Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
I posted this in another post below, but I just wanted to reiterate it here, for those who might not fully understand the situation.
It might help your understanding of the situation to understand that the CIA and NSA now use fake rape and sexual assault/harassment claims as their preferred method of character assassination (much easier, less messy, and just as effective as actual assassination). It happened to the poor bastard IMF head who made the VERY stupid mistake of challenging the supremacy of the U.S. Dollar. It also happened to Julian Assange and others.
No tin-foil hats here. It's just their modern way of doing business. So any time you hear of sex crimes charges against any member of the hacker/security community (or anyone else the NSA or CIA might have a vested interest in silencing or ostracizing), you should be VERY, VERY skeptical of the charges (and take a long hard look at the accusers).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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?
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.
Assange committed a "crime" that isn't a crime in the US. He lied to a woman to convince her to have sex with him. Apparently that's "rape" in Sweden, and not in the US. In addition to the non-crime (from an American perspective, assuming you are American), If the US media weren't a bunch of liars, it'd have been called "sexual misconduct" or the like, rather than "rape". It's not rape in any definition I've ever seen. To call it such, even if he's guilty is an insult to women who have been raped.
Learn to love Alaska
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."