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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."
WTF? This is some SJW bullshit here. Sexual misconduct cases are often poorly handled in many environments and it's terrible that it happens. However, it's asinine to punish all the users of Tor as a protest for the wrongdoing of a few people. 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?
Go find them yourselves.
I do agree with them that Tor is compromised but it's probably too late to do anything about it now.
Fucking scum.
I know people will disagree with me on here, but that's because they're neckbeard rape sympathizers. Go fuck yourselves.
Is for criminals and pedophiles.
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.
Maybe only tangentially related, but if we rejected Hobbes then maybe Tor wouldn't be needed... as much?
We live under a government created under principles that Hobbes came up with and while others views of man were too optimistic, Hobbes view of Man in nature reflected his poor home life growing up and he had no sense of how families actually work. I have said that I will be family for anyone who will be family for me, and that simply does not fit into Hobbes' philosophy. The Hamiltonians played dirty when pushing for passage of the Constitution. The Federalist papers were filled with bully and con language. The Hamiltonians broke with tradition and made it so that passage was not of unanimous State decision. Hobbes had a radical hatred of violence. I feel that violence is a natural part of the human experience. The reservation of violence to the State interferes with the natural experience of violence by man. It should be tempered, but not removed entirely. Hobbes decision to make the Sovereign and not the Pope the decider of religion was not particularly novel and merely created many smaller Holy Roman Empires, when it came to religion. Religion should be the decision of individuals only. His ideas hampered discourse and the free flow of ideas by Balkanizing the world when it came to individuals. Hobbes was a Dr. Frankenstein, but worse, he had no idea what parts of Man he was even using to construct his so-called Artificial Man. He had little indication that the parts that make up Man were represented in whole in his Artificial Man. And in fact it is not. Hobbes had no sense of personal preference, When he said Man was the same, he meant that Man was the same in the same sense the Cybermen from Doctor Who were all the same. God bless you, God bless America, and God bless the World. And as Jim Sterling says, "Thank God for me."
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
Seems to me like the govt has managed to destroy trust within the Tor community.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
By shutting it down? Is it that easy? Good way to build confidence!
Has to be some kind of joke.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
I can't be the only one who noticed this. They're supposedly concerned that government agents have actually infiltrated Tor -- and yet they only have six demands that are related to that.
And yet there's ten demands about the Appelbaum investigation.
It seems like government agents infiltrating Tor would be a bigger concern....
. . . and you end up with no one to play with cause the rest of us don't care about your childish bullshit.
Could you be bigger douche bags?
Wah wah I didn't get my way for X, so I'm going to take away Y! J hurt my feelings so I'm going to make sure I punish A,B,C,E, and G ... and not do anything at all to actually affect J that hasn't already been done. And I'm going to make sure my tantrum is as public as possible.
Thats a more appropriate statement about what you're doing.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Fear, uncertainty and doubt sown.
Principals divided.
While focus and energy is diverted to the search for "truth", the real truth is that fewer people will trust their secrets to Tor as a result.
Mission accomplished.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 And do remember, this is TOR we're talking about. They've got more people after them than just outrage milkers.
It sounds like these protesters need to figure out what it is they're protesting. And their demanding that an online accounts should have their "identities made public" sounds a little bit incongruous with Tor's own mission.
Shutting down Tor to protest an attack on Tor sounds like they really haven't thought this thing through, regardless of their agenda. It's not like a one-day boycott of Tor is going to cost Tor money or anything, so it's not really putting any pressure on the elements within the project that they want to force out. Plus, as other people have pointed out, it hurts Tor users more than it hurts the people they want to hurt.
Finally, the dumbness of their manifesto calls into question the validity of their claims. We don't have to worry about the government trying to destroy Tor as long as they're doing such a bang-up job all on their own.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why?
I meant it. they're cutting off their hand because someone else bound the other.
"six related to related to..."
Agents must be nearby.
All sound like reasonable demands, if you analyze them as a person that doesn't know anything about this case.
First off, read the Tor stinks document. This outlines how the NSA and GCHQ intended to attack Tor:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document
Keep in mind this document was 2007, so all of that was already done a long time ago. In particular note they intended to add many more of their own nodes and shape the traffic to ensure they could force a routing.
All the attacks, ONIONBREATH attack on hidden servers, increasing the Tor nodes they control (NEWTONCRADLE) etc. all will already be done, and many more besides, this document is very old.
