share in the harm of future victims, affirmative action early means many fewer victims. Victims should never feel shame because of an attack but they should feel shame for failure to properly respond and striving to prevent future victims. It is an awkward and disruptive occurrence, seek support and pursue justice, not just for yourself but for other existing victims, as well as of course to prevent future victims. Learn how to 'grr' the fuck up and present a resistive, mutually destructive, nature (I will destroy myself if necessary to destroy you should you initiate an attack, a state of mind that expresses itself in posture, facial expression and vocal tone, even if not true).

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[blottsie]

Just a reminder that the Tor Project itself dismissed Appelbaum based on complaints against him. If this were a conspiracy against Tor, wouldn't Tor have stood behind their own?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if these allegations were true, the actual actions were way back in the past. No way this qualifies as news.

You should better install SystemD and vote for Trump if you want to do something meaningful.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dismissed or stepped down?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[wisnoskij]

It's not news. It is either a crime that deserves to be reported to the police, who can privately investigate it, or it is made up gossip. There is literally no reason to ever publicly say things like this or to report on it.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Step down or be dismissed.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Posting it because it's news.

No, it's news once it's been proven in court. Until then it's an allegation. It's for the courts to judge, people rushing to judgement is just a form of moral posturing.

> There are a bunch of creeps in the software business

There are creeps everywhere. Please don't blame everyone in software collectively. I know zilch about this guy.

> With multiple people now coming up and vouching for the veracity of the complaints, this is beginning to sound pretty plausible.

Then do that IN COURT. Until then, you're just gossiping. Punish him properly in court if he's done wrong, don't pillory someone based on some web page that nobody has done any actual investigation of. Maybe he is a creep, maybe he isn't, I don't know and neither do you. Maybe your guess will be right, but it was still just a guess.

What I do know is that rushing off to judge someone and post about how terrible they are and how this proves everyone else in the industry is scum doesn't make you a good or moral person.

This isn't a race. There's no prize for being the first one to declare someone guilty. We have courts to adjudicate this. When and if they get it wrong, fine, complain. But this kind of nonsense is exactly why more civilized places don't allow publishing accusations until they're proven. You're here for a 5-minute hate to prove that you were right by being the first to condemn the guy. Whatever. I'd rather let the courts do that than try to pretend to be a good person by being the first one to throw stones at somebody.

So no, allegations are not news. This is yellow journalism, which our ancestors rightly rejected as scummy. I understand that it baits the clicks nowadays, but that doesn't make it good.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The more claimed victims, the more improbable it becomes

That is some world class rationalization. If there is only one victim then they are making it up, if there are lots of victims then they are making it up.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[The Evil Atheist]

The news is the news. Your criteria of what is news is not other's criteria. Stop demanding people follow your categorization. You are free to ignore things you don't want to read about.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Here is some evidence: Four witnesses. Not anonymous sources, but actual witnesses with names who have stepped forward

Yeah, all together after they got their stories straight to tell the press. The supposedly knew for quite awhile about Appelbaum's actions, and yet kept it to themselves until now after a professional looking website was created to accuse him. Sounds like a coordinated media product rollout.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hypocrisy is palpable.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

How 'bout, "If there are lots of victims (and witnesses), but not a single one of them ever reported his sexual assaults to the police, then maybe they are making it up."

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[MightyMartian]

The whole idea that tech people have some sort special knowledge of the law is utterly fallacious, a sort of appeal to authority where the poster tries to assert they are an authority in a field quite distinct from software development.

There really are some people posting here who suffer delusions of grandeur.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Baseless, sweeping generalization about a group masquerading as insight with just enough Wikipedia level reference to a persuasion method and a vacuous pop-psychological term to signal, "I'm educated. You people should listen to me while proceed to insult you. I'm educated."

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Oligonicella]

News - what's happening.

Allegation - something that's happening.

The Daily Dot made it clear that this was not empirical proof but heresay supported by people close to the issue.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[nomadic]

This is slashdot; the male nerd always is innocent to a lot of people here, even when there's overwhelming evidence that he did something. See, e.g., Hans Reiser and Terry Childs.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally victims go to the police rather than making websites, it tends to be more productive as far as getting justice and it doesn't encourage vigilantism.

Right now, those statements are hearsay. Yes, there could be something there, but we don't know that until the stories are corroborated with actual evidence--prove that he was actually there when they said he was, find other witnesses/videos/emails/whatever that match their story. Find physical evidence. For every Brock Turner, there's a fraternity wrongly accused of being rapists. There's no prize for being the first one to condemn someone.

If you're going to call yourself a pope, you might want to look up some of those things about not throwing the first stone and being slow to judgement. Though I'm giving you credit for the two or three witnesses bit, we can do a lot of additional checks that ancient Israel could not, so we should wait to see the evidence and condemn people after a full investigation, rather than at the time of accusation.

The only thing hasty judgement ever proved was which people were lacking sense, especially anyone excited that they might be able to guess the answer to a yes or no question correctly as if it validated their intuition as being superior to fact-based methods.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[lucm]

Wake me when there's a court judgement and actual investigation has been done, not someone badmouthing people online and calling attention to rumors like some trashy tabloid.

You mean a court judgement like owing $30,000 to someone over a $75 printer dispute? Or the OJ Simpson one? Or Casey Anthony?

Get real.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the National Enquirer is just trying to inform us of the evidence for Bat Boy in a neutral way, too. This is the 21st century, we don't need to rely on random people's accusations. If they say he did X at Y location, we can probably find security footage from the area, prove that they were in the right place, etc. If he sent scummy emails, someone should have a copy. Etc. Etc. Etc. We do not, cannot, and should not even listen to this until such time as the case has been made in court and the evidence presented by both parties. As you may note, the items above are things only the cops can reasonably do, so we have good reason to wait for them to do their work. Until then, this is a sick exercise in vigilante voyeurism.

Some of us use facts, rather than emotion, to decide these things. I realize it makes us an out group to those who need to condemn this guy as fast as possible to remain in good standing with their tribe. Bush rushed judgement is a bad way to go about things and pretending otherwise so you can have more likes doesn't make you better person.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Shadow of Eternity]

You mean like how the University of Virginia rape was totally real and verified by the editorial process of an established media source?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Shadow of Eternity]

Here is some evidence: Four witnesses. Not anonymous sources, but actual witnesses with names who have stepped forward

And how many witnesses did they have at salem again?
Four people and a very professional yet totally anonymous set of smears. They've got this many people and witnesses and yet no one is pressing charges? They waited for the professional media rollout instead of, yknow, actually doing something? Sounds like they learned from Rolling Stone.

it's no wonder that victims are afraid to step forward

Oh please, it's so much the opposite that people step forward even when no rape ever even happened in the first place. Remember UVA? Mattress Girl? Duke Lacross? It seems like the surest sign a sexual assault case is bullshit is it being picked up as a high profile feminist cause celebre.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think small.

This is step #1469 to kill tor. Completely seperate and not related to steps 1470 and 1468.

The shotgun approach.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[jandersen]

Why are we posting nasty things like this with no effort to investigate their veracity?

Because bloggers are not often real journalists, and it is so much easier - and less risky - to sit in a dark corner and pontificate. And of course, social media are even less about journalism and more about idle gossip and rumour mongering. Even Fox News do a better job of investigating their stories, and believe you me, I am no fan of Murdoch's Sewage Pumps.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rei]

You can start lecturing other people about how it's "report your sexual abuse to the police immediately or it didn't happen" when you've actually gone through sexual abuse yourself.

News flash: most people never report even outright rape, let alone lesser predatory behavior. Because, first off, nobody sets out for the evening with "get raped" on their TODO list. Coming to acceptance with what happened takes time. I've known people who outright started *dating* their rapist afterward, just so that they could self-justify to tell themselves that it wasn't really rape. It can take a long time to get past making excuses for them and trying to pretend it never happened. Just taking the (very common) issue of cases where the person was intoxicated or drugged out of the equation.

Even for those who come to terms with it immediately, tell me, how fun does it sound to go in for intrusive exams, talk with strangers about what you just went through, put yourself on the line, and have your name dragged through the mud by everyone who likes the guy as a liar and a slut? Times a thousand if the guy is well known and popular.

There are reasons why most assaults are never reported. Most people would rather focus on trying to get past it emotionally and not think about it than have to relive it and go through the hell of trying to get a prosecution that, in practice, stands very little odds of actually succeeding. In cases where victims find out that others have been reporting the same behavior from the individual, it becomes a lot easier to step forward together.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rei]

I know right, how did people who worked on Tor manage to put together something as complicated as a website?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd pressure people making false accusations of sexual misconduct to stay silent too ... seeing as they would be trying to ruin my life based on lies.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Daily Dot made it clear that this was not empirical proof but heresay supported by people close to the issue.

'hearsay'
'supported by people close to the issue.' (aka 'more hearsay')

Here's the thing - hearsay could be bloody well supported by the Golden Gate bridge, it still doesn't make it anything more than hearsay, trying to bolster its 'value' semantically in this manner is a wee bit 'greasy'..

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

..and have your name dragged through the mud by everyone who likes the guy as a liar and a slut? Times a thousand if the guy is well known and popular.

Ah, but it's OK for them to drag his name through the mud in an attempt to sidestep|subvert any legal due process?

here's a hint, it's not..

I'll not deny the legal system is broken with regards to rape, and I say that as someone whose sister was raped and the bastard responsible got away with thanks to police and prosecutor indifference.

This sort of crap (websites full of allegations and innuendo, etc) doesn't help either, there's a point at which people will start thinking 'the lady doth protest too much..' as no legal action has been taken, and the next time someone makes similar allegations the seeds of doubt sown from the previous circus grow..

They need to take legal action as accusers, no matter how painful it is to them personally, either that or they'll end up being the accused in a libel and defamation case.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong story Coward

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies have a lower bar for dismissal than a criminal court does. You can be fired at will in the US.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Xenx]

Grain of salt on that, especially when you take unions into account. I'm not implying anything in this case, but careful with the blanket statements.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[AmiMoJo]

The witnesses are credible. They give specific, verifiable details that others have confirmed. Times, places, behaviour that other people observed. What is really damning is that Appelbaum could provide some counter evidence of his own, explain why he kissed someone on the mouth unexpectedly in public or suggested a 3-way with their partner within earshot of others, but he hasn't.

As for pressing charges, it's not nearly as easy as you think. Many Tor developers don't trust law enforcement and some have even had to leave their home countries because of harassment. Given the international nature of these allegations, and the difficulty of making a joint complaint, and the very real fear that victims often have of not being believed, I can appreciate why there have not been official complaints yet. Give it time, perhaps one strong case will be selected and move forward, should the victim decide it's worth having their private life exposed and being questioned about their sexual habits in open court. Since Appelbaum seems to have gone underground for the most part now maybe they will judge that it isn't worth doing.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[PopeRatzo]

I hope Trump puts you in a work camp.

Trump 2016

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[PopeRatzo]

Right now, those statements are hearsay.

"Hearsay" has a very specific definition. An eye-witness account is the opposite of hearsay.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rei]

And that may well happen; we'll have to wait and see.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because it's the DONE THING today, baby.

He's guilty in the court of feminism because anonymous allegations said so. Slashdot is a wholly owned subsidiary of SJW inc.

In case anyone hadn't realised - feminism has 'weaponised' allegations of sexual misconduct. You can remove a man from his employment, friends and even destroy his family... with no consequences to yourself. If you have a vagina and no moral compass - which is, to be perfectly honest, most woman today.

Due process and quaint notions of innocent until proven guilty of old fashioned and have no place in a modern inclusive society.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

"should the victim decide it's worth having their private life exposed and being questioned about their sexual habits in open court."

There are complainants, not victims.

Unless you happen to be an SJW loon trying to ensure that someone is not given due process... of course.

To anyone else reading this: keep your eyes open for this kind of slight-of-mind.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Jason Levine]

Seriously. That guy got 6 months because the judge factored in "he's not going to get to go to a prestigious school anymore" as part of his punishment? The father wrote a letter saying it was unfair for his son to get such harsh consequences for "20 minutes of action"? (Here's a hint, it's not "getting some action" if it's non-consensual. That's called rape.) The defense kept trying to make the case that the woman obviously consented because of what she was wearing.

I'm not a woman so I'll never feel the fear of being raped, much less the actual trauma of being raped. However, if I went through a trauma like that, I think I'd be reluctant to go through it all over again just for my attacker to get a light sentence and cry about how that light sentence was SO unfair. I wouldn't want to face accusations from people (either in court or in the community) that I somehow consented to the assault simply because my attackers social status meant he was regarded as a hero of sorts.

No, this doesn't mean that the accusations against Appelbaum are automatically true, but it is understandable that some people might not want to go public with a lawsuit and yet might want to warn others about his behavior.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me when there's a court judgement and actual investigation has been done, not someone badmouthing people online and calling attention to rumors like some trashy tabloid.

You mean a court judgement like owing $30,000 to someone over a $75 printer dispute? Or the OJ Simpson one? Or Casey Anthony?

Get real.

Yeah! Let's listen to and believe things posted on random Internet web sites instead! /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[MightyMartian]

I suppose the idea that someone in IT somehow is graced with command of subjects as varied as the law or climatology must certainly be at least a corollary to the Salem Hypothesis, or perhaps it's a sign that the Salem Hypothesis is merely itself part of a larger principle where technicians of all sorts believe themselves so intelligent that foreign fields of expertise just by the nature of their genius are assimilated.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because the media is an attention whore with no compunction when it comes to dishonesty.

This has been going on quite awhile. You're just NOW noticing ?!?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[ArsenneLupin]

The witnesses are credible. They give specific, verifiable details that others have confirmed.

