I' sorry to see him leave. I had the opportunity to attend his talks in Munich and Hamburg and he is a great explainer and so well spoken. I'm curious what he is up to next.
There is generally no formal requirement to have earlier degrees; they're helpful for admission, of course, but if you can convince admissions and an advisor to take you on, you're in.
As far as I know, there is a formal requirement to have, e.g., a BSc to get a PhD or a masters.
Put it this way: can you provide even a single example that proves this to be false?
I know of just one instance actually (guy who is now a professor from Hong Kong, whose incredible experience with farming was counted).
On the other hand, I do know some smart folks without college degrees whose professors fought to get them in and to get them designated in certain higher level positions but they lost that battle.
Well, Jake's listed as Tanja's PhD student, so there's one example right there. If you google for a bit longer you'll find others who hold PhDs who don't have undergraduate degrees. It's definitely rare to be admitted this way and then not all these students end up successfully defending after admission, but the formal requirement for an undergraduate degree does not exist at some institutions, or can be waived with some uncommonly used paperwork at others.
Most people are surprised to find just how many things universities have a form to do. There's very few rules at a university you can't get waived with the right signatures on the right paperwork.
My own time in academia required a lot of paperwork...
I hope The Tor Project and Appelbaum will make statements. Their reticence and the suddenness of the resignation raises concerns that there are problems at that very important project.
Or this is FBI related, and they're barred from giving details. I'm not saying his sudden resignation is a canary, but I'm also not sure that it isn't.
After what Snowden has shown us about the lengths the government is willing to go (on our payroll, that is), how can you really trust any technology? To me, the chilling effect is far stronger than we generally suspect.
That's what I initially thought, but time will tell. If the media starts hyping this like the Assange case, then yes, the alphabet mafia may have had a hand... After going through some crap with an outright psychopath working for a non-profit (the signs were there (classic ones), but it took a bit of time to put together a comprehensive picture), I have some insight into how organizations (or groups of humans, fundamentally) tend to deal with this stuff. Tor's terseness does not surprise me - 'he said, she said's never go well and it violates some unspoken social rules.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing for differences in temperament and personality, amateur psychoanalyzing trying to understand a person, compassion... these are all things normal healthy people do, in the interests of co-operation - which psychopaths consciously take advantage of. And overlooking things because person X is effective at their job... it is the same sort of pragmatism that underlies the legal system - e.g. you may be entirely in the right and the other person in the wrong, but the legal system only cares about money and really, which one has more - and more lawyers. At some point, the rational person decides this is stupid and a waste of time and not worth it to their personal life, especially when society, as complex as it is now, isn't going to care that much about a bad actor unless they are very very notable.
E.g. Bill Cosby still has his supporters and Jimmy Saville got away with all sorts of stuff for years while others consciously looked away - because the cost of standing up and fighting the Establishment wouldn't have been worth it. It's groupthink, plain and simple, and a lot of people can't jump that hurdle.
Eventually, you realise how fundamentally corrupt humanity can be, and become more conservative (re: that quote). But ... if you have integrity, you have to realise why "conservatives" value hypocrisy so much because it is the foundation of power, and then you begin to see the real Truth about the world.
While I'm sure you intended this to be a compliment, you should know that ioerror has strong opinions (which I agree with) about the word "activist". From a recent talk[1][2] he gave about journalism and the media:
"Activism" is used as a pejorative term in order to suggest
that participation in a democratic society is somehow
outside of the normal behavior.
Fuck that. That is wrong.
[2] I strongly recommend everyone watch [1] - it's shorter than most of his talks (only 20m), and it has surprising revaluations about e.g. The Guardian. Jacob doesn't pull his punches, and he burns a few notable bridges.
I completely agree. However, the reality of things is that some people are more engaged than others when it comes to defending freedoms, advocacy, etc...
Edit : I have found this Tweet [0] I shared with ioerror himself about this same subject exactly a year ago.
Think of all the people that have been distanced from the project because of his behavior. Think of all the other people who would be distanced from it in the future if his behavior was tolerated and defended by the organization. This is really not a loss at all!
