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James Dolan, Co-Creator of SecureDrop, Dead At 36 (gizmodo.com)
The Freedom of the Press Foundation is reporting that James Dolan, former Marine and co-creator of the whistleblower submission system SecureDrop alongside Aaron Swartz and Wired editor Kevin Poulsen, has died at age 36. He reportedly took his own life. Gizmodo reports: First deployed as StrongBox with The New Yorker, organizations such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Gizmodo Media Group have all come to rely on SecureDrop -- which allows highly secure communication between journalists and sources in possession of sensitive information or documents. As an industry tool, it has become invaluable for reporters. Dolan joined the Freedom of the Press Foundation to maintain SecureDrop after co-creator Aaron Swartz took his life in 2013 at age 26, as pressure mounted in a federal investigation against him that many felt was overzealous. Memorial services have not yet been announced, and presently the circumstances of Dolan's death are not known.
People who annoy governments tend to kill themselves, isn't that strange?
Circumcision is child abuse.
You know we're all thinking it.
Yeah I might believe that if the other creator of SecureDrop had not also "taken his own life".
Truly the Deep State protects its own. Good luck to the next person to take over maintenance! Maybe you'll make seven years if you only drink water you purify yourself from random streams.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm starting to think that a lot of this feels like government sanctioned murder against individuals trying to help society by revealing the truth of matters.
This whole thing stinks.
I don't always wear a tinfoil hat, but when I do...
Smart people are usually more prone to depression that dumb ones.
Same thing with Gaydar. Both founders fell off high balconies, several years apart. Coincidences can seem significant. Usually, they're not.
He did himself in the quickest and most painless way possible with three gunshot wounds to the back.
I don't know what happened in real life, but these things always look suspicious.
And if you believe that was an accident, you'll believe James did himself in.
Cold War III
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I noticed the same thing. Suspicion level ratcheting up here... :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The foil-hatted crowd tends to assume that there is some shadowy consiracy of "men in black" types who go around killing people who are troublesome, but there are alternate explanations that require no such paranoia.
Consider the Cliven Bundy case (whether you support him, hate him, or ignor him, the CASE is worth consideration).
When you do something that offends elements of a massive powerful government, your life can become to some degree miserable, and not everybody is cut out to withstand that level of stress. The Bundys (who I personally find annoying) ended up finding surveillance devices on their property (not on the disputed grazing lands) eventually found themselves in an armed standoff with government agents, and then in jail. Their case is a public display of a basic fact: in ANY conflict with government, guns are involved - the only questions are [1] will the individual will back down before the government pulls its guns, [2] will the individual pull a gun, [3] will the government or the individual pull the trigger. If you do not do what the government demands, and then you keep resisting as the government tries to punish you, you will eventually be facing a loaded gun. In the Bundy case, the standoff reached the point where both sides pulled guns, and eventually both sides pulled triggers. Most Americans cave in long before the government unholsters its ever-present guns. In the aftermath, one person associated with them crumbled and made a plea deal, but Cliven and sons eventually were let out after a judge was outraged to discover the extreme misconduct of the federal prosecutors who hid and manipulated evidence and lied to the court about it. That process dragged on for YEARS, and the Bundys will have crippling legal bills even though they have prevailed. Faced with that level of stress, some people will take their own lives. Others who are not yet in as deep as the Bundys were can begin to worry that they might end up in such a situation and, in a moment of depression aand quiet desperation, choose what seems to them to be the only way out.
We may never know what drove Mr Dolan to his demise, but it would not be shocking to discover he saw a lot of darkness in his future, did not want to face it and did not see a clear happy way out. Work in areas like encryption can lead to a lot of thinking about very negative possiblities, so it would not be surprising if this was a contributing factor.
Incidentally, our government is not supposed to be so big and powerful and intrusive that we end up feeling the need to encrypt stuff. Our founders understood encryption; George Washington used encryption to communicate with his spies during the revolutionary war. Our founders did not include an escape clause from the Constitution to allow the feds to bypass the prohibition on unreasonable search and siezure, or to bypass the requirement for a warrant, if encryption is involved. They also understood war and the timeliness of information in time of war and yet still included no exception to allow government to engage in blanket spying on the population, siezure of communications, and decryption without warrants.
Instead of getting clever or snarky, people should consider the misery this man's family is currently experiencing; their lives are forever altered. Fot the rest of their lives they will be expecting to see him at meals, then remebering he will be absent. They'll thinking of things they need to remember to tell him when they see him, then remebering they'll not be seeing him again, etc.
He probably suffered from a deep depression or was bipolar. That is fairly common in the industry. He will be missed.
Wow. Did he piss off the Clintons? Because that's what happens to people who piss off the Clintons: they "commit suicide"
Why assume something logical when we can blame it on a government conspiracy plot?
Remember when the government has Hans Reiser framed as a way to get back at him for developing ReiserFS? It seems a lot of Slashdot does, because they're posting basically the exact same shit for this story as they were for that one.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It’s about time. Now you snowflakes can’t stop bringing up Hillary every 5 minutes. Lock her up and shut the fuck up about it already.
Apparently in real life and crime, pros know which jurisdictions have the most incompetent MEs and coroners.
Why assume something logical when we can blame it on a government conspiracy plot?
Exactly! Logic was invented by circumcising Reptilians to keep us confused about disreality. The only answer is to misinterpret the evidence.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Was it the CIA? NSA? AP? Wikileaks? Trump, Hillary, or Russia's FSB? Swap your tinfoil hat for your betting beanie and put your money where your mouth is!
So you’re saying that veterans don’t have a higher incidence of mental health issues and depression? Because the facts say otherwise and don’t let inconvenient things like that get in the way of your conspiracy plots.
Right because if you don’t believe in every loony conspiracy theory it must mean you agree 100% with anything the NSA does. Oh wait...
Assuming anything is usually dangerous.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
You got the compassion of a sand-dab, my friend.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I feel bad for the people who were impacted by his choice to end his own life. I feel bad for him for having not sought out or found the mental health support that he needed. I don't feel bad for him for having made such an idiotic choice of method for getting the papers out to the public. If he'd have stayed at his desk instead of breaking into the library closet the papers would have still gotten out, he could have still made his point, he'd still be alive, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.