Tor Foundation did not discover or even look for those attack nodes, or any of the GCHQ run nodes, when Snowden leaks came out. It was an outside university that went looking for attack nodes and found 100 of them.
Next off, read the JTRIG document. Domestic propaganda, fake victim posts, poll rigging software, HTTPS man in the middle software, astroturf.
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
See the slide "Discredit a target"
"Set up Honey Trap" "Write a blog purporting to be one of their victims" "Email / text their friends/ colleges etc."
Do not use TOR. The software and foundation that wrote it are backdoored.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/edward-snowden-revelations-gchq-using-online-viruses-and-honey-traps-to-discredit-targets-9117683.html
"Britain’s GCHQ has a covert unit which uses dirty tricks from “honey trap” sexual liaisons to texting anonymous messages to friends and neighbours to discredit targets from hackers to governments, according to the latest leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden."
"The covert GCHQ unit - the Joint Intelligence Threat Research Group (JTRIG) - runs what it terms an “Effects” programme against Britain’s enemies under what it calls the four Ds: “Deny/ Disrupt/ Degrade/ Deceive.” The mission of the unit is: “Using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world.”
"Slides from a 2012 presentation, marked Top Secret, outline JTRIG’s role in discrediting targets using both online techniques, such as using blogs to leak confidential information to companies or journalists, and “real life” methods like the honey trap - a time-honoured intelligence trick of luring an individual into a sexual encounter to gain information and leverage, potentially for blackmail."
Jacob has been a target frequently, he's an effective speaker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU
It's not really a surprise he's a target. It's more, business as usual.
You seem to be triggered, more ranting than coherent argument. I'm guessing you have odd colored hair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6KQATOxxH4
Why do the people corroborating the accusations deserve our trust either?
Wrong presumption. One starts by presuming the truth of a witness statement and then goes on to challenge the statement either on factual grounds or by impugning the character and reliability of the witness. Just as the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, the evidence led to prove that guilt is presumed true until proven false.
The original witness statements were challenged on the grounds that they could be the work of a single malevolent individual creating a fictional web site. I accept this as a fair criticism. However, as regards the confirmation of those stories, the question is not "why do the people corroborating those accusations deserve our trust," the question is what makes their testimony untrustworthy. I have been given no good reason to doubt the corroborators and I am thus required to accept their statements as presumptively true.
I know there's way too many cases that can't be prosecuted due to a lack of evidence but with so many accusations I struggle to believe not one has substantial enough proof to do something about it.
There is no guarantee that these particular accusations won't be prosecuted by the state at some future point in time (indeed given their number and the seriousness of the accusations one should expect they will). However that is a separate question to the one facing the organisation as to whether to let the guy go or not.
The problem you observe generally lies, at least in part, with standards of proof. The criminal standard of proof, beyond reasonable doubt, places a high burden in the way of conviction. And given the very serious consequences that result from criminal conviction that is as it should be. In general life (as in private litigation) we work instead to the balance of probability standard of proof. A good example of the different results which eventuate from differing standards of proof is given by the case of O J Simpson, who was found "not guilty" at the criminal standard, but against whom private action was sustained on the balance of probability standard.
They make sure her cover is underage and you're now responsible for recording child pornography with a 18 year old, whether or not they really were.
It isn't hard to frame someone if you have control of the narrative, the public records, and a large enough population base to be able to make people appear or disappear at will (or at least the papertrail that they really do/don't exist.)
Don't know whether this is real one way or the other, but Tor's relays have been suspect for a while if you watch your TBB 'circuit for this site' information shown by clicking on the green onion. The majority of connections are going through the US, UK, etc even if you explicitly forbid those circuits in your torrc config. The documentation states you should be able to blacklist sites to the point of tor not working if you turn on the StrictNodes option and set your geoip based exclusion filters, but in practice that doesn't work.
There is no real alternative to Tor for anonymous clearnet browsing, and the only serious and global hidden services alternative is I2P, which may be headed a similiar direction to Tor given the recent influx of 'PCness' in order to curry users and developers as I2P 'goes legit'.
You make a compelling accusation, but then I imagined that you might be a pedophile, therefore I cannot believe anything you say, because I don't listen to pedophiles. So we'll just start telling all your coworkers that while we have no idea whether it's true or not, we heard you might be a pedophile, so you know, we all need to treat you like an outcast without actually accusing you of anything or giving you any chance to clear your name, ever.