On a more serious note, sorry to see him leave. He seemed really deeply engaged in Tor Project, I saw him on CCC (Chaos Communication Congress, a huge hacker conference in Hamburg) a couple of times. See his talks here:
I will second the statement that Jacob is an able and skilled developer.
I have worked with him on projects long ago, however, so he can certainly have chosen where to focus his time and attention. Just because you don't see him code, don't assume he can't (replying to Grandparent of course)
There appear to be rape accusations against Jacob Applebaum. But so far only 2 Tor developers have stated this. No outside verification. Hopefully more facts surface as time goes on. This is very disconcerting.
I can't believe this is still the top comment. If Jacob Applebaum is a rapist, then that is horrible and of course he should step down. But this comment links to 3 tweets that are all duplicates of each other.
Is there any reason to think that Jacob Applebaum is actually a rapist? I would really like to see some proof of that, before jumping to any conclusions.
I also wouldn't take anything Meredith says at face value, it appears she has an axe to grind with Jacob.
See my comment further down about what I found out about her plagiarism claims.
Edit: It seems people aren't taking the time to go find my other comment so here is a copy-paste..but basically it doesn't appear he was a plagiarist or trying to be one:
Digging through some history regarding her plagiarism accusation, all this twitter ranting does is make me think less and less of Meredith:
To quote from one of the gmain.org e-mail responses from Gregory Maxwell:
--- BEGIN ---
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Meredith L. Patterson <clonearmy <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> would prefer to see it dealt
> with right here where you brought it up by failing to properly credit
> Nadim's work.
When Nadim posted, I responded off-list because I believe this drama has no place for otr-dev.
I responded to him with my email records showing that the document existing in April 2013— long prior to the history reflected on the wikipage (which appears to indicate that Nadim is the sole author of the text), and the commentary from my email records indicated that at the time I believed Jake to be a joint author of the document. The MP-OTR spec (being discussed, not the document you linked to) provides no attribution to anyone except Nadim, although I was certain that this wasn't the case.
In response Nadim confirmed my understanding. Apparently the true history of the document was lost when it was moved from git into the cryptocat wiki at some point, similarly to how Jake's fork doesn't include the history from the current cryptocat wiki (which includes a relatively modest amount of changes on the original document). Nadim further went on to claim "[Jake's] contributions to this document were done with him being part of the Cryptocat team at the WSJ hack-a-thon and thus this document belongs to the Cryptocat Project.". This theory of ownership may explain Nadim's failure to acknoweldge Jake's authorship— but it is not a sound theory, legally or ethically as I'm sure you would agree.
My own view is:
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* The reputation attacks are unjustified and unfortunate.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* By failing to at all acknowledge Jake's joint authorship of the document in his public accusation of plagiarism Nadim misrepresented the situation.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* Now that everyone is convinced everyone else is acting in bad faith the simple polite off-list resolution of this drama which should have been used is now not working.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* This is all over a rather insignificant incomplete protocol specification for a protocol that was really designed by none of the people involved in this discussion. Who is the author of those couple hundred lines of prose is not very important... what is important is that someone get around to finishing it and implementing it.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
In spite of this being foolish drama which has no place on this list, I now feel ethically obligated to comment in order to speak out in defense of Jake and to point out the factual inaccuracies which appear to have inspired your comments. As a penance for my contribution to this mess by responding in public I will be donating to one of the tor server hosting projects.
I beg everyone to just add a bunch of attributions to all the copies of the document (which would...
If the truth isn't known, Tor could be shooting itself in the foot if they 'decided' that it's one way or another. Makes sense that they would say that.
To quote from one of the gmain.org e-mail responses from Gregory Maxwell:
--- BEGIN ---
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Meredith L. Patterson
<clonearmy <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> would prefer to see it dealt
> with right here where you brought it up by failing to properly credit
> Nadim's work.
When Nadim posted, I responded off-list because I believe this drama
has no place for otr-dev.
I responded to him with my email records showing that the document
existing in April 2013— long prior to the history reflected on the
wikipage (which appears to indicate that Nadim is the sole author of
the text), and the commentary from my email records indicated that at
the time I believed Jake to be a joint author of the document. The
MP-OTR spec (being discussed, not the document you linked to) provides
no attribution to anyone except Nadim, although I was certain that
this wasn't the case.
