Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
The board stepped down.
Voluntarily.
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.
Very good question. Schneier has an excellent reputation and has fought considerably to free up encryption etc. On the other hand at least one of the accusations is provably false.
Probably the new board is chosen by the old board to provide a safe set of hands who are unlikely to collapse under pressure. Probably also this was an attack by a group which has a tendency to use false accusations to force people out of positions of power that they want to take over. That is a very serious situation and it's' really important to know who was behind each of the accusations.
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 ?
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.
[1] isn't he former DoD or something?
A very interestig and apparently false accusation to make. He's worked for British Telecomms when a company he co-founded got bought out, but it's not quite the same thing. He's also had a book (Applied Cryptography) used in lawsuits against the defence establishment, but again, that's not quite the same as working for them.
Do you have some citation or are you just randomly spreading shit?