We're also just ignoring the fact that the accusers have avoided going to court where their claims might be tested and that one of the "victims" came out saying their story about here was completely bogus. But what does that matter? We just have to tell nasty rumors about you to everyone because if enough people know the rumor it, it has to be true!
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?
The accusations against Jacob are filled with half truths and lies.
He may be a womaniser but calling him a rapist is insane.
I don't know if they're government agents, but people like Isis are definitely trying to take over the Tor project and push out everybody who won't submit to them
Is it possible that these protests are government sanctioned? It just seems suspicious to be mixing protests about Applebaum's treatment along with the infiltration of agents. All this seems to achieve is the fracturing of the Tor community, intended or otherwise.
...'Several women file charges against Assange in Sweden'.... no, not several, two filed charges after first conspiring. You try to make it sound like they acted independently, yet there was clear conspiracy elements.
It reminds me of the head of the IMF, who the US didn't like: Straus Kahn. The first rape charge failed, the maid who claimed she'd been raped had, the day before, called her brother about her big-money plot, so the FBI couldn't ignore the evidence of pre-conspiracy. i.e. it was a honey-pot. She clearly wouldn't have been able to ensure a big payout for a rape charge unless someone was going to pay her. So there was a paymaster for this honeypot.
So they doubled-down, and filed more charges in France on "procurement of prostitutes". Which is interesting, he claims the New York maid was selling BJs, her call to her brother seems to confirm it, so he is guilty of procuring a prostitute! So they throw a few more charges from prostitutes claiming to be hired by Strauss Kahn in France (where its a crime), and he's confessed to that in the US, so he would have found it impossible to defend against that claim. Obviously prostitutes were paid to make that claim, they don't work for free and it would end their careers if they squeal on their clients. Again a paymaster at work.
That second woman in the Assange case, the one who stole him from the first woman, the turned around and convinced the first one to file a charge. She looks like the honeypot here. I think the money trail would lead to her. The first ones just a patsy in this.
Shut down TOR? Wait, what does any of this have to do with illegal drugs, murder for hire, trolling forums and IRC, or child pornography?
Stop the Bullshit.
We need tor. Tor needs developers. Tor needs developers, which work together.
The best case for any agency is when the developers distrust each other and work against each other.
Whatever Appelbaum did or did not do, it's not in our interest, that this stops the work for tor.
Read this: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/g...
Really read this. This list contains some of the things you're seeing here. How to disturb groups and prevent them from working efficicently, how to get them to fight each other instead of fighting their enemy.
Keep your personal conflicts personal and continue to work against the threats we're facing.
Also, all power plants that can be suspected to supply power to computers running TOR, should be shut down.
Just until we can find out what the hell is going on, and not a day longer.
Also, all public transportation that can suspected to be used by people using computers running TOR, should be shut down.
Just until we can find out what the hell is going on, and not a day longer.
Also, all breathing air that can suspected to be used by people using computers running TOR, should be pumped out.
Just until we can find out what the hell is going on, and not a day longer.
I followed the story and read the accounts of the accusers back when the news broke. The modus operandi (sending acolytes to pressure someone) is exactly what Applebaum did.
The major point of the accusers wasn't that Applebaum raped someone. The major thing was that he was being such a giant asshole to some (many) individuals, bullying and pressuring them, that it crossed into abuse. And he mostly did that in front of witnesses. So people knew. All the website did was assemble a list and also show that those that were abused suffered a lot as a result.
It mainly served to wake up the people that witnessed a lot of the abuse (those working with him in Berlin) and force them into action.
If you knew anything about abuse, then you know very well that there is a huge grey area inside relationships (both as friends, partners and families) that do not fit neatly into the criminal law, but that could still greatly hurt the victims of such abuse.
Ok, here's one.... ... crickets.
Jake is openly queer/bi and sexually / relationship active, no big deal.
So where are all the men accusing him? How about even just one?
Why is it just these women?
Because if men were tasked with claiming they were raped, no one would believe them, nor would they be dumb enough to try.
But you put a bunch of strait / gay / strangely activist feminazi women to task, and they get cred.
Jake is innocent @ioerror, Tor Project is corrupt #torgate, and #torstrike is payback and termination of both Torproject and the fakeass SJW operatives by the real cryptopunk community. Don't fuck with them.