In response Nadim confirmed my understanding. Apparently the true
history of the document was lost when it was moved from git into the
cryptocat wiki at some point, similarly to how Jake's fork doesn't
include the history from the current cryptocat wiki (which includes a
relatively modest amount of changes on the original document). Nadim
further went on to claim "[Jake's] contributions to this document were
done with him being part of the Cryptocat team at the WSJ hack-a-thon
and thus this document belongs to the Cryptocat Project.". This
theory of ownership may explain Nadim's failure to acknoweldge Jake's
authorship— but it is not a sound theory, legally or ethically as I'm
sure you would agree.
My own view is:
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* The reputation attacks are unjustified and unfortunate.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* By failing to at all acknowledge Jake's joint authorship of the
document in his public accusation of plagiarism Nadim misrepresented
the situation.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* Now that everyone is convinced everyone else is acting in bad faith
the simple polite off-list resolution of this drama which should have
been used is now not working.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* This is all over a rather insignificant incomplete protocol
specification for a protocol that was really designed by none of the
people involved in this discussion. Who is the author of those couple
hundred lines of prose is not very important... what is important is
that someone get around to finishing it and implementing it.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
In spite of this being foolish drama which has no place on this list,
I now feel ethically obligated to comment in order to speak out in
defense of Jake and to point out the factual inaccuracies which appear
to have inspired your comments. As a penance for my contribution to
this mess by responding in public I will be donating to one of the tor
server hosting projects.
I beg everyone to just add a bunch of attributions to all the copies
of the document (which would be easier if the original history weren't
apparently lost) and move on with life.
---END---
Edit: Really, the more I think about it the more this infuriates me. It's essentially slander by a person who apparently just dislikes Jacob...made even more infuriating by the fact she is bringing up the plagiarism accusations again and misrepresentin...
This tweet in particular is just jaw-droppingly stupid: "Tor had the chance to nip this in the bud back when Jake was just a plagiarist. They ignored it, and he graduated to sexual assault."
Not to mention that it turns out he actually wasn't a plagiarist and there was a misunderstanding on both sides. Also throughout the ordeal Jacob seemed to handle it reasonably.
Edit: I didn't think my parent comment was inflammatory, but it's been flagged...so just to provide context for this follow-up, here are two sources to consider:
That email thread is worth a read. There were some serious misunderstandings and petty drama in there and it's hard to take any unsubstantiated accusations seriously after reading that.
slightly OT but clicking at all those twitter threads, and not being a twitter user myself, I'm having an extremely hard time understanding how the conversation(s) flow. What a terrible interface !
Is this actual rape or what a leftist project such as Tor could classify as rape? I can't imagine someone going around raping people for too long, unless it was not actual rape and just looking at some woman's face.
My apologies, I didn't see your other reply before I deleted and reposted the comment. I thought I'd replied to the post and not the comment, so I deleted and reposted, did not realise you had detached it.
I'm sorry for posting low quality comments and won't do it again.
It actually just crossed my mind that it might have been an innocent mistake and I came back to the thread with the thought of editing my comment. Sorry for assuming the worst of you! (It's a bias I try not to fall into, but still do.)
I'm reluctant to pre-judge someone in a situation like this (having zero facts, only allegations from people, some of whom I trust by default), but stepping down when allegations like this happen, even if you dispute their veracity, is often the best thing to do for the organization (and yourself).
This has to be tough for everyone involved. Tor is unpopular with a lot of people, and there are both internal-to-scene and journalist-vs-securitypeople historical dramas here, plus people often do bad things.
I'm confident the Tor Project will survive this; I hope justice for the people involved is served as well.
Which is why Tor should probably operate like PaX, without real life identities associated. Some open source contributions are not very different from activism in that they can get you into trouble in certain jurisdisctions, and in essence it's not much different from banned writers.
He was strongly associated with Tor from a PR/outreach perspective. Less critical than a year ago, and not particularly operational. Hence my confidence that Tor will survive.
