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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.
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.
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.
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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!
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:
— Andre (@puellavulnerata) July 18, 2014
Andrea seems easily able to launch into baseless smears against people who've gone up against her.
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
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sure this will be full of well-reasoned, cogent discussion. Just give me a moment to polish my monocle...
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.
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.
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.
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.
lucm, indeed.
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.
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.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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).
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.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
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.
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.
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.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
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?
You only get to share those kind of stories if they're true. Otherwise it's libel, which it is not protected free speech.
They don't. You just have a confirmation bias.
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?
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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.
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes