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Group Wants To Shut Down Tor For a Day On September 1 (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An internal group at the Tor Project is calling for a full 24-hour shutdown of the Tor network to protest the way the Tor Project dealt with the Jake Applebaum sexual misconduct accusations, and because of recent rumors it might be letting former government agents in its ranks. Two Tor members, also node operators, have shut down their servers as well, because of the same reason. They explained their motivations here and here.
"The protesters have made 16 demands," according to the article, six related to related to supposed infiltration of Tor by government agents, and 10 regarding the Appelbaum ruling and investigation -- including "asking all Tor employees that participated in this investigation to leave" and "the persons behind the JacobAppelbaum.net and the @JakeMustDie and @VictimsOfJake Twitter accounts to come forward and their identities made public."
"The protesters have made 16 demands," according to the article, six related to related to supposed infiltration of Tor by government agents, and 10 regarding the Appelbaum ruling and investigation -- including "asking all Tor employees that participated in this investigation to leave" and "the persons behind the JacobAppelbaum.net and the @JakeMustDie and @VictimsOfJake Twitter accounts to come forward and their identities made public."
If a substantial part of the Tor network is shutdown, you can bet that any one of a number of parties are going to keep a careful eye on how things come back up.
If there is a flaw in Tor, they might be able to de-anonymize users and nodes by watching them connect again for the first time.
I wouldn't put it quite that way, but I cant help but note the usual crowd banging on about "cucks" and "SJWs" or whatever the meaningless /pol/ slur of the week is yet again complaining about sexual assault being investigated.
Thankfully these people are in a minority, but good god do they like to make a noise.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Why should everyone who uses Tor to protect their anonymity be punished because of Jacob Applebaum and the people who apparently didn't respond to his misconduct appropriately?
Because by setting this controversy in front of the world, they may generate more interest and scrutiny into the matter.
The linked text points out many potential injustices and red flags, such as the hiring of two possible CIA operatives to the TOR project. It's important that all of this gets scrutinized and possibly sorted out, so that we don't end up with an insecure TOR that the CIA can eavesdrop on.
And by inconveniencing people, it might start a paradigm that people can use in future situations. Punishing someone based on accusations; ie - getting away from "innocent until proven guilty", gives enormous power to your enemies. If your opponents want to wreck you, all they have to do is gin up some accusations.
Future situations may be able to look back on this moment and think "let's wait until we have something concrete", rather than knee-jerk react in the cause of Social Justice.
Doing this is a good thing. They should turn off TOR one day a week until it's sorted out.
"the persons behind the JacobAppelbaum.net and the @JakeMustDie and @VictimsOfJake Twitter accounts to come forward and their identities made public."
Since we're talking about Tor, I can't decide whether these demands are ironic or are hypocritical.
#DeleteChrome
Did you even read the article? These guys are trying to punish people who helped crack down on rapists. They're rapist sympathizers, which is quite the opposite of "SJWs".
I read all three articles, and it says nothing of the sort.
You're doing this site a disservice by being so intellectually dishonest.
This is Slashdot. Take your sock-puppetry elsewhere.
Seems to me like the govt has managed to destroy trust within the Tor community.
If so, they did a service. Trust is a bad thing for anonymity. A perfect system would be one where you don't have to trust anyone else.
Your projection is incredible. The only people inventing meaningless slurs are the ones that throw out shit like "neckbeard" or "pissbaby" or "fuckboy", and lynch mobs are not investigations.
Face it, rape accusations have become THE form of character assassination. It's the new "witch". There's no evidence, proving your innocence is impossible, and the mere accusation is a death sentence.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
As always, a useful tip for anyone who may have run afoul of the government (be it the U.S., UK, any any other):
If a new girl seems to come out of nowhere in your life (at a club, at work, at your hotel room door) and tells you she's DTF, think with your head and not your dick.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I wouldn't put it quite that way, but I cant help but note the usual crowd banging on about "cucks" and "SJWs" or whatever the meaningless /pol/ slur of the week is yet again complaining about sexual assault being investigated.
If anything, they're complaining that the police didn't investigate--because they were never called--yet headlines were written as if there'd been a trial with a guilty verdict.
Are you really surprised that the "crowd" complains when they see potentially life-ruining sexual assault allegations handed over to a private company hired by Tor to do a secret investigation, instead of the justice system?
What is your solution? Don't allow people to make rape allegations? I don't think that is either fair or possible.
In situations like this the only way forward is to investigate. Applelbaum hasn't even bothered to deny any specific allegations, or make any kind of defence really. I'm sorry, but all we can do is evaluate the claims on the evidence we have. Multiple, corroborating stories that can be linked to specific times and places where he made public appearances with the victims.
We can't simply ignore that, all we can do do is remain open minded and willing to examine any and all evidence.
As for slurs, why don't you start by not ever calling anyone an "SJW" again? Take the high ground.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Being a social asshole, no matter how severe, does NOT give you the right to retaliate with FALSE RAPE CHARGES.
What is your solution? Don't allow people to make rape allegations? I don't think that is either fair or possible.
It's telling that you truly can't tell the difference between not completely unpersoning someone because of anonymous smears that even the alleged victim has publicly (and non-anonymously) rebuked as being complete horseshit, with the people portrayed as heroes and saviors actually being pretty shitty to her, and not allowing anyone to make rape allegations.
In situations like this the only way forward is to investigate. Applelbaum hasn't even bothered to deny any specific allegations, or make any kind of defence really. I'm sorry, but all we can do is evaluate the claims on the evidence we have. Multiple, corroborating stories that can be linked to specific times and places where he made public appearances with the victims.
If I made an anonymous webpage accusing you of everything from jaywalking to pedophilia and raised up a lynch mob to ostracize and unperson you would you exhaustively deny and refute everything or simply turn away in utter disgust?
This isn't evidence. NOTHING about this is evidence. These aren't "multiple corroborating stories", they're anonymous smears with absolutely no evidence that have already been completely rejected by the woman they're about. It's trivially easy to simply make up multiple stories with a handful of real details. If I knew you in real life I could do it in a single afternoon. Would that make it true? No, it wouldn't, EVIDENCE would make it true. Anonymous accusations are not evidence.
Say it with me again: Accusations are not evidence. Accusations NEED evidence.
That's the fundamental problem with your ideology, you treat accusations AS evidence and thus always reach a guilty verdict even when the woman those accusations are made on behalf of personally and publicly rebukes the entire thing as being total horseshit.
Which is, by the way, the only evidence we have so far: The woman who was supposedly the victim in all of this has completely denied the entire thing, told the real story of what happened to her, and even pointed out that the people supposedly "protecting" her were behaving shitty towards her and trying to force her into a role of agency-less victimhood.
As for slurs, why don't you start by not ever calling anyone an "SJW" again? Take the high ground.
First people demanded that nobody refer to that ideology and its adherents as feminists. So the term SJW was invented. Now you demand nobody use the term "SJW" and act as if it were a slur like neckbeard, fuckboy, pissbaby, and all the other identity-based slurs invented by SJWs. If another new term were invented you would demand nobody use that either.
What you're doing is nothing more than attempting to stifle dissent by making it impossible to even name or discuss your ideology and in-group. It's the exact same as if the GOP were to claim everyone using the words "neoliberal economics" or "trickle down economics" were terrorists.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."