If these stories were true, these same specific, verifiable details would also allow Appelbaum to find out which of his witnesses were singing. Completely defeating the goal of anonymity and professional backlash from the hands of Appelbaum.

So, that makes me think that their stated reason for wanting to stay anonymous is bullshit. And that maybe other "details" are bullshit too.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

.. should the victim decide it's worth having their private life exposed and being questioned about their sexual habits in open court.

And yet, by implication, you think it's apparently fine for them and their cohorts to make allegations as to the private life and sexual habits of Mr Appelbaum in public? Isn't that a bit inconsistent?. Who exactly is the 'victim' then in this case, as no-one is yet willing to test the veracity of these allegations in a court of law?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[T.E.D.]

Normally victims go to the police rather than making websites, it

Of sexual assault? No, normally victims don't report them at all. They tend to get blamed for their own victimization more than helped, and really who wants to go through that? Their odds of getting actual justice are much smaller than their odds of getting further abused.

Which is why there's a nasty little subculture of guys running around who have figured out how to do this to women with impunity. Then the majority of us who would never even think of behaving that way get stuck with trying to have real relationships with the emotionally-scarred results of these a-holes.

Seriously, screw this guy and everyone like him. He's the reason jails should exist.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagined you writing something like this last night. Did it come off as well as you hoped?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[AmiMoJo]

I'm sure Appelbaum knows who these people are, but doesn't call them out because it would just make things worse for him. At the moment there is some doubt and he just has to keep quiet to avoid clearing it up by confirming any specific details.

Of course he might be innocent, in which case he could question the specifics or state that he doesn't recognise those situations. Staying quiet, after being so outspoken against other conspiracies, doesn't really lend any credibility to him. He might just be handling it badly of course.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[AmiMoJo]

The nature of bringing allegations to light requires divulging their nature.

Note that many of the alleged victims don't live in Germany, many are in the US. Appelbaum went to Germany specifically to avoid US authorities, which he claims are investigating him over the Snowden leaks and TOR. It's likely that many have no realistic prospect of seeing him charged if they do report it.

I really hope someone in Germany does make a police report though, now that others have come forward to corroborate their story. Even then, they will need to be able to call witnesses to the German court so it will probably be some time before they can talk to people and be sure it's worthwhile doing so.

Appelbaum, if innocent, really needs to speak up and deny some of the specifics. Given the fairly specific claims, he should be able to show that at least some of them are not true, or name people who were at these events who must have witnesses (or not witnessed) them.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so.. so.. educated. Educated.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I'm not a woman so I'll never feel the fear of being raped, much less the actual trauma of being raped.

Hey man, I know some neighborhoods in LA that you could venture into and perhaps get "the rape experience" which will be pretty close I imagine to what a woman feels when she's raped. You might even think what happens to you is actually worse that what happens to a woman. But that would only mean you're a girly man, because real men don't experience trauma, do they Ace?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Appelbaum, if innocent, really needs to speak up and deny some of the specifics.

No, he doesn't have to do any such thing, you lying shitbag, nor should he speak at all about this.

You, yet again, prove that you are a mindless ideologue with no understanding of the law, why the law exists, or the kind of abuses that occur.

Thankfully it's becoming increasingly clear that: 1. Women lie. A lot. 2. Men are being railroaded by mini-fascists like you. 3. The media are scumbags.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of how easy it is for a company to fire someone, we're still looking at a situation where the people who work with him on a daily basis view the allegations as credible enough to warrant that response.

That, to me, is rather damning. If I were accused of bullshit, my colleagues would offer moral support and management wouldn't do anything. For a public-facing employee, a suspension might be appropriate. But being forced to step down pretty much means they believe he did it.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[PopeRatzo]

Seriously. That guy got 6 months because the judge factored in "he's not going to get to go to a prestigious school anymore" as part of his punishment?

The judge was also a former Stanford athlete and frat boy. White privilege is wonderful.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[SethJohnson]

The more claimed victims, the more improbable it becomes that they did not inform the authorities and seek prosecution for that activity.

Or, perhaps it means the perpetrator developed a well-refined method of getting dirt on victims, perpetrating the assault, then blackmailing them into silence.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

>News flash: most people never report even outright rape, let alone lesser predatory behavior.

That's a completely unsubstantiated claim not supported by any credible source.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The more claimed victims, the more improbable it becomes

Tell that to Bill Cosby, fool.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[EndlessNameless]

I wish I had mod points.

I hate it when people dismiss something as "hearsay" just because it disagrees with their conclusions.

Especially when the statement is actually an allegation, an eyewitness account, or a forensic report. Or when they are perfectly willing to accept hearsay in favor of their conclusions.

Actually, virtually every time I see "hearsay" mentioned it is an attempt to dismiss something that is not actually hearsay. Maybe I just hate a lot of people.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a woman so you can't get raped?

YOU ARE A FOOL.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe they were assaulted, it is perfectly reasonable to call them victims. Even police reports refer to them as victims, regardless of the fact that a trial obviously has not yet been held when it was written.

It sounds like you're trying to be his lawyer---and failing at it.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, why does slashdot, which, as we all know, have very high journalistic standard and always verify their stories, post this with no verification.
Besides, it's not like anyone at TOR could vouch for these allegations.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

> You can start lecturing other people about how it's "report your sexual abuse to the police immediately or it didn't happen" when you've actually gone through sexual abuse yourself.

I've been sexually harassed. I reported it properly. Yes, it was painful. Yes, I had to confront them face to face. I won.

Nobody wins if you set up websites instead of filing charges. Nobody wins if we believe every accusation without evidence. Nobody wins if we support the idea that people shouldn't file charges.

So the fix here is to support victims coming forward appropriately and to make the examination as painless as possible, not to subvert justice because this crime is especially bad.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

kissed someone on the mouth unexpectedly in public or suggested a 3-way with their partner within earshot of others, but he hasn't.

This is the "sexual assault" he's being smeared with? Kissing someone on the mouth and talking about having sex? Haha how is this even a story. At least the CIA found women who would actually claim rape against Assange.

LOL @ suggesting a 3-way with somebody is "sexual assault." Get real.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

..and have your name dragged through the mud by everyone who likes the guy as a liar and a slut? Times a thousand if the guy is well known and popular.

Ah, but it's OK for them to drag his name through the mud in an attempt to sidestep|subvert any legal due process?

here's a hint, it's not..

I'll not deny the legal system is broken with regards to rape, and I say that as someone whose sister was raped and the bastard responsible got away with thanks to police and prosecutor indifference.

This sort of crap (websites full of allegations and innuendo, etc) doesn't help either, there's a point at which people will start thinking 'the lady doth protest too much..' as no legal action has been taken, and the next time someone makes similar allegations the seeds of doubt sown from the previous circus grow..

They need to take legal action as accusers, no matter how painful it is to them personally, either that or they'll end up being the accused in a libel and defamation case.

Cogent and insightful and not deserving of a troll rating. The "Listen and Believe" Slashdot contingent is in full mod force it appears

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[jdavidb]

In the wake of what happened to an actual convicted rapist Brock Turner, it's no wonder that victims are afraid to step forward. Depending on the color and social level of the perpetrator, there's almost no chance of justice and a very large chance that the victim's life will be further destroyed.

Ronin Farrow wrote a superb piece recently based on his sister's own experience of a molestation suit that gives a lot of explanation as to why victims don't always want to come forward or continue to pursue the matter.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not reasonable to call them "victims".

Especially because they are people writing stories on websites.

and .. you sound like the pitchfork and torch wielding morons that are busy dismantling the legal system with their idiocy and hatred.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[jdavidb]

Everybody ought to read the entirety of the letter that came out yesterday from Brock Turner's victim. It shows exactly what it's like to be checked out for sexual assault.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rakarra]

Good lord, this is probably the most unjustified "Troll" rating of the day.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rakarra]

News flash: most people never report even outright rape, let alone lesser predatory behavior

Then it didn't happen.

No, you don't get to have it both ways.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rakarra]

Did you have anything particularly useful to add, AC, or do you make it a habit to just babble when your arguments unravel?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Rakarra]

I'm sure the National Enquirer is just trying to inform us of the evidence for Bat Boy in a neutral way, too.

That wasn't the Enquirer, that was World Weekly News, and it was the finest news source for those of us who wanted to keep tabs on how Bat Boy's astronaut training was going.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ample evidence?

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. Try this (and it's not the only example):

" I was intoxicated and not thinking clearly, and it took me a long time to realize that Jacob was going down on me, in the living room, in front of everyone. I told him that I didn't want to do that, and he stopped, but I don't remember what happened directly after, except that he kept touching me. The next thing I realized was that one of his friends in the room was touching me instead of Jacob, and Jacob told me to go down on his friend. I asked them to stop, however, all of this had a really long delayed effect because I was under the influence. I remember that his friend did stop touching me when I asked him to, but then I blacked out, and when I came back into consciousness, Jacob was having sex with me in the living room with his friends watching. When I realized what was happening, I told him again that I wanted to stop. He asked why, and I said that I didn't want to do that in front of everyone. He did stop, but replied, "well, that's what we've already been doing", and turned extremely cold."

Sexual assault? Well she was drunk, not a virgin and probably wearing a short skirt too. And made the whole thing up.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Aerokii]

I'm a victim of this shitty comment.

Unless AmiMoJo is working this case, they're hardly trying to ensure that anyone is not given due process.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of a story about a bunch of frat boys running a train on a woman, who kept resisting and saying no, but they just went right on forcing her to perform sex acts until eventually she fell into a glass table. Except that whole story turned out to be a complete fabrication, none of it ever happened, and the people who published it are being sued. Which I suspect will happen in this case too.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

I told him that I didn't want to do that, and he stopped

I remember that his friend did stop touching me when I asked him to

Huh, imagine that.

I was intoxicated and not thinking clearly

I don't remember what happened directly after

then I blacked out

Basically what you're saying is that there's no way she could have done or said something she doesn't remember. Despite admitting that she doesn't remember, and that any time she told someone to stop, they stopped.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Fuck this shit, let's fork it.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[david_thornley]

The original words perhaps should be something like "most people never report even outright rape to the authorities", since if they report it to nobody it won't be counted.

Re: I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

You edited out the part where she said she and Applebaum were "romantically involved" at the time. Kinda changes the context a bit.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations, you are now officially part of the problem

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Male survivor of domestic and sexual abuse here. Sorry, but I have no fucking sympathy for women who refuse to report that they've been raped. One fucking syllable out of a woman's mouth and the accused is arrested and will face an intense legal investigation.

I was molested in 9th grade by a friend of the family. She forced unwanted touching upon me and I was forced to penetrate. Do you know what the response was? The next day when I told our school's police officer, he told me that I was going to face punishment for wasting his time if I ever brought it up again. When I told my parents, they went ballistic on me 'for lying and causing a scandal'.

The vast, vast majority of people will not believe that a man or boy has been sexually assaulted or raped. Furthermore, coming forward will provoke a violent backlash from the police, from your loved ones and from society at large.

What happens when a woman comes forward about being sexually assaulted or raped? There is immediate police action. Her loved ones give her moral support, society is on her side.

So you can fuck right off with your gynocentric bullshit.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[rtb61]

People in IT are effective researchers. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to research information as required. I need very little expertise in any area what so ever, as long as I am capable of looking up that information and reading it and understanding it. A whole internet of experts on every imaginable subject, to access and gain the part of their expertise that they make available and that I require at that time. Now you can either accept the research that others have done and produced for others to access or in your world, only accept your own. How great is my expertise, great enough to look up the intellectual efforts of others and make use of it, it's called reading and unlike dead tree reading, I can look up the exact bit of information I am after through effective filtering of the information available http://scienceblogs.com/pharyn....

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Shadow of Eternity]

The fact that they're anonymously trying to provoke mob justice against someone by definition makes them un-credible, and should lead to everyone's first response being "If you are so credible and have such evidence why are you trying to anonymously provoke mob violence and ostracization instead of actually proving it and putting this person in jail?"

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray tell, what arguments do you think that I've made? I eagerly await your response Rakarra.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[The Evil Atheist]

Telling people to STOP demanding other people in the FIRST PLACE is not hypocrisy. Someone has to say it.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so wake me when we have an actual court case. The media angle is BS. If they have a case, take it to court. It's not fair to listen to one side of things with no investigation and I have no reason to believe that some random blog can do a proper investigation. So I'm going to call out anyone trying to take this route instead of going to the cops.

Some of us remember what happened to that fraternity and how people's lives got ruined by people rushing to judgement and declaring everybody obviously guilty based on accusations. Prove it in court and I'll be happy for you to punish the guy. And if they don't even try to prove it in court? Then I'll have to assume innocence until proven guilty.

The only thing you prove by being the first one to condemn somebody is that you have poor judgement.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using the legal definition instead of the common one, which is "information received from other people that one cannot adequately substantiate; rumor." But you don't have to take my word for it: https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ahearsay

Legal dictionaries wouldn't need to exist if they followed the common use of words and this is hardly a court of law where you might reasonably assume the legal definition instead of the common one. The eyewitness statements of anonymous people aren't exactly something the rest of us can verify, whatever the site claims to make of those. I mean, I could say that I have verified the stories of three anonymous people who claim that you're a pedophile and go publish that, but claiming to have any good cause to believe or disbelieve these claims until an investigation is done is just nonsense.

