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Tor Project Installs New Board of Directors After Jacob Appelbaum Controversy (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Tor Project announced today that is has elected an entirely new board of directors as part of a larger shake-up after accusations of misconduct by former employee Jacob Appelbaum. Appelbaum left the company in June after the nonprofit organization said it had received multiple accusations against him. The seven board members that are leaving the organization said in a statement today that it is their "duty to ensure that the Tor Project has the best possible leadership." The New York Times reports that the board agreed to step down following the controversy surrounding Appelbaum. Some of the board members who will be leaving include Tor Project co-founders Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, who will continue to work on the organization's technical research and development team, according to the statement. They will be replaced with several prominent cryptographers and scholars, including University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze, Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn, and security technologist Bruce Schneier. Meanwhile, researchers at MIT have been working on a new anonymity network that they say is more secure than Tor.
Does anyone believe Tor is secure when the FBI can exploit it at will? and when 100 nodes are revealed to be attack nodes? The most recent disclosure of of the 100 attack nodes did NOT come from the Tor Project, it came from Northeastern University researchers. Tor projects excuses were very noticeable:
"Roger Dingledine, co-founder of the Tor Project, told Motherboard in an email, “One key thing to understand is that those are not all relays that are in the Tor network at the same time, and few to none of them are in the Tor network right now.” "
Reading Roger's response, does this sound like a man actively hunting for bad nodes? Because it sounds like a man covering up bad nodes to me.
It should be obvious that Tor would be the first to receive a demand to backdoor their product, and given their funding they would be the most compliant.
Jacob should fork TOR, secure it, relaunch it himself and be very careful about the people he hires.
Are we seeing an actual change of the guard, and if so, is it actually to benefit privacy, security, and anonymity, or are we going to find out all these new board members have been compromised/were already working for the government to compromise our security?
I don't really believe that, but it is worth asking and scrutinizing periodically, just like the tor code and processes itself.
mass surveillance. Hillary does too, but she is DINO at this point.
Agreed. She is a Republican so this is the fault of Reoublivans.
Exactly. She is a Republican so everything she does is the fault of the Republicans.
Why does every single project meant to keep us secure have someone accused of sex crimes under fishy circumstances? Even Linus gets some of this now. I hope he avoids going anywhere without reliable witnesses present.
Why is there no mention of the fact that one of the alleged anonymous "victims" said that the people who came forward did not speak for her and that the accusations were completely false? I seem to remember that Slashdot never bothered to post that story and yes, I did, in fact, submit it.
Make of this what you will. Do we only cover the parts of the story we want people to hear?
From the Wikipedia article on Applebaum:
The Tor Project and several other organizations ended their association with Appelbaum in June 2016 following several allegations of sexual abuse; Appelbaum denied the accusations.
Okay, so he's being thrown under the bus due to an accusation.
Reading further:
One woman, who has been held-up as an example of one of his victims, hotly contested allegations that Appelbaum abused her and questioned the validity of other allegations against him.
Women are generally sensitive about sexual abuse, so having a woman deny the allegations, and with insight into the situation question the other allegations, shouldn't we at least wait for charges being filed?
Various activists and others have publicly supported Appelbaum, citing that extrajudicial social reactions to the allegations were overly extreme, and had violated Appelbaum's fundamental rights, resulting in a witch-hunt.
Are we a society rules by law?
Or do we simply try things in the court of public opinion, where the loudest voice is the strongest evidence?
We have an entire board being replaced due to an accusation.
The potential for abuse is enormous.
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't bought out the Tor Project, closed the source, and changed it so all nodes including exit nodes are ran by Microsoft.
The board stepped down.
Voluntarily.
https://lwn.net/Articles/69440...
"Accordingly, we are pleased to announce an excellent slate of new directors who have agreed to
serve on Tor's board. The old directors have, as of July 12, 2016, elected these directors as the
new Tor board:
Matt Blaze
Cindy Cohn
Gabriella Coleman
Linus Nordberg
Megan Price
Bruce Schneier[1]
Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson will continue in their roles as co-founders of the Tor Project,
leading Tor's technical research and development. We will all continue to support Tor's mission,
community, management, and organization; and we are happy to offer Shari, the new board, and the
entire team our help and knowledge. We thank the Tor community for their patience and help in this
transition."