I don't even know what there would be to discuss with this story. It seems like the only possible outcome of it is a lot of personalized Internet drama. If there's an important story here, someone will eventually write it, and maybe that will have a place on HN. But this one-line page isn't that, and I flagged this story, and hope others do too.
Hmmm. Would you feel the same way if there wasn't so much ambiguity around his departure? There's often HN stories when notable people depart notable organizations/projects.
I definitely understand where you're coming from. This comment section certainly isn't even remotely productive and I can understand and mostly agree with your choice to flag it. But purely out of interest, I do wonder where you feel the line is. I do find it interesting to know when various people change their affiliations. It's one of the things I actually often find out about on HN, since I otherwise wouldn't end up keeping up with any of it.
I feel like most of the people commenting here probably don't know any other Tor project members by name, including the founder's, and don't really know what Appelbaum did or the project either. So the fact that we're off to these ridiculous races on this thread based on this one-line post is especially galling.
Speculation can on rare occasions be interesting, when it's done by informed speculators. But that's not what we have here, is it?
I just think that the submission's merit is independent of the page full of awful comments it generated. The submission itself seems about as HN worthy as other "X leaves Y" submissions. IMO, the comments are a problem in the HN community, not a problem in the submission.
Pragmatically though, flagging the story and getting whatever this comment section off the front page probably makes sense.
People are posting related info they've found. Seems entirely valid to me (especially given that the media botches a lot of stories, like the last two revelations of "the real Satoshi").
The other comments had me rolling my eyes. But far as Tor and Appelbaum, remember that Appelbaum was the public face of Tor and defender of Wikileaks for many people. Also did lots of work on these issues. Was the fieldguy in many countries deploying the tech. Justifies a specific interest in Appelbaum over others where some, including me, were wondering if aomeone missed a writeup somewhere about why he left and what's his next plans.
All this other stuff seems tabloid. Not what we need on HN.
I didn't say developer. So, dont correct it. I also addressed broader issues than merely Tor code. He did lots of outreach plus helped deploy Tor in a lot of rough areas. Post Snowden, he took a role both informing and being an evangelist.
You can't unroll years of video presentations and writeups by one comment. So, please cite reputable sources saying all that was a hoax in his official job duty on Tor to hoax people.
His role was evangelism, he was successful with it, but it does not affect the technology in any way. Just as the death of your car salesman would affect your customer experience but not the way Ford builds cars for you.
I have no idea what "deploying Tor" means, but apparently it means loading an installation package on a machine. So come one, you could impress non-techies with that but...
I respectfully disagree. He had enough involvement with the project (speaking about it publicly) that his departure on its own is sufficiently newsworthy.
(FWIW, I know a bunch of the Tor devs, Tor founders, and various anti-Jake people across areas. I've also known Jake for about 20y. I just think "person publicly associated with the org leaves" is newsworthy, since Tor itself is newsworthy.)
FWIW, there is now a twitter account and website set up now dedicated entirely to completely assassinating his character. Whether there are claims made that are true or not, I'm not linking to either because I think the court of public opinion is the most fucked approach to getting justice (I personally know of one person sitting in prison now for 14 years for murder because his character was systematically assassinated in public leading up to the trial. He ended up pleading guilty to another crime that occurred while he was in solitary confinement awaiting trial in order to avoid life in prison).
For those curious, you can probably find both if you look hard enough, but there isn't anything substantiated or factual presented by either. If anything, they make the accusers look incredibly desperate and vindictive. Furthermore, the site references the "plagiarism" incident as one of the offenses which feels absurd after reading the thread with all the drama surrounding that "offense":
Those who have worked with Jake won't be surprised at all by this. These are accusations coming from multiple people in the tech/privacy/infosec crowd, not from the government.
> .@mmeijeri Jake finally raped enough people that Tor as an organisation couldn't ignore it anymore.
I worked around Jake around 2009ish in the early years of the Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco. I've seen his charismatic pushiness routine that he uses to get what he wants. I joked that if you ever wanted to find him in a group photo, just look front and center. As time went on, I did hear more uneasy things about him. His name came up with a person I met at PyCon last year in Montreal, who then relayed a story that didn't go as far as sexual assault, but was very troubling. He's one of those people that you step aside and warn your friends about. Keep an eye on your intoxicated friends when he's around.