I would also note that you did not, perhaps because you could not, respond to any of the other points made above, which makes for a rather sad rebuttal.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

The allegations were kept secret for years. People were intimidated by a charismatic psychopath and his minions. He was able to keep it "rumors" for a long, long time. Now, finally, people have started coming forward and making them public. In a situation where people are silenced by someone in a position of power, going public is the prerequisite for investigating the veracity of the allegations. That so many reputed activists now break their anonymity and endanger themselves to tell their experiences with Appelbaum is an indication of how serious they are. It doesn't prove that he is a rapist, but his strategy of intimidating and silencing people has become pretty clear and not even himself is disputing that.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[cryptizard]

Appelbaum knows who they are, but imagine how that would go if he tried to tell anyone else their identities. "Hey everybody, this anonymous person that accused me of groping her in this specific situation is definitely Jane Doe because I only ever groped one person in that bar and.... oh... shit...."

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[PopeRatzo]

You're using the legal definition instead of the common one

When you're talking about the accusation of criminal activity, the legal definition is the one you'd want to use, no?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[ArsenneLupin]

... unless he tries to get back at them in some completely unrelated way (badmouthing them for poor job performance, or whatever)

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[lucm]

Ever heard of the Arab Spring?

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't rape. It was some dumpster slut getting fingered while they were both drunk then decided to press charges when she thought she could get a few cents. I hope someone kills her.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Dread_ed]

Bullshit, and fuck you. What you are saying is enabling those who are wounded and hurt the most deeply to hide from that hurt while it continues to victimize them for the rest of their life.

I lost my virginity through rape, to a woman 7 years older. I passed out from drinking, she had her way with me. When it was over, my neck, chest, torso, arms, and legs were so bruised from her that the next day one of my high school administrators took me out of class to find out if I needed help. She was concerned my family was beating and choking me, and wanted to call CPS. I couldn't find a way to explain that I passed out and was taken advantage of by a grown woman. I didn't say that, after I woke up, the woman apologized for what she had done to me; not the rape, no not that. But for all the scratches, bite marks, suck marks, and bruises she had left on my body. I didn't tell that my rapist had acted completely indifferent to how I might feel about what happened, and even went so far as to explain offhandedly that all of the bruises and marks on my body were really my fault, as scratching, biting, sucking, and hitting me was the only way to stimulate me enough while I was passed out to keep me sexually aroused while she did what she wanted with me.

So, yea, I kept my mouth shut about what happened. I was scared, embarrassed, and very confused. I can tell you without a doubt it was the exact wrong thing to do, keeping my mouth shut. The person who got hurt the most from me not talking about it? Me. Sure I wanted to get past it, sure I wanted to forget it. I was waiting for the bruises, scratches, hickies, and bite marks to fade so I could pretend the hurts didn't happen. I completely missed the point. My mind, emotions, and my "self" was hurt far worse than my body was. Not talking to someone was the worst thing I could do to myself. By not talking to someone, I made sure that I was never free from the effect of what she did to me, and how I had reflexively internalized it. I was at the effect of what happened for decades before I could even admit it was rape. It colored all of my interactions, both with sexuality and intimacy, without me even considering that it had. I packed it away in my mind, thinking I was healed just like all of the marks on my body, when in reality I was wounded so deeply I couldn't see the bottom of the hurt.

So as someone who has been raped, I will now say, fuck you, don't ever defend someone's motivation to not report what happened. Hiding the hurt inside you will fuck up your life, your experience of (or your ability to experience) joy and happiness, your ability to be truly intimate and vulnerable with the right person once they come along.

Just leave justice and retribution out of it for a moment, because that's a whole different subject. I'm talking to the people who have been assaulted and raped that haven't told someone. You need help to be free of this. You need help to heal. The first step is to tell someone that can help. Your experience of life is at stake. The rest of your life is at stake. Don't let a piece of shit rapist take the rest of your life from you. You can be free from this, but it takes help to get free. Tell someone, for your own sake. For the sake of your future self, so you can look back and see how far you have come and how free you are, rather than how this has controlled you, limited you, strangled your life right in front of you for decades and how you were powerless to face and overcome it alone. You don't know how deep the hurt goes without talking to someone. You can never get it out if you keep it all inside.

Re:I'm sure this will be just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like Mozilla stood behind Brendan Eich

A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

For privacy advocates. Caesar's wife must not only appear honest; she must be honest.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever, somehow every software nerd to rock the security boat is secretly a rapist? Is that really the most likely explanation for this? Coincidentally one of the most impossible crimes to convict... and totally impossible to exonerate in the public eye.

Sure is a coincidence!

Re:A disturbing setback

[PPH]

This.

In many cases, intelligence agencies recruit moles based on having some embarrassing information. It doesn't have to be prosecutable. Just something the subject doesn't want revealed. But now that allegations have been made public, the leverage value of the information has been diminished to the likes of the CIA/NSA. So this stuff should never be swept under the rug. Bring out the evidence and judge Applbaum either guilty or innocent publicly.

Undoubtedly, some women will be hesitant to pursue charges, due to the way that the s/w developer culture comes down on them. But in this case, that could work against anyone making threats, particularly anonymously*. Because if that information gets into the hands of the TLAs, its just as valuable fodder for blackmail as Jacob's fondling charge. And the sources of those threats will need to be bounced from sensitive projects as well.

*Like the NSA isn't watching the TOR/privacy s/w developer community already.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Every software nerd in security? So what... two? I had no idea they were so undermanned.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry Jacob, nice try but you failed at damage control. Now go apologize to those women!

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Jacob, apologize to your anonymous accusers!

Re: A disturbing setback

[Rei]

I'm sorry, but do you live in a world where whenever any high profile geek gets accused of rape, his legions of fans line up to condemn him? Because in the world I've been living in, they line up to accuse it of being a giant conspiracy and his accusers of being lying sluts paid by the NSA.

I know there are some truths we don't want to acknowledge, but the reality is that polls of women show that about 1 in 6 report having been sexually assaulted during their lives, and there's an expected lifetime incidence of about 1 in 4. These are anonymous polls, they have nothing to gain by lying in them. Who the heck do you think it is that's assaulting all these women? Do you think it's just something like five guys, lurking in the shadows? The fact is that there are a lot of people in the general population committing rape. Something confirmed by anonymous surveys of men. A rather clever approach used to poll the other side of the equation (Lesak & Miller 2002, McWhorter 2009, etc) is, rather than to use the word rape in the surveys, simply survey about their various sexual experiences, and include some experiences in the list that are rape, without using the word rape to describe them. Depending on the group and the study, usually in the ballpark of 10% of young men confess to having committed rape at least once, and about a third of them to having done it multiple times. Which are numbers that correlate well with the victim reporting incidence.

Rape is not rare. Rapists are not rare. But convictions are. And victims know this latter fact, and few want to go through hell for something that is almost certain to be futile.

Re: A disturbing setback

[moronoxyd]

I find it interesting that many of the posts here that try to defend Appelbaum and point out that the accusations come from anonymous sources were written by Anonymous Cowards...

Re: A disturbing setback

[Kielistic]

Anonymous polls from where? You're going to have to give sources on these figures because the only research I have ever personally seen reporting these outcomes have basically been checklists on what not to do when you want useful results. I'm sure an anonymous poll from the huffington post will yield totally legit results for such a question.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously that means you shouldn't trust statements made by people posting anonymously on the internet since you can't determine if they are posting in furtherance of a hidden agenda! Interesting, huh?

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

A rather clever approach used to poll the other side of the equation (Lesak & Miller 2002, McWhorter 2009, etc) is, rather than to use the word rape in the surveys, simply survey about their various sexual experiences, and include some experiences in the list that are rape, without using the word rape to describe them.

Depending on the group and the study,usually in the ballpark of 10% of young men confess to having committed rape at least once, and about a third of them to having done it multiple times...

Sorry, but this sort of crap doesn't help, I know you'll now start quibbling about which 'group' of young males we're talking about here, but it is heavily implied that we're all just as bad, and the '10%' and 'about a third of them' figures are designed to evoke a specific reaction, so, seeing as we're playing 'ballpark' figures here...

Census Data
FBI Data

US Census data 2010: Ages 10-69 years (arbitrarily chosen range): 119,561,848
10% being rapists, gives us: 11,956,184

Ok, so young men were mentioned, let's tune it down a bit

US Census data 2010: Ages 10-29: 43,533,295
10% being rapists, gives us: 4,353,329
and, assuming the surveys you talk about above mean that 33% of this 10% figure are repeat rapists, gives us 1,436,598.

... Which are numbers that correlate well with the victim reporting incidence.

Official FBI's statistics for 2010: 84,767 'forcible' rapes, and, bear in mind, they do not differentiate between rape types (e.g. male rape, homosexual rape..), but, for 'ballpark' purposes we're assuming rape as per discussion here so will take these figures as an absolute maximum.

Assuming each rape in the FBI's statistics was carried out by a different individual, and that these individuals were all from the same age range as published in the US census.

Running through the age ranges on the table gives you a figure of between 0.74% and 1.48% of the males in each range being rapists (up to 65-69 years old range), after that, obviously, the figures become a bit meaningless (rise to 925% for 100 years and over group...and, no, I'm not going to get drawn into the 'historical abuse' argument)

Taking wider ranges,
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 10-29, gives us a figure of 0.2%
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 10-69, gives us 0.07%..
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 15-24, gives us 0.38%

So, not quite 10%.

Rape is not rare. Rapists are not rare. But convictions are. And victims know this latter fact, and few want to go through hell for something that is almost certain to be futile.

Rape and rapists may not be rare, however that doesn't mean they're as common as implied either. 'but, unreported and rapes...', yes, I know this happens and understand (from family experience) why people are reluctant to proceed with legal action in these cases, sorry, but as harsh and callous as this may sound they should proceed legally, horrible as the experience might be, as It is only rape if a court of law decides it to be so, until then, I'm afraid it is just allegations and innuendo.
Yes the legal system stinks, it might fail them, here's the thing though, it might not.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that many of the posts here that try to defend Appelbaum and point out that the accusations come from anonymous sources were written by Anonymous Cowards...

It suits this case very well, since Appelbaum works in the business of making people anonymous. Take it as a tribute.

Re: A disturbing setback

[AmiMoJo]

You have to understand that most rapid is not some guy with a knife jumping out of the bushes and dragging his victim down a dark alley. Most of it is guys who think it's okay take advantage of a drunk girl, or who don't stop when asked to, or who just pressured someone into sex they didn't really want.

In the first couple of episodes of the TV show Dexter there is a joke made by the police officers about doing a "bucking bronco". That's where the guy is doing it doggy style and deliberately says some other girl's name, and then holds on for as long as possible while the girl tries to throw him off her. They laugh about it... Because back then, because rape culture became a thing people were aware of, that was funny. Fortunately these days many more people would understand it to be rape, even if the other person changes their mind and says "no" when you are moments from finishing.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

who just pressured someone into sex they didn't really want.

That's rape now? Women must be so stupid that they must be protected like we do children, because they cannot possibly take any personal responsibility.

The more of this rape culture shit I hear the more I sympathize with radical Islam. I certainly don't approve of ISIS, but I understand their motivation.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

Rodeo sex: Call her by her _sister's_ name. You only have to stay in for 8 seconds though, which would be 'stopping in a reasonable amount of time' so 'not rape'. It's not like you're 'donkey punching' her.

If you're going to convict a gender for the humorous, imaginary, creatively named sex acts thought up by virgins in their mom's basement, you should also condemn. 'Cleveland Steamers', 'Space Docking' etc etc. Basically half the urban dictionary.

Re: A disturbing setback

[Anonymous Coward]

or who just pressured someone into sex they didn't really want.

ALL
DATE RAPE
IS
FAKE RAPE

End Feminist police state rape culture now!

Is he being Assanged or what?

[guruevi]

There have been a number of serious issues with the Tor network recently. We've seen official government efforts to neutralize the network, then we've seen a number of exploits that has allowed government agencies like the FBI and NSA to spy on Tor networks. Then we see them going after Tor developers and finally we're supposed to believe that the lead Tor developer is 'dirty'?

Tor is dead, it's still too centralized to be sufficiently safe. We need alternatives.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an alternative but you might not like it: Get a couple hookers, settle down on a beach in Thailand, and cease all use of the internet.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Tor is dead, it's still too centralized to be sufficiently safe.

Eh? Nothing you've presented supports this statement. You've also misstated the nature of the FBI attacks on Tor users. Do you have an axe to grind?

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funded by the US government and its the largest onion network in existence which make it THE target for states to break into and compromise.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

tin cans and string

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[BuypolarBear]

Tor is dead

Long live Tor!

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he suing the named people for libel and slander? No? Then it's probably true.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Assanged" is an interesting verb. Remember that Assange was accused not by his opponents, but by his former supporters.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Kreplock]

Is he suing the named people for libel and slander? No? Then it's probably true.

Wrong.

Not having undertaken the hideously expensive, soul eating process of filing lawsuits against one or more anonymous accusers is not an indication of guilt.

On the flip side of your shitty logic: did the accusers run to the cops and file charges the very next day? No? Then he's probably innocent.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not about Tor, its Wikileaks that's being weakened.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[blackomegax]

How does funding equal insecure?

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think it is extremely likely that that is the case.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tor is dead

Long live Tor!

Long live TORa! TORa! TORa!
Oh wait, that did not work out ether.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he could be waiting to accrue enough negative consequences from the defamation, so that he can ask for mucho damages when he does decide to file a lawsuit.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have the victims gone to the police? No? Then it's probably false.

Not that I believe this or care either way, but it's just as valid as anything you've presented.

Re:Is he being Assanged or what?

[guruevi]

I don't have to and I haven't. Google the damn thing and find out that the FBI/NSA initially tried to subvert traffic by inserting large amount of exit nodes they controlled, later they funded a spying effort on Tor traffic through an academic front (was it Stanford?) who was collecting the "academic" data and transferring to the agency, in between there Snowden revealed at least 2 additional programs to subvert traffic. In more recent times, they have prosecuted the creator of Tor2Web into what appears to be a suicide, harassed another developer to flee to Germany, refuse to release several flaws they use to "investigate" as evidence to courts, and now the organization behind Tor seems to be compromised.