[1] isn't he former DoD or something?
Moral within an organisation is always important, and stakeholders should have confidence in the board to manage things, but;
This is an organisation that lots of powerful people and government would like to see destroyed, it maintains a product that is controversial, and is used in some extreme circumstances.
Do they really need to manage the perception of their work so aggressively. People will have very strong views for/against TOR independent of perceived employee behaviour.
Can Tor as an organisation be trusted if public perception is more important to them than proven facts.
Is TOR just about money now ?
Accusation.
Just about anyone who is to be 'taken down' in western societies seems to be done by sexual impropriety. JFK, MLK both had allegations of misconduct.
That's a convenient way to brush things off.
For MLK the FBI has sex tapes (including video) recorded in his hotel room. Those tapes were not a fabrication but rather a surprise, as the FBI was instead hoping to get evidence of MLK being in cahoots with commies (of which there's no evidence).
Back then the FBI tried to leak those but the media refused to play ball (that was a long time before Gawker). So they sent a ridiculous letter to his house, with a copy of those tapes. Here's an actual quote from that letter which was allegedly read by his wife first:
The American public will know you for what you are, an evil, abnormal beast, and Satan could not do more
Years later a bunch of right-wingers tried to get those tapes released but a judge sealed them until 2027.
So take off your tinfoil hat. It's healthy to ask questions, but when you raise doubts about sexual allegations simply on the basis that the alleged perpetrator is famous and therefore some nefarious organization must be trying to frame him, you're making it more difficult for real victims to come out.
lucm, indeed.
This is an overtake of Tor and there is a new network by MIT which no doubt will spy on people for da goverment
The issue is not with unfounded accusations. The people that worked with Applebaum over the years found the accusations very plausible, because of the conduct he has shown to the rest of the board members. They know why they finally got rid of him.
This story isn't about some accusations that came out of the blue, but about an organization finally pulling the plug on a really mean character that has used his social skills and status for over a decade to abuse countless people.
My problem is: Why haven't they done so sooner. If you read the accounts, you really have to wonder how toxic the organizations (TOR, CCC, cDc, et al) were that hosted this gigantic psychopath for so long. And if you look at his bio (Wikipedia), his psychological problems aren't a big surprise.
So why has this been going on for so long, and how many other (smarter) abusers still hide in these communities? There is a lot of abuse that can't be adequately addressed by criminal law, but still warrants dealing with and the TOR project has not shown any interest in finding out how to deal with these issues in the future. Neither have cDc or the CCC.
The board stepped down.
Voluntarily.
So did Appelbaum.
Please provide more reliable evidence before advocating shunning people.
Otherwise, we'll just publish a pedophile alert to everyone near you saying that the Ixian may be a rapist and a pedophile based on anonymous internet comments. I mean, I don't have any proof or anything, but you certainly could be one, so women and children should shun you to avoid allowing a creep like you to continue their predatory practices.
I have watched many Jacob Appelbaum speeches. Appelbaum often expresses how governments are out to get him, how he is on the cast iron list of the NSA, and authorities look for ways to incriminate him. So what the hell is he doing sleeping with so many people? If you consider yourself to be an activist, a journalist or a high profile target, you mitigate risk. You don't jump in bed with as many people as possible. This is how many people get neutralized. Keep it in your pants, get a wife/husband, whatever. But don't go hopping into bed with lots of people and then complain when this is used against you.
As for sex allegations, Appelbaum seems to be more guilty of a lack of sensitivity and tact than being an actual rapist. The women he approached were too vulnerable, confused, and unsure of themselves. Freaking nitroglycerin. If these women wanted nothing to do, physically, with Appelbaum. They could have told him, 'no'. However, there was a women he propositioned in a restaurant in a very tactless way. That was bad. Then there was a girl he kissed...and she didn't want it. He could have asked for permission first, but she could have also just smacked him to bring the message home clear.
grab Tails 1.4.1 from kat.cr
add these to your torrc
StrictNodes 1
ExcludeNodes {us}
done. Just run it in a VM as a LiveCD, that is simplest. There are more tricks but they spawn counter-measures from braindead CIA/NSA/FBI. Why entertain the dead?