The stories I read on http://jacobappelbaum.net/ fit exactly with the Jake that I knew. He is focused on his own wants and laughs off people's boundaries. Reading the stories on that site doesn't make me think of an elaborate conspiracy to discredit him but of how Cosby was able to get away with his crimes for years.
Before people start saying I'm a shill: I don't have any connection to the http://jacobappelbaum.net/ nor do I know the people who made it (or, at least, I don't know if any people I know made it). [I wrote a book on cryptography, and 100% of the proceeds go to the Tor Project, the EFF and Creative Commons.](http://inventwithpython.com/hacking/proceeds)
"Three current Tor employees—two of which agreed to be named on the record—have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site’s authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question.
Andrea Shepard, a senior Tor developer, confirmed to the Daily Dot that she was in touch with at least one of the victims on the website several months ago. Alison Macrina, a Tor employee and advocate as well as the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, also vouched for the authenticity of the anonymous victims' statements.
"It’s related to something that started happening in earnest about three or four months ago," Macrina said. "Which is simply that people stopped being afraid to talk to each other about Jake. That’s how I heard from some victims.""
As an outsider, I don't know what is going on at all, but since you linked to some people that are notable that are willing to go on the record, it seems appropriate to quote some of what they said,
"Andrea Shepard, a senior Tor developer, confirmed to the Daily Dot that she was in touch with at least one of the victims on the website several months ago. Alison Macrina, a Tor employee and advocate as well as the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, also vouched for the authenticity of the anonymous victims’ statements."
I feel like a conspiracy theorist by saying there are far too many rape allegations against people associated with wikileaks. Cui bono?
Edit: As someone that has almost exclusively hung out with educated/privileged people, I am just not used to anyone that would tolerate any assault occurring around me. People have never even joked about it around me, and I am the most crude person IRL. I am aware that I could be wrong, this story just sounds difficult to believe.
108 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/ioerror/status/736259103790632960
I' sorry to see him leave. I had the opportunity to attend his talks in Munich and Hamburg and he is a great explainer and so well spoken. I'm curious what he is up to next.
Think this is simply him dedicating more of his time to schooling.
Put it this way: can you provide even a single example that proves this to be false?
I know of just one instance actually (guy who is now a professor from Hong Kong, whose incredible experience with farming was counted).
On the other hand, I do know some smart folks without college degrees whose professors fought to get them in and to get them designated in certain higher level positions but they lost that battle.
Most people are surprised to find just how many things universities have a form to do. There's very few rules at a university you can't get waived with the right signatures on the right paperwork.
My own time in academia required a lot of paperwork...
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing for differences in temperament and personality, amateur psychoanalyzing trying to understand a person, compassion... these are all things normal healthy people do, in the interests of co-operation - which psychopaths consciously take advantage of. And overlooking things because person X is effective at their job... it is the same sort of pragmatism that underlies the legal system - e.g. you may be entirely in the right and the other person in the wrong, but the legal system only cares about money and really, which one has more - and more lawyers. At some point, the rational person decides this is stupid and a waste of time and not worth it to their personal life, especially when society, as complex as it is now, isn't going to care that much about a bad actor unless they are very very notable.
E.g. Bill Cosby still has his supporters and Jimmy Saville got away with all sorts of stuff for years while others consciously looked away - because the cost of standing up and fighting the Establishment wouldn't have been worth it. It's groupthink, plain and simple, and a lot of people can't jump that hurdle.
Eventually, you realise how fundamentally corrupt humanity can be, and become more conservative (re: that quote). But ... if you have integrity, you have to realise why "conservatives" value hypocrisy so much because it is the foundation of power, and then you begin to see the real Truth about the world.
[1]: https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/732593939719593984
[2]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi...
https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/638735997396774912
While I'm sure you intended this to be a compliment, you should know that ioerror has strong opinions (which I agree with) about the word "activist". From a recent talk[1][2] he gave about journalism and the media:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78[2] I strongly recommend everyone watch [1] - it's shorter than most of his talks (only 20m), and it has surprising revaluations about e.g. The Guardian. Jacob doesn't pull his punches, and he burns a few notable bridges.