Too obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite obvious that the NSA, FBI, CIA, or one of their friends abroad are trying to publicly discredit this guy.

Re:Too obvious

[lucm]

It's quite obvious that the NSA, FBI, CIA, or one of their friends abroad are trying to publicly discredit this guy.

If that's what you think, you may want to reconsider everything else in your life that appears obvious to you.

Seriously the guy is such an asshole that some people in his own organization were wondering if he could have been a spy sent to sabotage the infosec community. Tinfoil hats all around.

the only valid comment at this juncture

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it has come to this.

What this means for TOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much merit this history has
Is this an FBI/NSA etc. smear attack to put pressure on Tor programmers? or is this guy a miserable creep that deserve to rot? and if he is a creep, will the fibs and co. pressure him or will he rat Tor in exchange for a go free card?

Re:What this means for TOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs the FBI/NSA to conduct a smear operation when you've got smear merchants in residence?

How leading Tor developers and advocates tried to smear me after I reported their US Government ties

Take Tor developer Andrea Shepard. As soon as my story went live, Shepard responded with a torrent of childish insults, calling me “Pandofilth” and “Yasha the Foul,” a “statist propagandist," a "fucktard's fucktard." Shepard accused me of being funded by spooks, and ranted on and on about the various ways in which she said I had performed sexual favors for a male colleague. She hurled similar childish abuse at anyone she caught commenting positively about my article. When readers suggested to Shepard that she should instead offer a point-by-point rebuttal of my article, rather that swearing and insulting at anyone who mentioned it, she responded that my article wasn't worth the effort of rebutting (only insulting), and that I don't deserve to live:

@Raed667 @headhntr Yasha Levine doesn't merit that kind of effort. Frankly, he doesn't merit *oxygen*.

— Andre (@puellavulnerata) July 18, 2014

Andrea seems easily able to launch into baseless smears against people who've gone up against her.

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Tor a US Navy project? Or did it split off. I was not aware that Tor was a company/project with employee s

Guilty until proven innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking nerds

WTF is with the shitty editing?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Tor developer leaving the US for Germany doesn't have a fucking thing to do with the allegations against Jacob Appelbaum. This is a pattern in every fucking story on here that the editors feel the need to insert offtopic bullshit in the stories. How about, instead of putting in offtopic nonsense, the editors check spelling and grammar, then go find a couple of additional sources? It's like the editors are trolling their own damn stories and it's getting really annoying. You know, when the site was first sold, the editors would participate in the discussions and seemed genuinely interested in engaging users. Now it seems like they're rarely around. I've also seen some pretty rude comments in the face of criticism, at least from one editor. Slashdot has changed a bit since the ownership change, but not for the better.

Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really think he's got a choice now. He's got to sue for libel and slander if he wants any chance of restoring his reputation.

And Tor is fucked.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[lucm]

Unless those victims made verbal testimonies, slander is not even relevant. Don't use words you don't understand

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for Parent, and Tor isn't fucked -- it was fine before Jake, it'll be better without Jake.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

Tor is fucked. The remaining hired developers are all on the government payroll (some over $100,000) and the ones that have already left represent the braintrust that got anything done.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

>Unless those victims made verbal testimonies,

According to the Tor developers who "verfied" the accusers stories, they did. Or didn't you read any of the fucking articles, dumbass?

Re:Appelbaum only option

[110010001000]

Dayum! OVER $100,000! Wow. That is amazing. $100,000! LOL.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[lucm]

You still obviously don't know what slander means. Did you just ear your mom and dad talk about grown-up things and figured you'd impress the other kids with your big words?

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh, u rly showed me.
What a witty riposte!

Oops! there i go agin wit my bg werds

riposte/rpst/
noun
        a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
        a quick return thrust following a parry.
verb
        make a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
        make a quick return thrust in fencing.

Sorry for making you feel intellectually inadequate with muh "big words"

Go ear your mom.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[lucm]

ahh, u rly showed me.
What a witty riposte!

Oops! there i go agin wit my bg werds

Anyone who told you in the past that you're clever and/or funny lied, or is a total idiot. (And btw this isn't slander)

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

Figured you wait and come back when you thought the coast was clear and leave some limp-wristed faggot comment you pusillanimous little shit.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[lucm]

Figured you wait and come back when you thought the coast was clear and leave some limp-wristed faggot comment you pusillanimous little shit.

Yeah I was busy, I had a Skype session with your mom. We did talk a little and she warned me that when you feel belittled or insecure you tend to use a foul language. So I feel terrible to have put you through this, I shouldn't have brought attention to your shortcomings. Hopefully you will learn something out of this, at the very least what the word "slander" means.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that must have been some Skype session, given that my mother died last year of pancreatic cancer. OH WELL, YOU WIN.

Re:Appelbaum only option

[lucm]

Wow, that must have been some Skype session, given that my mother died last year of pancreatic cancer. OH WELL, YOU WIN.

I won early in the thread, when I pointed out that you have no idea what "slander" means. Everything after that was just an epilogue.

I'll never know if your mom really died of pancreatic cancer or if you just made that up. If it did happen, using that as ammo in a flame war on Slashdot is really a terrific way to honor her memory; and if you made it up, it's immensely respectful for people who actually suffer or died from that terrible disease. I guess either way it shows what a classy person you are.

Re: I don't believe the story

[XXongo]

Was he not married? I don't understand what the story is saying.

The link to the allegations is in the summery, but if you don't want to scroll up, here: jacobappelbaum.net

He was sexually harassing men? women? or both?

That's not clear to me, since the names and photo-icons on the site are pseudonyms. Three of them who imply their sex in the narratives are female (despite male-appearing photo-icons)

Faggots

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, just a bunch of faggots complaining loudly.

I hate to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Devices were removed lights turned off and warm blankets provided to make my partner feel safe" wtf how old are these people.

Otherwise I support bringing people like this to justice.

Re:I hate to say it

[lucm]

It's a clunky description but I can totally picture it. Create some kind of intimate, quiet ambiance like when you're the last two persons sitting next to a dying bonfire; let the other person feel like they're talking in confidence with a trusted friend; then the next day you repeat publicly everything the other person said.

But on the other hand whenever someone says something like "safe space" I just feel like fedexing them a bag of post-Taco Bell shit. So I'm conflicted on that one.

Is this just standard procedure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect, and hope, that this is merely character assassination as Jacob has claimed. Accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple retrospective victims seem to be emerging as a pattern now, sometimes against people like Jacob who are anti-authoritarian activists. The Tor project seems very compromised from the bits and pieces I've randomly gathered over time, some of the people who work on the Tor project also work on government projects or collaborate with government agencies which makes the whole thing seem queer.

I don't know, and may never know, whether to take these articles seriously, and I suppose I really shouldn't since there are greater issues to focus on. There does now seem to be a need for a new independent secure tool for safe communication and data exchange to fill the role that Tor is now in doubt of fulfilling.

Re: I don't believe the story

[Anonymous Coward]

He was sexually harassing men? women? or both?

That's not clear to me, since the names and photo-icons on the site are pseudonyms. Three of them who imply their sex in the narratives are female (despite male-appearing photo-icons)

All of the photo-icons on the site are of Appelbaum.

From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

I am not able to find any account of what has happened that does not come with a strong political agenda attached. That is the core problem with public accusations as opposed to filing a complaint: It immediately muddies the waters as people on both sides jump on the issue and try to exploit it for their own agendas. I honestly have no idea of what to think of this because all possibilities from him having done exactly what is claimed to this being an orchestrated smear-campaign seem now equally probable. I even consider it possible that he was a mole and what happens now is the desired outcome. Not good at all.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[rahvin112]

So you are claiming the victim's statements on the linked website are all full of political agenda? You didn't even read them did you? No you didn't.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

I could train an LSTM network to write a victim's statement. What does an appeal to Pathos have to do with the facts of the case?

It's known that these sorts of smears are a preferred tool of the political elite to achieve desired regime changes. The fact that the accused is a central public figure to a technology project which is the source of major headaches to many extremely powerful people should instantly set off alarm bells in your head.

If Kim Jong Ill can maintain a harem, a three letter agency can manage to find four conspirators to play "The Count of Monte Cristo" gambit against the accused. It is precisely this sort of undemocratic character assassination which motivated the founding fathers distrust of large powerful governments.

Dull-eyed sheep buying the official story and believing what they want to hear are known as "useful idiots" in the Machiavellian circles which shape the future. Every step you make in life is followed and preceded by a trail of whispers behind the scenes which write the future. Doors open or close based on these whispers, and it is frequently the case that people live and die by them.

It's not a coincidence when vulnerable women are left in a compromised state alone with predators. The reputation of the predator usually precedes them, and the sexual assault is frequently retribution by a "trusted-friend" of the woman who abandoned her to the wolves for a perceived slight. These facts are obvious if you chip at the thin veneer.

What is "true", and what is "pleasant to believe" are almost universally at crossroads. If you prefer to bury your head in the sand and see the world at face value then you are no longer a free agent: you're scenery.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

Read their FAQ. They state the point of their site is to keep Jacob from joining another community. They want him shunned. They want any good reputation about him removed and they hope he gets better.

True or not, I don't care. I didn't recognize his name and won't remember him in a month.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[quantaman]

I am not able to find any account of what has happened that does not come with a strong political agenda attached. That is the core problem with public accusations as opposed to filing a complaint: It immediately muddies the waters as people on both sides jump on the issue and try to exploit it for their own agendas. I honestly have no idea of what to think of this because all possibilities from him having done exactly what is claimed to this being an orchestrated smear-campaign seem now equally probable. I even consider it possible that he was a mole and what happens now is the desired outcome. Not good at all.

(emphasis added)

Is he possibly innocent and this could just be a smear campaign? Sure.

But the odds are nowhere near equal.

There are multiple victims who have put their names and faces to specific accusations, they might be fake (it happens), but the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of them being mostly legit.

I don't know if they're also pursuing criminal charges or not, if they aren't it doesn't mean they're lying. Not everyone who wants to get their story out necessarily wants to go through legal proceedings or have the perpetrator put in prison.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Shadow of Eternity]

There are multiple victims who have put their names and faces to specific accusations, they might be fake (it happens), but the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of them being mostly legit.

Remember Rolling Stone? Tim Hunt? Emma Sulkowicz (mattress girl)? Duke Lacrosse?

There are a packet of anonymous smears and four other people insisting "oh yeah that's totes legit". The odds of this being nothing more than a manipulative attempt to use the current public tendency towards blind support and witch hunts far outweighs anything else. Everything done here is designed to minimize accountability and maximize sensationalism and public outrage.

I don't know if they're also pursuing criminal charges or not, if they aren't it doesn't mean they're lying. Not everyone who wants to get their story out necessarily wants to go through legal proceedings or have the perpetrator put in prison.

We have a word for this. It's called Libel. We also have a word for when people try to stir up public outrage to cause extra-judicial harm to someone, we call it Lynching.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

No there are names and faces to people who say they know the people making the accusations ... that's a few too many degrees of plausible deniability for me to take seriously.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Dr. Evil]

The vagueness in the accusations of "sexual misconduct" and intimidation is awful. I had to read the stories to figure out what the accusations are.

http://jacobappelbaum.net/ is very weird.

The site is difficult to navigate and difficult to extract the meat of the accusations.

There are 8 stories (+2 empty ones). 1 first person rape account, 1 second person rape account and professional bullying and harassment. 1 first person sexual molestation. The rest are harassment, bullying, intimidation and aggressive, inappropriate sexual propositioning (e.g, asserting himself in professional situations, ignoring personal boundaries and aggressively sexually propositioning in front of a victim's business clients)

"political agenda", yes... although the motivation for it seems to be victimization, and the stories are almost all very public so they should be easy to corroborate.

The design of the site doesn't do anyone a service.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

Anonymous statements have zero credibility. I do not read them. Anybody can claim anything anonymously and it is pretty easy to make statements that sound credible, but are a complete fabrication.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

In other words, they claim to be doing vigilantism. This is never good, even if it hits somebody deserving. It is an illegal act for good reasons as the mechanisms are far too easy to abuse and it is extremely hard to defend against that.

In this case, it is also an appeal to emotion, which makes abusing it even easier. The only thing they will achieve this way is a split in the community. That of course raises the question if that was the aim all along.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

Indeed. Which adds an extra layer of complexity to this: The people doing this must know that in the past similar campaigns have been based on direct lies.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

There is a good reason hearsay is not admitted as evidence in any functioning legal system. It is just far too often wrong.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

jacob raped me too, he did it using his superior and strong geeky torso and manly man-arms which are really strong, in fact ive heard he is so strong he can rape mid sized animals, and even small men, like... asians and shit
he did it all with one hand, and a mouse, and he teabagged my corpse later. But while he was doing that to me my team won the game, so its all good, sometimes you rape, sometimes you get raped, right?

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[gweihir]

Not credible, but obviously something you really believe. Fail on both count.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[quantaman]

There are multiple victims who have put their names and faces to specific accusations, they might be fake (it happens), but the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of them being mostly legit.

Remember Rolling Stone? Tim Hunt? Emma Sulkowicz (mattress girl)? Duke Lacrosse?

There are a packet of anonymous smears and four other people insisting "oh yeah that's totes legit".

Even your handpicked list of anecdotes is problematic.

Rolling Stone and Duke Lacrosse are legitimate examples of false reporting, relevant to this discussion but as I said, it does happen.