Appelbaum sounds like an epic asshole, the 'victims' like naive retards and if this wasn't orchestrated by the feds.. Melrose Place drama.
Being a social asshole, no matter how severe, does NOT give you the right to retaliate with FALSE RAPE CHARGES.
Alec Guiness had been blacklisted for almost 20 years from acting thanks to McCarthy's lists. In a show of shrewd capitalist irony, he was the only actor in ANH to have a percentage written into his contract rather than an upfront fee. Those residuals were what he lived off of up until his death 15-20 years later.
Some ironic parallels there in that both he and his character were shut out of the public eye for almost 20 years thanks to authoritarian fascist assholes :)
It can be agreed that Jacob Appelbaum has poor etiquette but it is highly doubtful he is a rapist. I have read the statements from the women. This does not seem to be sexual assault, rather confused women who entered dubious situations at worst. They got very close to him, entered a bed with him, got into a bathroom with him, got drunk at an orgy with him. Pretty dubious stuff. Of course the women can also express a firm "no" at any time and leave. Was he coercive, guilty of poor comments, and taking initiative? Probably. But that is not the same as assault. If Appelbaum was guilty of those dodgy things, he will now likely tread very carefully. However, he is not a bad guy, just someone who was used to having his own way or seeing how far he could go in an immature way. Now he will know better.
He was accused of attempting to rape Jill Bahring by Emerson Tan and Meredith Patterson.
Jill then denied the claim, saying it was mutual sex play. He *was* accused of attempted rape, you want to ignore the false claim, but it happened.
"If you knew anything about abuse"... I know when someone is trying to plant the words "victim" and "abuse" into their comment Britz.
Yes, if you run a tor node and you don't want to keep it up, take it down. You should be removed from the tor network.
The same goes for root DNS server or TLD server operators. If you don't want to keep it up, take it down. It will be removed from the network.
Being a part of something doesn't mean you provide a service and if you're unable or unwilling to do so reliably then you'll be removed. If you thought this was your method of expressing your political thoughts you were wrong.
Jacob Applebaum may have done bad things, but he certainly didn't take down the tor network for a day. These self-absorbed aholes are much much worse than anything he did because they want to impact millions of people in thousands of countries so they can have their sick moment of SJW fantasy.
Sorry. If you can't run a server without wanting to keep it up, you should be removed from the network.
The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it -- famous saying which applies ever more to this.
E
Applebaum was not let go over false rape charges, but over a long history of abuse of multiple people. Rape may or may have been part of his conduct.
is that the TOR network is so badly designed it apparently can be switched off entirely by a central authority.
He was sacked after Emerson Tan made a rape attempt allegation claiming Jacob had attempted to rape Jill. Jill denies the claim, it was mutual she says. Says Emerson was mistaken.
"Rape may or may have been part of his conduct."
And you change Emersons false claim of *attempted* rape into a false claim of *actual* rape.
You're very obvious about it.
I have been rather disturbed to see how many people are still defending that creep; but I'm not altogether surprised, having had my own experience with someone like Appelbaum. A lot of people don't understand until they have been on the receiving end of such intricate and well-stragegized abuse. Reading some of the victims' stories was so reminiscent of a particular brand of sociopathic creepiness that I wanted to vomit. Guys like Appelbaum are absolute masters of pushing the envelope right to the razor-thin edge of what you can technically accuse them of, and are even more talented at manipulating people around them; especially when most of those people are adoring fans. It's extremely rare for someone like him to get exposed in this way for those very reasons. Appelbaum found the perfect corner to spin his webs. A place where everyone is rightfully paranoid and it's all-to-easy to frame any attempt to stop him as some kind of conspiracy. So no, Appelbaum did not TECHNICALLY rape anyone (If he had, they would have simply pressed charges against him), but his actions were much more calculated and sinister, and his victims rightfully feel every bit as violated.
People are entitled to face their accuser...
Anonymous Cowards are not to be trusted.
Tor is a gimmick. If you use Tor, you are not anonymous. Imagine it more like painting a huge target on your forehead. If you use Tor, I guarantee you someone out there is monitoring what you are doing. Just use a damn VPN people!
You're just jelly AF that no one's ever told you they're DTF.
:)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
LOLWUT
Okay, now I'm done.
That politically parsed "may or may [not] have" language is exactly why in civilized life there is due process, so intelligence agencies must be staffed with competence people rather than operators who use character assassination.
News for nerds, stuff that doesn't matter.