Edit : I have found this Tweet [0] I shared with ioerror himself about this same subject exactly a year ago.
[0] https://twitter.com/Raed667/status/608297894651772929
http://www.wired.com/2007/10/so-who-wants-to/
On a more serious note, sorry to see him leave. He seemed really deeply engaged in Tor Project, I saw him on CCC (Chaos Communication Congress, a huge hacker conference in Hamburg) a couple of times. See his talks here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=appelbaum+ccc
(I’m a former Google engineer, have worked on privacy and security software [I created Disconnect, have contributed to HTTPS Everywhere].)
I have worked with him on projects long ago, however, so he can certainly have chosen where to focus his time and attention. Just because you don't see him code, don't assume he can't (replying to Grandparent of course)
https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73523010215444889...
https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73858143289374310...
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817
Those are quite serious accusations. I really hope we'll learn more about this.
Is there any reason to think that Jacob Applebaum is actually a rapist? I would really like to see some proof of that, before jumping to any conclusions.
See my comment further down about what I found out about her plagiarism claims.
Edit: It seems people aren't taking the time to go find my other comment so here is a copy-paste..but basically it doesn't appear he was a plagiarist or trying to be one:
Digging through some history regarding her plagiarism accusation, all this twitter ranting does is make me think less and less of Meredith:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546
https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376
To quote from one of the gmain.org e-mail responses from Gregory Maxwell:
--- BEGIN ---
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Meredith L. Patterson <clonearmy <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> would prefer to see it dealt
> with right here where you brought it up by failing to properly credit
> Nadim's work.
When Nadim posted, I responded off-list because I believe this drama has no place for otr-dev.
I responded to him with my email records showing that the document existing in April 2013— long prior to the history reflected on the wikipage (which appears to indicate that Nadim is the sole author of the text), and the commentary from my email records indicated that at the time I believed Jake to be a joint author of the document. The MP-OTR spec (being discussed, not the document you linked to) provides no attribution to anyone except Nadim, although I was certain that this wasn't the case.
In response Nadim confirmed my understanding. Apparently the true history of the document was lost when it was moved from git into the cryptocat wiki at some point, similarly to how Jake's fork doesn't include the history from the current cryptocat wiki (which includes a relatively modest amount of changes on the original document). Nadim further went on to claim "[Jake's] contributions to this document were done with him being part of the Cryptocat team at the WSJ hack-a-thon and thus this document belongs to the Cryptocat Project.". This theory of ownership may explain Nadim's failure to acknoweldge Jake's authorship— but it is not a sound theory, legally or ethically as I'm sure you would agree.
My own view is:
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* The reputation attacks are unjustified and unfortunate.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* By failing to at all acknowledge Jake's joint authorship of the document in his public accusation of plagiarism Nadim misrepresented the situation.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* Now that everyone is convinced everyone else is acting in bad faith the simple polite off-list resolution of this drama which should have been used is now not working.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* This is all over a rather insignificant incomplete protocol specification for a protocol that was really designed by none of the people involved in this discussion. Who is the author of those couple hundred lines of prose is not very important... what is important is that someone get around to finishing it and implementing it.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list In spite of this being foolish drama which has no place on this list, I now feel ethically obligated to comment in order to speak out in defense of Jake and to point out the factual inaccuracies which appear to have inspired your comments. As a penance for my contribution to this mess by responding in public I will be donating to one of the tor server hosting projects.
I beg everyone to just add a bunch of attributions to all the copies of the document (which would...
EDIT: Tor doesn't confirm or deny the allegations drove the departure. https://twitter.com/JackSmithIV/status/738857839402311681
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546
https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376
To quote from one of the gmain.org e-mail responses from Gregory Maxwell:
--- BEGIN ---
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Meredith L. Patterson <clonearmy <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> would prefer to see it dealt
> with right here where you brought it up by failing to properly credit
> Nadim's work.
When Nadim posted, I responded off-list because I believe this drama has no place for otr-dev.