But Tim Hunt was just a victim of the Internet rage machine taking his remarks in a public speech out of context, the only similarities are Internet + gender.

And Emma Sulkowicz's campaign was a specific response to her complaints of assault being dismissed by the authorities. You might think she's making a false accusation but it's a fundamentally different thing.

Oh, and the two cases that were false accusations, those were with a single witness, not four.

I don't know if they're also pursuing criminal charges or not, if they aren't it doesn't mean they're lying. Not everyone who wants to get their story out necessarily wants to go through legal proceedings or have the perpetrator put in prison.

We have a word for this. It's called Libel. We also have a word for when people try to stir up public outrage to cause extra-judicial harm to someone, we call it Lynching.

Well he's free to sue them for Libel just like they can press charges.

Frankly I think this has to do with the fact that the legal system is poorly designed to deal with a majority of sexual assault.

A lot of victims don't want the intensive scrutiny of a trial or the heavy punishment of a guilty verdict, this results in predators like Bill Cosby raping dozens of women over a series of decades, and he's hardly the first example.

I'd much prefer a system where the victim can opt (if they want) for a much weaker interventionist punishment where both sides can keep anonymity but the perpetrator is now on the radar, and things can be escalated if the behaviour persists. I suspect that this would really improve reporting and reduce assaults without smearing men with false reports.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Shadow of Eternity]

Emma's complaints weren't dismissed, they were taken so seriously that her victim wasn't even allowed to bring in her own words as exculpatory evidence and even then the Title IX kangaroo court sided against her. Do you know how insanely rare that is? Title IX hearings are so insane prejudiced that they'll expell a male student who was raped while blacked out for supposedly being the aggressor rather than the victim.

I'd much prefer a system where the victim can opt (if they want) for a much weaker interventionist punishment where both sides can keep anonymity but the perpetrator is now on the radar, and things can be escalated if the behaviour persists. I suspect that this would really improve reporting and reduce assaults without smearing men with false reports.

So instead of a good old fashioned southern lynch mob you want the Stasi taking anonymous tips.

Re:From here on it is propaganda all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the website. It wasn't a good idea to publish anonymous accounts of rape and not calling it that, and mixing it up with vague allegations of "plagiarism" and insisting on alphabetic sorting so his name would come first on papers. Luckily now we have better than this crappy website. We have detailed witness accounts of people who have come out of anonymity, and Appelbaum's behavior that doesn't make him look like an innocent person.

Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

That website and all those stories makes this geek out like he's a stone cold player. He's King Shit, I am in awe of him and wish I could be his friend.

Oh, good, a Slashdot thread on sexual harassment.

[jeffb (2.718)]

I'm sure this will be full of well-reasoned, cogent discussion. Just give me a moment to polish my monocle...

Misleading photos [Re: I don't believe the story]

[XXongo]

He was sexually harassing men? women? or both?

That's not clear to me, since the names and photo-icons on the site are pseudonyms. Three of them who imply their sex in the narratives are female (despite male-appearing photo-icons)

All of the photo-icons on the site are of Appelbaum.

!!!

The site would be much clearer if they actually mentioned that minor fact.

The way the site is arranged makes it appear that each photo is a picture of the person whose narrative is linked. I can only assume that they believe that everybody in the world knows what Appelbaum looks like, and so they don't need to bother making it clear who these are pictures of.

Tails OS 2.4 Released - 6/7/16 - changelog within!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tails Linux OS 2.4 Changelog:

https://git-tails.immerda.ch/t...

tails (2.4) unstable; urgency=medium

* Major new features and changes
- Upgrade Tor Browser to 6.0.1 based on Firefox 45.2. (Closes:
#11403, #11513).
- Enable Icedove's automatic configuration wizard. We patch the
wizard to only use secure protocols when probing, and only
accept secure protocols, while keeping the improvements done by
TorBirdy in its own non-automatic configuration wizard. (Closes:
#6158, #11204)

* Security fixes
- Upgrade bsdtar and libarchive13 to 3.1.2-11+deb8u1.
- Upgrade icedove to 38.8.0-1~deb8u1+tails3.
- Upgrade imagemagick to 8:6.8.9.9-5+deb8u3.
- Upgrade libexpat1 to 2.1.0-6+deb8u2.
- Upgrade libgd3 to 2.1.0-5+deb8u3.
- Upgrade gdk-pixbuf-based packages to 2.31.1-2+deb8u5.
- Upgrade libidn11 to 1.29-1+deb8u1.
- Upgrade libndp0 to 1.4-2+deb8u1.
- Upgrade poppler-based packages to 0.26.5-2+deb8u1.
- Upgrade librsvg2-2 to 2.40.5-1+deb8u2.
- Upgrade libsmbclient to 2:4.2.10+dfsg-0+deb8u3.
- Upgrade OpenSSL to 1.0.1k-3+deb8u5.
- Upgrade libtasn1-6 to 4.2-3+deb8u2.
- Upgrade libxml2 to 2.9.1+dfsg1-5+deb8u2.
- Upgrade openjdk-7-jre to 7u101-2.6.6-1~deb8u1.

* Bugfixes
- Enable Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery for IPv4. If any
system on the path to the remote host has a MTU smaller than the
standard Ethernet one, then Tails will receive an ICMP packet
asking it to send smaller packets. Our firewall will drop such
ICMP packets to the floor, and then the TCP connection won't
work properly. This can happen to any TCP connection, but so far
it's been reported as breaking obfs4 for actual users. Thanks to
Yawning for the help! (Closes: #9268)
- Make Tails Upgrader ship other locales than English. (Closes:
#10221)
- Make it possible to add local USB printers again. Bugfix on
Tails 2.0. (Closes #10965).

* Minor improvements
- Remove custom SSH ciphers and MACs settings. (Closes: #7315)
- Bring back "minimize" and "maximize" buttons in titlebars by
default. (Closes: #11270)
- Icedove improvements:
* Stop patching in our default into Torbirdy. We've upstreamed
some parts, and the rest we set with pref branch overrides in /etc/xul-ext/torbirdy.js. (Closes: #10905)
* Use hkps keyserver in Enigmail. (Closes: #10906)
* Default to POP if persistence is enabled,

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[russotto]

I have no idea about the man's guilt or innocence, but it seems to me that if you want to make a guilty man look innocent, an obvious smear campaign like that website is one way to do it.

Movie Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until this becomes a movie?

Re:Movie Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bang Bros is working on it, but recruiting talent has been a pain in the ass.

Re: I don't believe the story

[Applehu Akbar]

" I don't understand what the story is saying. He was sexually harassing men? women? or both? "

You need to understand the Sexual Allegation Rules. Allegations of sexual misconduct by anonymous victims are automatically true and your life is ruined. The victims can stay anonymous, because Tor.

Nothing particularly bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of this stuff seems to have happened when alcohol was involved.
Why is it men have to be completely responsible for their actions while drunk but women don't have to?
I've had my cock grabbed by strange women who were drunk and I never thought to ruin their image and employment prospects because of it. I just shrugged it off because alcohol makes you do stupid shit.

Re:Nothing particularly bad

[Anonymous Coward]

no one who is drunk can give consent.

that is the law.

if you screw someone when they are drunk, you are exposing yourself to charges of rape (sex without consent)

this is a lesson for everyone of every gender, sex, or what have you.

intoxication equals no consent.

if you can't get that through your thick head, STAY IN MOMMA'S BASEMENT AND JACK OFF TO PORN.

Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment" law

[axewolf]

It's not so much to protect women.
It's more to be able to start up witch trials against men who are doing something important.

This is actually the main reason for all law. Law does not exist to create justice in any logical sense. It exists solely as a device to turn the masses against anyone who challenges the status quo.

More to the point, why is this a publicity circus?

[thesupraman]

So, apparently there are a solid number of people who are well aware of things this guy has been doing
that are supposedly solidly covered by normal criminal law, and they have known for some time, and yet
no charges have been pressed, no police have been involved, and no one has had a day in court?

Instead, we have people who can 'verify Anonymous victims' (no, really) and that makes a public and well
organised smeer campaign the correct path forward? With media release level publicity and professional
websites publicly collecting more anonymous accounts against this guy?

My god he really must have pissed in someones beer..

For all I know he is guilty as sin, however vigilante justice is now the socially accepted way of dealing with
what should be reasonably simple criminal complaints? I am not sure that he is the worse offender in
this particular circle of wrongness.

Just as he may well be guilty, he also has the right to face his accusers (in a court of law), have a legal defense,
all those trappings of a just society that we all would demand, dont we? And when, as it seems people are quite
certain, he is found guilty, he will be suitably punished.

But instead we have this - congratulations accusers, you have lowered yourselves to the level you claim he works on.

Damned Apologists

[Anonymous Coward]

Socially awkward males support creep abusing first his authority then his fame to evade punishment for unwanted sexual battery; film at 11.

Witnesses lie

[axewolf]

Witnesses lie and are manipulated.

In the modern world eye witnesses mean absolutely nothing. People can be convinced of anything, including memory of experiences they never had.
This is a consequence of abstracting so many aspects of the world behind multiple layers of virtual interfaces.

Re:Witnesses lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Witnesses lie and are manipulated

Rapists lie and manipulate.

Re:Witnesses lie

[EndlessNameless]

In the modern world eye witnesses mean absolutely nothing.

That is a decision for the jury to make. I seriously doubt that every witness in the world has been tampered with, so it becomes a question of honesty and reliability.

People can be convinced of anything, including memory of experiences they never had.

That is difficult to pull off and requires a concerted effort. Even the experts cannot induce memories very well. Is there any evidence of such an effort in this case?

This is a consequence of abstracting so many aspects of the world behind multiple layers of virtual interfaces.

Meaningless psycho-babble. Mentally sound adults have very little trouble distinguishing between imaginary, physical, hypothetical, and virtual entities.

We consider people who have serious trouble with this to be either handicapped or insane.

Re:Witnesses lie

[axewolf]

"Meaningless psycho-babble"

Listen guy, you should stop blaming your ignorance and lack of will to imagine on other people. Or is it your illiteracy?

"a decision for the jury to make"

oh god. juries exist for the sole reason to remove objectivity from the judgement. guess how often that works in favor of those against an authority? Juries are witnesses too.

This relates to my point very much. Witnesses are conditioned to pass judgement. Their morality interferes with their objectivity. They live lives in which their main function is to judge "good" or "bad". Most people are not really people. They've given up too much of their rational faculties that nature gave them. They are sorting machines.

Technology enables objectivity, yet we rely on subjective interpretation as much as ever. Proof of crookedness, if you care to estimate the dimensions honestly.

Re:Witnesses lie

[Rakarra]

People can be convinced of anything, including memory of experiences they never had.

That is difficult to pull off and requires a concerted effort. Even the experts cannot induce memories very well. Is there any evidence of such an effort in this case?

We're not talking about inducing memory from scratch, just leading questions that get people to misremember things. Or sometimes people do the misremembering on their own, and when you misremember an event, the mind solidifies the false narrative that you came up with and it seems more sure and concrete to you. A well-known example among my age group (40s) involves the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Many people remember "seeing" the disaster live, on television in their classrooms, something that was rarer than we remembered. While some classrooms had televisions wheeled in to watch the shuttle launch, what often happened is that they heard about the disaster when it happened, then they saw footage later of the shuttle explosion, yet the memory of "watching the shuttle launch as it happened" was formed and reinforced. They weren't lying, not knowingly. But their eyewitness recollection is faulty.

The Stanford Journal of Legal Studies had an interesting article called The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony on the problems with eyewitness testimony, and why its reputation within legal circles has fallen while its reputation outside is near-infallible.

Re:Witnesses lie

[david_thornley]

Rather than insults, why don't you try providing evidence that most adult humans can't tell reality from fantasy? Or that they aren't really people? Heck, if Appelbaum isn't really people, why not just shoot it and have done with it? There's very few laws against shooting something that isn't a person.

Juries, in US criminal trials, exist for the purpose of determining the facts of the case. They are not witnesses in any reasonable sense. They seem to tend to believe police officers overmuch, but other than that I haven't observed a tendency to follow authority. They are an attempt at objectivity. They aren't perfect, but I don't see how we're going to do better.

I don't see how technology is supposed to enable objectivity in cases like this. We have events that were unrecorded, so we have to rely on the memory of participants, and we don't have Asimov-style psychic probes.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we have two solid options here:

1) The alleged victims step forward and handle this responsibly in the court of law. This way there's an objective evaluation of facts around this case.

2) Applebaum sues the maintainers of the website for libel. This way there's also an objective evaluation of facts around this case.

If neither of the above scenarios happen, this kind of vigilante justice will gain a semi-official status as a tool to solve similar issues (not good).

Not suprised if it were true

[mvdwege]

Jacob Appelbaum has already shown himself to be a massive dick by launching smear campaigns against critics, so he starts out with one strike against his credibility.

Re:Not suprised if it were true

[Anonymous Coward]

Just gonna repost this here. Its from the same story you linked.

How leading Tor developers and advocates tried to smear me after I reported their US Government ties [pando.com]

Take Tor developer Andrea Shepard. As soon as my story went live, Shepard responded with a torrent of childish insults, calling me “Pandofilth” and “Yasha the Foul,” a “statist propagandist," a "fucktard's fucktard." Shepard accused me of being funded by spooks, and ranted on and on about the various ways in which she said I had performed sexual favors for a male colleague. She hurled similar childish abuse at anyone she caught commenting positively about my article. When readers suggested to Shepard that she should instead offer a point-by-point rebuttal of my article, rather that swearing and insulting at anyone who mentioned it, she responded that my article wasn't worth the effort of rebutting (only insulting), and that I don't deserve to live:

        @Raed667 @headhntr Yasha Levine doesn't merit that kind of effort. Frankly, he doesn't merit *oxygen*.

— Andre (@puellavulnerata) July 18, 2014

Re:Not suprised if it were true

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting a batch of Twitter messages without context possibly makes sense to someone out there, but I can't make heads or tails out of them. Especially when none of the names say anything to me.

Also, I cannot find more than one or two words in total from Appelbaum in that article. Are those really 'smear campaigns'?

What the hell is up with Andrea Shepard though? (quoted by the other AC in the thread.)

Re: I don't believe the story

[cyber-vandal]

In what way are men immune to sexual harassment?

My Jacob Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so here's my Jacob story. I'm going to post as AC despite having an account here with excellent karma. I stand by what I say but I don't wish to have any conversations with those who might want to know more, as will become obvious below. So mod it as you see fit.

Everything I'm telling you would have to already be known to the relevant authorities. (Which is the point.)

I liked Jacob Appelbaum, he had done some really good things. I admired him.
I had a conversation with Jacob a few years ago. This is a direct one-on-one in-person conversation. We were talking about teaching hardware hacking and at some point the subject came up of his hacker outreach work. He got to talking about a trip he had taken to Iraq to teach hardware hacking and stuff. This was while there was still a big U.S. presence there and a lot of fighting. That sounded cool at first. Maybe generous and kind of daring. But as he went on it turned out he was teaching teenagers how to hack remote controls, like garage door openers and stuff. Not bombs or anything, but just how to hack remotes, ya know, and rig them to things.

  I was stunned. I mean, these are basically young men of fighting age, in a war zone. What do you think they might do with this new skill?
I didn't know what to say. I asked, "Don't you think that's a bit irresponsible, under the circumstances?"
He said something that I can't remember verbatim about knowledge being generally good. I was annoyed, I pressed him on it. Like, what if they blow up some poor kid from Oakland? Eventually he got annoyed and went on a long rant about how it's their country and we have no right to be there and so whatever happens happens, and related things, etc.

I didn't even respond. At best this is completely idiotic. At worst, he just admitted a very serious crime.

Ok, so I am against the Iraq war. I'll say so and put a sticker on my car and vote accordingly on election day. But WHAT. THE. FUCK. To actually go there and share your abilities in a way that contributes to their own sectarian violence AND gets people from your own country killed is in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING UNIVERSE. I can't express the feeling I get thinking about this. It's like it's just too offensive to even qualify as STUPID. It comes to STUPID's door and is turned away on grounds of extreme repulsiveness. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is so beyond the pale that my mind is unable to properly categorize it. Holy fucking shit.

I was and still am completely amazed and the irresponsibility and sheer narcissism of this kind of thinking. I have secretly considered him to be a dangerous monster ever since. The rest of the community now agrees. There is no happiness in this, but there is relief.

Now people talk about how he gets harassed by the authorities. It might be because he has done important and valuable work for privacy, which is true, and they don't like that and so they're messing with him. I believe this is probably true. It could ALSO be because he POKES THEM IN THE FUCKING EYE until they come after him, because he is a narcissist and if they are hounding him it will confirm his own sense of importance. That must feel good to a narcissist, being important like that.

Some people do something good, and because it is good, they are considered heroes. And some people really really want to be heroes. So they look for things that are undeniably good to do so they can become heroes. There is a pretty big difference between these two kinds of people. The very noble fight for rights and freedom attracts both. The second type attaches themselves to noble causes and when their true motivations are known, those causes are diminished.

The Mannings and the Snowdens are shadowed by the Assanges and Appelbaums. They are diminished by them. And yet, good work of the former could not have been done without the undeniably good work of the latter, done for both the right and wrong reasons.

Re:My Jacob Story

[rMortyH]

Wow. It's a shame no one will ever see this.

Re:My Jacob Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try but this is as overwritten and hollow sounding as the "heartfelt" stories on the campaign site.

Re:My Jacob Story

[AC-x]

I've got an Appelbaum story too! I've met him a couple of times at gallery after parties and conferences in Berlin, had a bit of a chat about internet security issues, he told me I should go to the TOR developer conference, err, that's about it.

Re:My Jacob Story

[Anonymous Coward]

cool story, bro

...this is so beyond the pale that my mind is unable to properly categorize it

..I was and still am completely amazed and the irresponsibility and sheer narcissism of this kind of thinking. I have secretly considered him to be a dangerous monster ever since . The rest of the community now agrees. There is no happiness in this, but there is relief.

'The rest of the community now agrees.' really?, from where I'm sitting with my popcorn the community as you call it has split into 'pro' 'anti' 'who cares?' and 'troll' factions (and those are the only ones I've identified so far)

..The very noble fight for rights and freedom attracts both..

..The Mannings and the Snowdens are shadowed by the Assanges and Appelbaums. They are diminished by them.

meh, poor attempts at purple prose, 3/10, try harder..

Re:My Jacob Story

[tetraverse]

It's understandable why you would post that character assasination anonymously:

Ok, so here's my Jacob story. I'm going to post as AC despite having an account here with excellent karma. I stand by what I say but I don't wish to have any conversations with those who might want to know more, as will become obvious below. So mod it as you see fit.

Everything I'm telling you would have to already be known to the relevant authorities. (Which is the point.)

I liked Jacob Appelbaum, he had done some really good things. I admired him. I had a conversation with Jacob a few years ago. This is a direct one-on-one in-person conversation. We were talking about teaching hardware hacking and at some point the subject came up of his hacker outreach work. He got to talking about a trip he had taken to Iraq to teach hardware hacking and stuff. This was while there was still a big U.S. presence there and a lot of fighting. That sounded cool at first. Maybe generous and kind of daring. But as he went on it turned out he was teaching teenagers how to hack remote controls, like garage door openers and stuff. Not bombs or anything, but just how to hack remotes, ya know, and rig them to things.

I was stunned. I mean, these are basically young men of fighting age, in a war zone. What do you think they might do with this new skill? I didn't know what to say. I asked, "Don't you think that's a bit irresponsible, under the circumstances?" He said something that I can't remember verbatim about knowledge being generally good. I was annoyed, I pressed him on it. Like, what if they blow up some poor kid from Oakland? Eventually he got annoyed and went on a long rant about how it's their country and we have no right to be there and so whatever happens happens, and related things, etc.

I didn't even respond. At best this is completely idiotic. At worst, he just admitted a very serious crime.

Ok, so I am against the Iraq war. I'll say so and put a sticker on my car and vote accordingly on election day. But WHAT. THE. FUCK. To actually go there and share your abilities in a way that contributes to their own sectarian violence AND gets people from your own country killed is in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING UNIVERSE. I can't express the feeling I get thinking about this. It's like it's just too offensive to even qualify as STUPID. It comes to STUPID's door and is turned away on grounds of extreme repulsiveness. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is so beyond the pale that my mind is unable to properly categorize it. Holy fucking shit.

I was and still am completely amazed and the irresponsibility and sheer narcissism of this kind of thinking. I have secretly considered him to be a dangerous monster ever since. The rest of the community now agrees. There is no happiness in this, but there is relief.

Now people talk about how he gets harassed by the authorities. It might be because he has done important and valuable work for privacy, which is true, and they don't like that and so they're messing with him. I believe this is probably true. It could ALSO be because he POKES THEM IN THE FUCKING EYE until they come after him, because he is a narcissist and if they are hounding him it will confirm his own sense of importance. That must feel good to a narcissist, being important like that.

Some people do something good, and because it is good, they are considered heroes. And some people really really want to be heroes. So they look for things that are undeniably good to do so they can become heroes. There is a pretty big difference between these two kinds of people. The very noble fight for rights and freedom attracts both. The second type attaches themselves to noble causes and when their true motivations are known, those causes are diminished.

The Mannings and the Snowdens are shadowed by the Assanges and Appelbaums. They are diminished by them. And yet, good work of the former could not have been done without the undeniably good work of the latter, done for both the right and wrong reasons.

Possible bright side

[Mathinker]

Well, no matter whether the allegations are true or not, we now presumable have one highly motivated and capable pair of eyeballs which will carefully audit all new commits to the TOR code base.

The other possibility is that he'll fork and ignore TOR development altogether. Might be OK, but only if he can convince enough people to run nodes on his competing network. His competing network might be able use TOR as an exit route (running an exit node is the highest risk part of such a network).

Re:Possible bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's wait and see how this unfolds. Uncertainty is the most destructive power at play here.

Innocent until proven guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

By law anybody is considered innocent until proven guilty (in dubio pro reo). I don't know if he's guilty or not, that's not up to me (or us) to decide. If one (or more) of his accusators take him to court, it's the courts task to make that decision.

This public shaming in the court of oppinons is disgusting. How is the man supposed to defend himself?

Re:Innocent until proven guilty

[Aerokii]

That applies nicely to the court system and the state. It's less applicable in tech forums home to a wide variety of people from varying nations and jurisdictions.

We're allowed to have an opinion on the matter. Based on available information, I think these accusations have merit.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

My god he really must have pissed in someones beer..

FBI, NSA, Congress...

Noticed a pattern in how anybody who opposes the mantra "everything the government does is secret, and everybody else don't get to have secrets" are accused of sexual misconduct?

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at a picture of Jacob Appelbaum, I find it hard to believe that he could intimidate or bully anyone. The guy is a scrawny, four-eyed nerd. He'd get laughed at if he tried to pull some shit like that.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

anything other than an orchestrated take down of the TOR project

The people behind projects like this tend to be always a little out there, anti-social/unsocialised somewhere on the autistic spectrum types, so it is possible that this is all just drama.

But no, seriously, this is a straight up social takedown. And reiserfs proves it can work. My guess is that a few half-crazy types were planted in to rupture the porject from within. The moral of today's story is that, if you want to co-develop software, do it over the internet. Never meet these people in real life.

Discrediting: the American way

[cloud.pt]

Do you see a pattern here? Every single male individual that happens to participate in something that hampers US Government surveillance, will usually be faced with sexual charges or be painted with dubious life choices. Assange and this guy are clear examples, and Snowden's gf professional detail was also outed pretty fast (for those who don't know, she worked in the "exotic dancing industry"). I guess the "traitor" label just wasn't cutting it anymore so they decided to go with the "rapist" one instead.

Re:Discrediting: the American way

[hyades1]

There's certainly reason to give your idea serious consideration, but based on what's emerging, it looks like this guy might really be a huge a-hole. Right from the get-go, there was a lot of information available about how questionable the efforts were to get Assange back to Sweden. I have little doubt he'd have been on a private jet to some US gulag before he got within shouting distance of a Swedish courtroom. And it's astonishing how fast the stories about Snowden's girlfriend moved to the back burner once the media found out she was a hottie, and generated more pro-Snowden sentiment than the reverse.

But this is starting to look more like a Jian Ghomeshi situation than either of the others. Ghomeshi was acquitted of all charges, but it has become obvious he's a twisted little prick in need of a really good beating. It's starting to look like Appelbaum was cut from the same cloth.

Re:Discrediting: the American way

[cloud.pt]

I agree with you but the problem resides exactly in the fact that there is doubt. I can't be sure Assange or Appelbaum did or did not whatever they're accused of, nobody can. And the Gvm't is playing with that to influence public opinion. For what's it worth, I'd rather go with "innocent until proven guilty" rather than act out like the TOR project and immediately lay off people without substantial proof. All they have are anonymous allegations and/or one-sided stories. I agree that in harassment/rape and many female-bound abuse it is very hard to not have "her word against his" scenarios, but if there's two things we're certain of is this person is technically competent and that his actions seriously affect those with power to influence public opinion. The only thing we can't be certain is that hearsay is nothing more than what we, as a society with a collective opinion, make of it.

Re:Discrediting: the American way

[coldsalmon]

Even if these allegations are politically motivated, it doesn't mean that they are false. There is an embarrassingly large amount of sexual assault, rape, and sexism in the world, and especially in the IT industry. There is a ready-made avenue to prosecute men in the tech sector because a whole lot of them engage in criminal sexual behavior. If we could stop the culture of sexism, the ready-made discrediting and prosecution would disappear. All men can help out simply by not behaving like creepy assholes, and by calling out those who do. And if you're going to challenge government surveillance, for fuck's sake don't go around raping people all the time!

Re:Discrediting: the American way

[110010001000]

Especially in the IT industry??? I take it you have never worked in another industry.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing Vigilante Justice with Free Speech. Vigilante Justice involves breaking the law. If Appelbaum's accusers beat him senseless or killed him, or detained him, or key'd his car, or even _touched_ him they would be vigilantes.

Instead they shared their stories in a public forum.

That's Free Speech in a Free Society.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I know about Assange and now Appelbaum.

Who else has been accused?

So where is the beef

[Anonymous Coward]

So where are the rapes which were the original accusation against Appelbaum? As far as I know making sexual advances or acting as an asshole is not a crime even if the stories are true.

Also I would hope that there would be some way of confirming that this or that text in the internet is actually written by the person who it claims to be. Is there anyway mathematicly prove content like public/private key scheme and is there any communities that advocates that kinda behavior?

Re:Smmary of their Stories

[RuffMasterD]

Good summary. I am sure many more people stood up to this guy, and we will never read about them, so this could be the tip of the iceberg we see here. But how many victims need to come forward before you decide this guy is bad for business and should get the boot? Hundreds? Thousands? At some point you need to stop blaming victims and start blaming the creep. I don't care if this guy is a programming superstar, if other talented people say to themselves "fuck this shit, I'm out of here" because of his continuous harassment then he is a liability.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[moronoxyd]

Seriously, there is no way that this is anything other than an orchestrated take down of the TOR project since they can't eliminate it technically nor in the courts.