I responded to him with my email records showing that the document existing in April 2013— long prior to the history reflected on the wikipage (which appears to indicate that Nadim is the sole author of the text), and the commentary from my email records indicated that at the time I believed Jake to be a joint author of the document. The MP-OTR spec (being discussed, not the document you linked to) provides no attribution to anyone except Nadim, although I was certain that this wasn't the case.
In response Nadim confirmed my understanding. Apparently the true history of the document was lost when it was moved from git into the cryptocat wiki at some point, similarly to how Jake's fork doesn't include the history from the current cryptocat wiki (which includes a relatively modest amount of changes on the original document). Nadim further went on to claim "[Jake's] contributions to this document were done with him being part of the Cryptocat team at the WSJ hack-a-thon and thus this document belongs to the Cryptocat Project.". This theory of ownership may explain Nadim's failure to acknoweldge Jake's authorship— but it is not a sound theory, legally or ethically as I'm sure you would agree.
My own view is:
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* The reputation attacks are unjustified and unfortunate.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* By failing to at all acknowledge Jake's joint authorship of the document in his public accusation of plagiarism Nadim misrepresented the situation.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* Now that everyone is convinced everyone else is acting in bad faith the simple polite off-list resolution of this drama which should have been used is now not working.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
* This is all over a rather insignificant incomplete protocol specification for a protocol that was really designed by none of the people involved in this discussion. Who is the author of those couple hundred lines of prose is not very important... what is important is that someone get around to finishing it and implementing it.
* This is foolish drama which has no place on this list
In spite of this being foolish drama which has no place on this list, I now feel ethically obligated to comment in order to speak out in defense of Jake and to point out the factual inaccuracies which appear to have inspired your comments. As a penance for my contribution to this mess by responding in public I will be donating to one of the tor server hosting projects.
I beg everyone to just add a bunch of attributions to all the copies of the document (which would be easier if the original history weren't apparently lost) and move on with life.
---END---
Edit: Really, the more I think about it the more this infuriates me. It's essentially slander by a person who apparently just dislikes Jacob...made even more infuriating by the fact she is bringing up the plagiarism accusations again and misrepresentin...
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802325565755392
I'm all for believing accusers as a default position, but where the fuck is the actual accusation? It's all vague and secondhand.
Edit: I didn't think my parent comment was inflammatory, but it's been flagged...so just to provide context for this follow-up, here are two sources to consider:
# Meredith's and Jacobs previous interaction regarding her referred to plagiarism incident https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376
# Public email thread on otr-dev about the event in question http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
2) waiting to comment until after your org has made an official statement is, if anything, erring on the side of being professional
3) Attempting to downplay rape accusations with an account that's 58 minutes old is not a good look.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
I'm sorry for posting low quality comments and won't do it again.
(Normally I wouldn't do that in response to a comment that got personal, but then that shouldn't just be a loophole either.)
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
This has to be tough for everyone involved. Tor is unpopular with a lot of people, and there are both internal-to-scene and journalist-vs-securitypeople historical dramas here, plus people often do bad things.
I'm confident the Tor Project will survive this; I hope justice for the people involved is served as well.
I definitely understand where you're coming from. This comment section certainly isn't even remotely productive and I can understand and mostly agree with your choice to flag it. But purely out of interest, I do wonder where you feel the line is. I do find it interesting to know when various people change their affiliations. It's one of the things I actually often find out about on HN, since I otherwise wouldn't end up keeping up with any of it.
Speculation can on rare occasions be interesting, when it's done by informed speculators. But that's not what we have here, is it?
I just think that the submission's merit is independent of the page full of awful comments it generated. The submission itself seems about as HN worthy as other "X leaves Y" submissions. IMO, the comments are a problem in the HN community, not a problem in the submission.
Pragmatically though, flagging the story and getting whatever this comment section off the front page probably makes sense.
All this other stuff seems tabloid. Not what we need on HN.
"did lots of work on these issues" is misleading. He was an imposter and that was precisely his official role in the tor project.
You can't unroll years of video presentations and writeups by one comment. So, please cite reputable sources saying all that was a hoax in his official job duty on Tor to hoax people.