And 'they' managed to get three people working on TOR, including a senior member of the team, to take TOR down!

Is your post a case of 'I just ignore the information that doesn't support my conspiracy theory', or do you really believe that everyone working at TOR except Appelbaum is working for the enemy?

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Development should be done remotely, and preferably even using pseudonyms. Let code talk and not personalities.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

You only get to share those kind of stories if they're true. Otherwise it's libel, which it is not protected free speech.

Sounds just like Jackie

[Lawrence_Bird]

And probably turns out the same way.

I don't get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you actually assault someone over IRC from your mom's basement?

Tabloids on Slashdot?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Three current Tor employees -- two of which agreed to be named on the record -- have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net.

That site means dick. I suggest everybody use Tor anyway, knowing there are shadow gov agencies that will flood Internet sites with rumor stories like this.

Use NoScript (noscript.net) and remove any and all Google XSS permissions in Options/Advanced. Also uncheck all ABE boxes. Use Adblock as well.

Eric Schmidt is Pentagon. https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/06/1834211/eric-schmidt-gets-a-job-at-the-pentagon?sdsrc=rel

Google is spy. Facebook is obviously spy as well. Twitter is spy. Microsoft is spy. Apple is China-friendly, you figure it out. That is all of your phones and IP addresses connected to who you are if you use them on Facebook and put real info. Yes, they are coordinated like that.

*Today* is a VERY BAD DAY FOR THE CIA.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[dave420]

They don't. You just have a confirmation bias.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it what it is: slander. This whole thing should be in a court with proper discovery, full stop. Instead it will probably be end up in civil court.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

A conspiracy of half-crazy plants made Hans Reiser murder his fucking wife?

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[MightyMartian]

It's rather sad Reiser still has his defenders.

Re: I don't believe the story

[gsslay]

Was he not married?

How is this relevant?

He was sexually harassing men? women? or both?

Does it matter?

Men can simply say fuck off how can you sexually harass a man?

You have no idea how sexual harassment works. Particularly in a workplace/professional setting.

So I assume they are saying he was sexually harassing women?

Based on your reasoning, your assumption is unsafe.

And I think he is not an unpleasant looking fella and I would love to be sexually harassed by him.

All becomes clear. You're not just wrong, you are also an idiot.

Re:So did he sexually assault females or males?

[Anonymous Coward]

Males are 10x more likely to be assraped

Isn't that entirely due to rape in the prison population? Something that male sitcom writers endlessly joke about, that male police officers use as threats, that male prison officers do nothing about and that the mainly male judiciary ignores when giving men long prison sentences.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[bv728]

Going to the police around sexual harassment has a poor track record of going anywhere, even with witnesses. Most of the time it winds up around competing accusations. Evidence is often scarce, and with charismatic folks involved, people may not realize the extent they've been manipulated until later. Abusers often target people who are not in a position to speak up, where their career could be at risk. Conventions are also a giant issue - doing all of this hundreds of miles distant even further reduces the odds of success, and ratchets up the stress. And, of course, the stress of spending the next few years being literally forced to deal with your abuser by the legal system.

That's before you get into things like real cases where police gaslighted a rape victim into recanting, prosecuted them for reporting the rape, and only come around once they catch the rapist who kept the physical evidence of the rape exactly as reported. Or the public attacks against the credibility of people who report to police, have witnesses, photographic and video evidence and pursue a restraining order, exactly as people tell them to.

So you wind up not reporting, and maybe convince yourself it was a one time thing, or maybe you played too big a role in it, and he's too important... then someone else mentions something. And someone else. And a fourth person. And it snowballs, and you wind up in a situation where none of you can make effective claims in court, but something is obviously wrong. Remaining silent means that others are going to go into interactions with this person unprepared. So, you say something.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

The legal system in the US is a form of punishment. Having interacted with it a few times, it is completely rational for victims to want to avoid further damage by exposing themselves to it.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, in your world, nothing can get done unless you have mommy and daddy court system handling it for you. The court system is not how free sovreign individuals with the capacity to take direct action and have a say in their life solve problems. They solve problems with 'vigilante justice' Man boys who are brainwashed and thoroughly indoctrinated by mass media believe that they are helpless and everything must be done through the 'justice system' are the types that write this and spend all day watching 'law and order'

Why would you petition the same court system that said slavery was perfectly acceptable for redress of any wrongs that have been committed against you. The court system does not care about justice. The court system cares about keeping the status quo, and the masses (such as yourself) in a condition of self inflicted helplessness.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[kellymcdonald78]

Slander is spoken, libel is written https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[TheCarp]

That is the hard thing. The allegations are not entirely unbelievable; yet.... its also not like infiltration and use of sexual allegations against people is unheard of. In fact, its pretty well acknowledged as a tried and true tactic of intelligence services around the world.

Re:Oh, good, a Slashdot thread on sexual harassmen

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair, Slashdot has got a lot better at these "controversial" topics since the new overlords took over. I don't know what they have done about the trolls, and particularly the troll moderation block vote and mod bombing, but at least we get to hear both sides of the argument these days. People can now post with only moderate fear of being modded to -1 hell for saying something unpopular, which from a karma perspective is survivable.

Thanks to the team for continual improvements. Slashdot is better than it's been for many years.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[AmiMoJo]

Do you have any examples of this? Someone who clearly did not do any unwanted sexual touching, forced kissing etc. who was accused of sexual harassment because they challenged the status quo?

I can't think of any. Assange was accused of rape, not sexual harassment, and freely admits to actually having (consensual) sex with those women. Anyone else you would like to cite to support your claim?

rape is not that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I think is about time we take this rap thing out of the darkness and into the light
I know it might be offensive for some people specially white people or cops, but COOME OOON, its not that big of a deal, and the rape stuff always comes with a sticker so everybody that picks it up knows its RAPE and not rock, or classical, or electronica, so, do we really need to demonize rap? foreal? People that hate rape are just racists, thats it, i said it, i went there, handle it!!!!!

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[AmiMoJo]

Just as he may well be guilty, he also has the right to face his accusers (in a court of law), have a legal defense,
all those trappings of a just society that we all would demand

Of course, but you also can't force people to make police reports, or force the police to take them seriously, or force the prosecutor to take the case forward. In this situation, if he does want his day in court, he will have to sue his accusers. Some of them have come forward publicly, and the anonymous ones can be identified by a court if he can convince them that there is a case to be made.

You can't demand someone not say something because exercising their free speech creates a burden on you. Such an idea is incompatible with freedom of speech.

Re: I don't believe the story

[Anonymous Coward]

well, being extremely ugly stops pretty much every harassment, that and crazy eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6KjdrNn4A
example ^^

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

I have watched enough of his presentations to see some coercive power seeking behavior on stage. When I saw it it didnt jibe with free speech and the ability to have opinions different than him.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

And if those stories they're sharing end up being not true, it's called libel. You'll find that this is definitely not considered to be under the Free Speech umbrella.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to make a guilty man look innocent...

I think you got that backwards. They would be trying to make an innocent man look guilty.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

The CIA discovered a long time ago that character assassination was just as effective, and much less messy, than the kind with a bullet. They used it on Julian Assange and many others, My favorite is a certain IMF chairman who made the very stupid mistake of challenging the supremacy of the U.S. dollar. Big mistake. At least with that one they dropped the charges the same week his successor took office. That sucessor was suddenly oddly quiet on the topic of introducing a new global currency to compete with the dollar (imagine that).

Pro-tip: If you're doing something the U.S. government doesn't like, don't assume that the girl who's all over you at the bar or who shows up at your hotel room telling you she's DTF is into you for your stunning personality. Don't let your ego or your dumb dick be used as a weapon against you.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, but you also can't force people to make police reports, or force the police to take them seriously, or force the prosecutor to take the case forward.

That's how it's supposed to work. If you have a problem with the guy, the onus is on you to file those reports and convince the police and prosecutors to act.

In this situation, if he does want his day in court, he will have to sue his accusers.

That is ass backwards. As above, if the accusers have a problem with the guy, it is up to the accusers to sue, or convince the state to sue. The civilized world works on the assumption of innocent until proven guilty. The onus is on the prosecution to present a case against the accused, especially on serious crimes like rape.

You can't demand someone not say something because exercising their free speech creates a burden on you

Who's doing that?

This Jacob guy's response isn't screaming to shut that site down. He's using his own speech to say the site is wrong and shouldn't be trusted

Neither did the poster you replied to. He was also just using his speech to criticize the site and the idea behind it.

The ones who hate free speech are coming form the pro-feminist pro-social justice Left. They're the ones protesting and driving conservative voices from speaking on college campuses. They're the ones demanding safe spaces where they're free from criticism. They're the ones who want to force other people to give them trigger warnings as they just can't stand having their feelings hurt by other people's free speech.

Interesting Timing

[Uncle Warthog]

Regardless of Jake's innocence or guilt, I find the timing on this to be very interesting: Just after a major change in management and before what appears to be an upcoming change in the TOR protocol. I'm hoping that's just coincidental.

Re:Interesting Timing

[Uncle Warthog]

Some more interesting timing: Apparently Jake's last day was two whole weeks ago, May 25th, and he was officially shown the door on the 27th. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it's certainly interesting.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

bullies are often (usually) weak frightened people with small/broken senses of self. this is why they have to act in bullying ways to feel big powerful, not small and weak.

scrawny socially awkward nerds often fit that pattern, 4-eyed or not. I cannot tell you how many times in my 4 decades in high tech I've run into that type of personality and behavior.

deal with a bully by fighting back. generally they go find a target that doesn't fight back; but not always (sometimes, you get fired; ask me how I know).

The bigger issue

[Britz]

I read some of the accounts and feel that there is a different issue that is not being discussed: The community that allowed this all to happen right in front of their own eyes.

Just now they disavow the abuser and tell the victims to go to the police. But the justice system is not really any help in most abuse cases. First of all nothing criminal happened in many of the stories. Yet the actions taken by Mr. Applebaum, while not criminal, where despicable none the less. And he did so in front of numerous witnesses. By not speaking up and putting an end to them they condoned his actions and encouraged this behaviour. People at the Tor project admit they knew what was going on. Applebaum may have created the toxic environment in the first place, but the people that didn't put an end to it or even helped him bully the victims into silence abetted him.

The community is to blame for this at least in part.

Even sexual abuse cases are complicated, because they often happen within an existing relationship with existing trust and power structures. A lot of abuse is not black and white, but in a grey area, when it comes to the criminal assessment. Just because someone is a severe asshole in a relationship and abuses their partner doesn't mean a crime happened.

There is currently a criminal case in the news about a rape that happened on the campus of Standford university. Two witnesses came upon a scene where a person was raping an unconscious body. Even though this seems to be a clear cut case, the victim still had to answer to questions regarding her sex life and endure a lengthy trial. Even though she wasn't conscious during the crime so couldn't answer any questions about it. Imagine how complicated cases are where the victim was conscious. I don't even know how I would or could design a trial or justice system that does a better job. In the end, most sexual abuse cases are about the question which side tells the more believable story. Which is far from perfect.

The fact that the communities around Applebaum (Tor was not his only project, he was part of the CCC, cDc and possibly more) simply sit back and tell the victims to go to the police instead of opening investigations about the issue is deeply troubling.

Any project that Applebaum was part of and does not at least issue apologies for allowing this to go on and taking steps to prevent similar events in the future are highly suspicious.

How many more Applebaums are out there, working inside Tor, inside the Chaos Computer Club, inside the Cult of the Dead Cow and abuse helpless victims?

Re:The bigger issue

[Anonymous Coward]

What really hurts me is how this heterosexual rapist psychopath macho has been able to pose as "queer" and compare the rape allegations against him with "character-assassination tactics [] against fellow members of the LGBT community" and none of his former coworkers have commented on that aspect. It doesn't matter what gender he's attracted to (even though all his known sex partners/objects seem to be women), he shouldn't get away with the insinuation that he's a victim of homophobia.

Re:The bigger issue

[Anonymous Coward]

If it isn't criminal, then it isn't a problem, and no one has any obligation beyond what the law declares.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I know about Assange and now Appelbaum.

Who else has been accused?

Well there was that IMF chairman who thought it would be a smart move to challenge the supremacy of the U.S. Dollar.

Spoiler alert: In a twist ending, it turned out that this was not, in fact, a smart move.

Snakes in Suits, when Psychopaths go to work

[Anonymous Coward]

This explains all you need to know, and why douche bags seem to so commonly succeed in screwing over others.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Snake...

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[Anonymous Coward]

If he doesn't believe in free speech why is he working on the TOR project? It is the cornerstone of the project. TOR was made by the govt to talk privately and was forked to protect free speech online. Or at least that's what we are told. He could be working on any other projects with the knowledge he has.

So because of his talks on stage, that gave you the impression that he's done something wrong?

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[Anonymous Coward]

My anecdote is the total opposite of this.

“Forest” platonically sharing a bed wi

[tetraverse]

'“Forest” writes that she woke up one night while platonically sharing a bed with Appelbaum to find her pants unzipped, his hands in her underwear and touching her vagina.'

The only time a male would share a bed "platonically" with a women is when the male is deceased. At the risk of looking a little paranoid, this is precisely the same way they discredited Assange, having two women come forward with accusations, who turned out later on worked for a CIA front organization.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[axewolf]

What a world of funhouse mirrors you must live in. You have no imagination. You honestly think imagination has no place in your view of the world. Good job letting the world have its way with you!

You are asking me to tailor-make a persuasive presentation for you specifically.

Instead, I ask you, what is the proof that any man who as ever been accused of sexual harassment or rape actually did it? Finding his DNA inside her? What if it was consentual?

There is no way, no way at all, to bring this matter into objective terms. That is obvious, all lawmakers would see this, and so they know it and made these laws anyway. Why?
Who has no real grip on objectivity? Women. Okay make some animal noises. "SEXIST!!!!". But it's true. It's a consequence of biology. The proof is in sexual dimorphism. They have strengths against men, but it is not in their rationality. A strong argument is in our history. Men have had much more immediate need for quick thinking in objective matters, and so they were selected to be rational above women. Exploration, combat, construction, etc. For hundreds of thousands of years men surpassed women in these ways. Sexual dimorphism not only in humans but in all apes proves this pattern is even more ancient in some aspects, going back millions of years. I digress.

Women needed to be placated so they would be economically productive in the new paradigm.
But that's not the main point. It was not women's instinctual behavior that was the problem for the industrializing world; they would go to work regardless of having children to watch etc. The main point was to subdue the instincts of men. They are more complex in the problems they cause for society. This was a golden chance for the society to establish a regiment of constant whipping against men. By punishing their sexual instincts, they encourage them to be mentally weak and compliant. They remove their ability to be fulfilled, not just be removing the possibility for most to mate easily, but removing the possibility to even attempt mating. The extreme cases being homosexuals who would never attempt mating and indeed find it disgusting to participate in.

Just like all law, this is a way to destroy those who would challenge the status quo.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Rakarra]

Of course.
"The people who write the software I like are SAINTS! There's no way this isn't some big conspiracy that everyone who actually knows him is taking part in!"

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Rakarra]

And reiserfs proves it can work. My guess is that a few half-crazy types were planted in to rupture the porject from within

LOL. Fucking REISER is your example? You seriously couldn't do better than him?

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[jdavidb]

So, apparently there are a solid number of people who are well aware of things this guy has been doing that are supposedly solidly covered by normal criminal law, and they have known for some time, and yet no charges have been pressed, no police have been involved, and no one has had a day in court? Instead, we have people who can 'verify Anonymous victims' (no, really) and that makes a public and well organised smeer campaign the correct path forward?

Read what the prosecutor said about the case against Woody Allen on behalf of Dylan Farrow. Read the letter from Brock Turner's victim and learn about what she went through just to get the guy a six months' sentence. Read about Bill Cosby's victims. Find out why criminal complaints are not the path forward.

however vigilante justice is now the socially accepted way of dealing with what should be reasonably simple criminal complaints

This is not vigilante justice. It's just telling the truth publicly, and it encourages other victims to report these crimes sooner and more regularly.

he also has the right to face his accusers (in a court of law), have a legal defense, all those trappings of a just society that we all would demand, dont we?

No, that's only if they charge him in a court of law. This is just telling the truth. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody should know the good news.

this is worse than i thought

[Anonymous Coward]

are you n-words reading the site? holly mother of black jesus, that shit is HILARIOUS, theres no fucking way real people wrote that shit, theres at least 1 thing that does not make sense in every single fucking paragraph!!!!!! its fucking amazing, not only reads like a 12 year old wrote the stuff, but it makes no sense

"we were just introduced and right then he proposed to watch me and my partner fuck and we felt very humilliated"

next paragraph

"i slept with him many times but as friends"

next
"as i woke up he was rubbing my clit" (must be a heavy sleeper since she said she was fully clothed)

are this men/woman born without a trace of testosterone or what, so you worked with the guy and got in bed with him even tho he humilliated you the very first day you meet? really????

holly shit all my life i had it all backwards, instead of being nice i should humilliate girls so they will sleep with me and eventually i get to rub their clits!!!!

it was so simple!!! thnx slashdot!!!

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Coren22]

How slanderous of you!

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Coren22]

You can't demand someone not say something because exercising their free speech creates a burden on you. Such an idea is incompatible with freedom of speech.

Um, that is kind of incompatible with libel and slander laws. It isn't free speech to tell a false story about someone else. Also, if the stories are true, but the tellers can't prove it, they can still be prosecuted for libel (in this case).

Notice I am not a lawyer, and neither are you, this is not legal advice.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Coren22]

It's just telling the truth publicly, and it encourages other victims to report these crimes sooner and more regularly.

Correction, this is telling a possible truth, neither you nor I were there, so we cannot independently determine if these accounts are true. Until any of these cases (the slander case included) are prosecuted, there is no way for anyone to know if this is a case of slander, or a serial harasser. Just like Cosby in fact.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Coren22]

After he led the police to his wife's body, you would think people would stop defending him.

https://www.wired.com/2008/07/...

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[jdavidb]

I'm writing about the point of view of a person looking for options when they are a victim and legal recourse is inadequate. In such a case the person knows full well what the truth is.

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember that one a bit too well... A truly fucking sad story.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[AmiMoJo]

In Germany and in fact all of Europe, libel is not a crime. You can't be prosecuted for it. It's a purely civil matter, people can sue you if they can show that it is both untrue and caused them some kind of loss.

Even if they are sued, it doesn't stop them saying it again. It is possible to get an injunction sometimes, which does go against freedom of speech. I don't think Germany has them though, they are a UK thing.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[david_thornley]

IANAL, but I believe that, in the US, believing what you say is true is a defense against libel. If Appelbaum can show that the claimed incidents probably didn't happen, he can win. I believe the standard would be preponderance of the evidence.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

How stupid of you Coren the clown KING of FAIL hahahaha https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody defends you Coren and you couldn't defend yourself when apk destroyed you for all to see 3 times hahahaha https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk could get you for libeling him Coren22. Instead he made you publicly eat your words for all to see hahaha https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments.... but of course he also realizes you're a penniless fool buried up to your eyeballs in payments and you're worthless as well as an utter imbecile.

honestly...

[haedus]

I watched this fella' on youtube giving a presentation once and totally did not dig the experience. Some words that come to mind as far as first impressions go would be, superiority complex, condescending, with a hint of verbal assault-i-ness... It's not uncommon to see, some times, very intelligent/competent/capable/experienced people act that way some times, and I'll admit I'm a total ninny; but, I got the feeling it was more some expose` on how the audience was stupid because they are the way they are; rather than, a talk about how the US constitution is being violated and their are serious privacy issues at stake the world over, such and such... That being said, from the brief first impression I could make on the fella', he seemed like kind of an attack dog. Is he a moral individual? Did he do some sexual stuff he shouldn't have? Could be. Dude seemed like a total douche, though. I see no reason why the military would care or want to have a program like TOR destroyed. The US Justice system, drug sniffer types, yeah they would.... I say there is probably some truth to the situation. I'm a damned ninny and the fucker bothered me, so I can imagine him pissing off enough sensitive people, slowly over time, building up weight. Then all it takes is some sureptitious noise or otherwise to start the avalanche that's already been waiting to happen...

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[Anonymous Coward]

It gave me the impression that the true purpose of his crusade is something other than free speech, mainly the accumulation of power over others. Power seeking personality of course might tie in with being a rapist. I have heard that rape is about power not neccesarily sex. You got to watch people though who in preaching something contradict the very thing they preach.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

Most bullies tend to be bigger and dumber than everyone else. That's why they pick on others. The reason it works is because they make others feel in fear of getting beaten up.

Take one look at a picture of Jacob Appelbaum and tell me with a straight face that he looks intimidating. Even if he had a gun, I think people would still laugh at him if he tried to bully anyone.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because Coren is a weak-ass faggot. You could fuck his wife/girlfriend in her ass right in front of him and he couldn't do a thing about it but run to the corner and sob like a little bitch.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

he also has the right to face his accusers (in a court of law), have a legal defense,
all those trappings of a just society that we all would demand, dont we?

I don't. What right would that be? He can't force them to press charges against him. But if he wants to face them in a court of law, which I doubt, he can always sue them for libel.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[cryptizard]

I mean, forget about all those cases where there are videos of guys having sex with unconscious women, or women who are vehemently telling them not to. That's not "proof" I guess. By your logic you could never have proof of any crime. If I get you alone in a room and beat the shit out of you, maybe you did that to yourself? We can never know objectively. The only difference here is that you have some weird issues with women that you are projecting onto the situation.

Re:“Forest” platonically sharing a bed

[cryptizard]

That kind of logic is insulting to men. To imply that no man can resist groping a woman that is close enough to them is ridiculous and reductive.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Coren22]

Get some help, you really need it. Delusions aren't healthy.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Coren22]

Wow, APK resorting to personal attacks like they matter.

Seek help man.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Coren22]

Seek help, psychiatric disease is something that can be treated.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Coren22 you brought it on yourself with your lies APK tore you apart on https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments.... and your butthurt signatures about APK too & putting him down when he's not around bitch tactics too.

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth hurt Coren22? That's not him. APK signs his posts like where he shredded your personal attacks on him https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[axewolf]

You're clearly insane

Nice crafting of strawmen to ignore the issue and masturbate out your stupid emotions about an issue you don't understand

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[axewolf]

Just to help you with your horrible reading comprehension:

Authority decides objectivity. That is becoming a simpler and simpler truth. The authority of our society is unjust. As long as it stands, there is no justice.

having the shit beaten out of you is not the worst thing.
being raped is not the worst thing.
maybe some of the blame should be on you for your acts of free will that led to these circumstances? That's not even a question usually. Because free will has been removed from most people by the current authority. It's simply a matter of removing the parts of the machine that are working counter to its function. This is injustice because the parts are greater than the machine itself. They are more complex and wonderful and have far more potential to fulfill humanity.

But hey, I guess the pittance you get from your job is enough to ignore all of this and to ignore any possible questioning of your circumstances. If you ever get any real success it will be even more reason to go with the flow! Apparently it boils down to a question of character, and most people have all of theirs removed at a young age.

Re:More to the point, why is this a publicity circ

[Anonymous Coward]

Coren22 speak for yourself caught lying about APK and he made you eat your words for it publicly humiliating you https://slashdot.org/comments.... , http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , https://slashdot.org/comments.... Eating your words isn't healthy! It's not good nutrition hahahaha.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[cryptizard]

lolwut? I don't think you know what a straw man is. I directly refuted his argument that there is no proof that any man accused of rape actually did it, which is patently absurd. There are plenty cases with video evidence or multiple eye witnesses.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[cryptizard]

I think you believe that what you are writing is a coherent thought, but I assure you it is not.

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see. Whenever the government wants to shut someone down, lately, they suddenly become rapist or pediphiles.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[axewolf]

Okay I'm sorry, I'm dealing with a retard here, I was giving you too much credit.
Yes cherrypick the part you want to address. Completely wrap yourself up in a false implication that if valid is nothing but accessory to the argument and THEN address the entire statement.

Do you have any idea how tiny the proportion of cases of rape with clear-cut evidence are, like the cases you mentioned? "Plenty"? Plenty enough for what? For you to use an excuse for completely abandoning your rational faculties in perceiving the world around you?

You are so low in your consciousness. You are stuck, focused on an point that is several layers behind the important point that was addressed.

You have no argument against the parent, but you want to object, so like the little rat you are you chew at the corner hoping the contents will spill out.

Re:Behold the real reason for "sexual harassment"

[cryptizard]

You apparently don't want to have an actual conversation. At no point did I ever insult you or devolve the to ad hominem attacks, and I have better things to do with my time than name call with random people on the internet. Have a good day, and I hope you find a better outlet for these feelings.

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that if he does not pursue a law suit, it is as good as an admission of guilt. If someone did this to me, and it wasn't true, a libel suit would be step ONE.

If on the other hand, I were guilty, then I would say the web site was just a malicious attempt to discredit me, and hope that it goes away.

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

Ook, so Strauss-Kahn did not violently assault a hotel maid? He did not force her to suck his d***? He been accused of multiple sex related crimes.

How do you know that he is innocent? Or did the CIA force him to do it?

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, where's the Snowden sex crime allegations?

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares APK.

Re: More to the point, why is this a publicity cir

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so let Appelbaum sue them, if it's libel. Still not 'vigilante justice.'

Looks like it's falling apart

[russotto]

Jill Bahring: I Was Not Assaulted by Jacob Appelbaum

So the only incident that isn't anything but anonymous rumor turns out not to be assault at all, but merely a consensual public display of affection. The rest is unsubstantiated smear campaign.

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpr

[TheCarp]

> You got to watch people though who in preaching something contradict the very thing they preach.

Very much this. Not everyone is ideological, and not everyone who is has an ideology that values openness and truth.

Some pretty bad guys often have their interests pretty well aligned with free speech activists. Plus people are complicated and can come up with all sorts of twisted logic to justify things.

But I am also pretty familiar at this point with seeing people who did very good work turn out to be deeply flawed people personally.

A news story had me looking up some of the Stratfor leak emails, and I found a little gem in there, a bit of intelligence service humor, but, I think its also a pretty interesting statement on people:
https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/...

"Patriot: A source who is betraying his country for ideological, religious, patriotic or other unreliable beliefs. Very dangerous person. He could change his mind."

Maybe a smear campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

From the trustworthy sources (telling real names, not exaggerating, no colorful homepages) like nick farr and fefe, it sounds like appelbaum is a real asshole.
But being an asshole alone is not illegal.

And now let's think we want to make a smear campaign against somebody. Then we need something plausible. When somebody already IS an asshole, which treats other people not so nice, we just need to add a few details and some pseudonymous statements and everybody will believe it and say "he always seemed to be that way".

Re:Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelpro

[YoungManKlaus]

It's a simple web of trust thing. Whom do you trust more? Appelbaum or - for instance - Nick Farr?

Re: Does anyone here NOT beleive this is cointelp

[Anonymous Coward]

Tor is heavily used by law enforcement to hide that it's law enforcement on the other end of the line. Frequently used when placing logic bombs in email to reverse track suspects to physical locations.