His role was evangelism, he was successful with it, but it does not affect the technology in any way. Just as the death of your car salesman would affect your customer experience but not the way Ford builds cars for you.
I have no idea what "deploying Tor" means, but apparently it means loading an installation package on a machine. So come one, you could impress non-techies with that but...
It's totally flagworthy but this is the same thing as 'soliciting votes' which is supposed to be a Bad HN Manners.
(FWIW, I know a bunch of the Tor devs, Tor founders, and various anti-Jake people across areas. I've also known Jake for about 20y. I just think "person publicly associated with the org leaves" is newsworthy, since Tor itself is newsworthy.)
I mean, I doubt it, but it's nowhere near beyond the realm of possibility.
For those curious, you can probably find both if you look hard enough, but there isn't anything substantiated or factual presented by either. If anything, they make the accusers look incredibly desperate and vindictive. Furthermore, the site references the "plagiarism" incident as one of the offenses which feels absurd after reading the thread with all the drama surrounding that "offense":
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546
Gregory Maxwell's comment on there seems the best considered reply:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/155...
For those that found the site, I encourage you to file an abuse complaint for libel at http://publicdomainregistry.com/report-abuse-complain/
For those that found the twitter account, I encourage you to report the account to twitter.
This is not what justice looks like.
For those thinking these are government-sponsored lies, do you think [Meredith Patterson](https://twitter.com/maradydd) of [Status 451 Blog](https://status451.com/) is working with the government?
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738801590333624320
> [blog.torproject.org/blog/jacob-appelbaum-leaves-tor-project …](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/jacob-appelbaum-leaves-tor-...) is a gross disservice to the Tor community. People deserve to know why Tor evicted its resident sociopath.
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802325565755392
> Tor had the chance to nip this in the bud back when Jake was just a plagiarist. They ignored it, and he graduated to sexual assault.
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817
> .@mmeijeri Jake finally raped enough people that Tor as an organisation couldn't ignore it anymore.
I worked around Jake around 2009ish in the early years of the Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco. I've seen his charismatic pushiness routine that he uses to get what he wants. I joked that if you ever wanted to find him in a group photo, just look front and center. As time went on, I did hear more uneasy things about him. His name came up with a person I met at PyCon last year in Montreal, who then relayed a story that didn't go as far as sexual assault, but was very troubling. He's one of those people that you step aside and warn your friends about. Keep an eye on your intoxicated friends when he's around.
The stories I read on http://jacobappelbaum.net/ fit exactly with the Jake that I knew. He is focused on his own wants and laughs off people's boundaries. Reading the stories on that site doesn't make me think of an elaborate conspiracy to discredit him but of how Cosby was able to get away with his crimes for years.
Before people start saying I'm a shill: I don't have any connection to the http://jacobappelbaum.net/ nor do I know the people who made it (or, at least, I don't know if any people I know made it). [I wrote a book on cryptography, and 100% of the proceeds go to the Tor Project, the EFF and Creative Commons.](http://inventwithpython.com/hacking/proceeds)
"Three current Tor employees—two of which agreed to be named on the record—have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site’s authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question.
Andrea Shepard, a senior Tor developer, confirmed to the Daily Dot that she was in touch with at least one of the victims on the website several months ago. Alison Macrina, a Tor employee and advocate as well as the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, also vouched for the authenticity of the anonymous victims' statements.
"It’s related to something that started happening in earnest about three or four months ago," Macrina said. "Which is simply that people stopped being afraid to talk to each other about Jake. That’s how I heard from some victims.""
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/jacob-appelbaum-tor-project...
"Andrea Shepard, a senior Tor developer, confirmed to the Daily Dot that she was in touch with at least one of the victims on the website several months ago. Alison Macrina, a Tor employee and advocate as well as the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, also vouched for the authenticity of the anonymous victims’ statements."
I feel like a conspiracy theorist by saying there are far too many rape allegations against people associated with wikileaks. Cui bono?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
Edit: As someone that has almost exclusively hung out with educated/privileged people, I am just not used to anyone that would tolerate any assault occurring around me. People have never even joked about it around me, and I am the most crude person IRL. I am aware that I could be wrong, this story just sounds difficult to believe.