Or do you want to argue that the NSA doesn't care about the person that revealed a catalog of their tools to the public?
So, yeah, I maintain that there are plenty of juicier targets that Jacob Appelbaum. I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.
They are also targets. I made no claim about the relative importance of Appelbaum's involvement, which is completely off-topic. He gave the talk at 30c3, which makes him a figurehead and thus a target.
> he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view
So what? That doesn't make him any less of a target from agencies that are pissed off about their documents being leaked to the public. The TLAs would love to make an example out of any of the people involved.
> I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.
That's your interpretation. To be clear, I haven't stated my interpretation, as my only point was that Appelbaum is absolutely on the short list of people we know are the target of state agencies so dismissing the possibility of their involvement is foolish.
(I don't personally know Appelbaum, nor his accusers, although I've spoken to several of them and seen them at conferences throughout the years. I thought Appelbaum was great at promoting Tor. I also remember my second conversation with him, at 26C3 in 2009: he bragged about how he'd stayed at a squat during his visit in Stockholm the month before and fucked some anarchist girl. Which, at the time, I thought was a bit odd bringing up in casual conversation with someone he didn't know.)
I'm not sure that being crass is necessarily an indicator that he's more likely to be a rapist. That's the problem with all this, there's a lot of substantiated stories about him being an asshole, an actual refutation by the party involved of one of the stories that was originally conveyed by a third party, and a bunch of unsubstantiated stories about him being as asshole and a rapist. I don't think the correct thing to do in this case is to assume his guilt. The right may not include assuming his innocence either, until more information is presented.
There's a lot of "you should believe the victim" stuff going around, but at this point are we sure there even is a victim (in the rape accusation)? Is it all third party accusations about anonymous victims, or do we actually have a victim that has come forward? I think that's an important distinction. I put a lot less trust in anonymous sources.
I'm just brainstorming. Perhaps in a hundred years we'll create a way to do that. Until then, let's all just whisper and rumor and accuse and retweet and go with how we "feel" at any particular moment. /s :-)
There are as of yet unsubstantiated, uncorroborated & unverified stories.
Rape and sexual assault are illegal. Let's let the courts decide that, based on evidence. Not rumor, innuendo or mob retweets.
And when it comes to mental health, considering their behaviour and words, I would need to see a clinical diagnosis of ALL involved people to take that seriously in the least. So far I see people who are being abusive saying someone else is abusive; so far I see people demonstrating no empathy, intellectual honesty or capability to reflect, calling someone else a sociopath. So far I see a "community" with very little courage or integrity talking about standing up to bullies, while flagging the story which is clearing up a false claim that has already been spread. A safe space for lynch mobs.
Appelbaum might be guilty of some or a lot of things, but I'm not taking anyone's word for it when they can't even answer the most simple and obvious questions, questions they should have had answers for before even speaking. And the "trust" or "respect" of people who don't notice that is at best of zero value for my own evaluation, at worst it has negative value. And as it stands, I can't interpret the "diagnosis" as sociopath (and plagiarist) as anything than another red flag for those making it, considering all the proof in all this pudding so far, and considering how they don't "criticize their own".
I guess that's also Appelbaum's sinister influence, or something, that so many people don't dare to or are unable to do what a somewhat moral, somewhat intelligent child would already have done (maybe you can even strike "moral" and "intelligent" and replace that with "without an agenda or outside pressure, freely and honestly responding"). Don't put any obligations on victims, after all - including having to prove their victim status that gives them amnesty for any and all transgressions and regressions.
Though maybe they're not transgressions, since a sociopath is not a human being (and just with the victim status, since a sociopath has no rights you don't have to prove the claim after you made it), like someone spookily alluded to but then somehow didn't follow up on [1]. But remember, Appelbaum's allegedly the sick person, so nobody else can be sick. He is allegedly manipulative and dishonest, so nobody else can be.
Remember Greenwald's partner was harassed and detained all the way in UK at the request of the US government because he was close to one of the people on this short list of Snowden documents holders.
Regardless of whether the allegations are true, false, or a mixture of both, the Tor community needs to find better ways of handling situations like this in the future to better protect both victims of abuse, and victims of false accusations, to make sure people in that community feel safe and can focus on their work.
http://www.dw.com/en/snowden-ally-appelbaum-claims-his-berli...
And other similar and very recent account of the US gov harassing Tor developers:
> https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html
It could be noted that the core Tor developer (@isislovecruft) who wrote that post has also spoken out against Appelbaum.
because I did a quick search and saw nothing in their blog or Twitter stream. Instead... I saw a lot of what I expected to see: smoke, emo-drama, innuendo, rumor and SJW brigading.
I'd love to have my views corrected by facts and something concrete. It would help everybody involved in the discussion.
This. Thank you for stating it. The attackers should accept blame for making life harder for real victims.
I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".)
Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)
Also, considering my OC explicitly said that I think rape is a real thing, and bad, I think its clear I do not discount it. I'm anti-rape. I'm also pro-truth and anti-smearing. Its the nuance in how we as a society handle these stances together that I observe is sometimes lost on certain people.
That's what upset me the most. We saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to justify abusive behaviour. And we saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to slip in claims about plagiarism without even attempting to back those up. Regardless of the plausibility of the accusations against Appelbaum, since two wrongs don't make a right, that (and the unwillingness or inability to address it) made the assumption of good faith impossible. And that's not even mentioning the "totally unrelated" Twitter account.
The whole "conspiracy" stuff is a red herring to me. That is, people can speculate about that until the cows come home -- but not to dismiss the obvious, the whole campaign as well as the shaming people who spoke out against the process, and the attempt to excuse bypassing the legal system with how bad it is, then being so much worse. The list of WTFs is long.
https://twitter.com/Shidash/status/741259721756319744
Does that say it all, yet? How far does it have to go?
It was really fun getting ignored and downvoted or mocked by a throwaway just for actually asking hard questions and not just patting some "respected whoevers" on the back, by the way.
The difference between peer pressure and peer review is that with peer review, the more peers you have, the more eyes on the problem you have. With peer pressure, you still only have one set of eyes, but more peers make it squint harder, until it's completely shut. And this was a great demonstration of that, of the total absence of that free thinking hacker spirit that's so easy to print on the label of a tin, but so hard to keep alive in one.
No hard feelings, but know this: seeing someone with a torch and pitchfork, or seeing someone close their curtains as if they haven't seen anything when a lynch mob is out and about, is not really better than seeing someone be abusive to a person, sexually or otherwise. Until you see that person repent and make fantastic changes, it changes something irrevocably. You cannot unsee it. Same goes for "communities".
And that's indeed a very good parallel with what happened to Assange. The issue was never about rape, but that's basically how the story was being told in the media and what most people got out of it.
Today we get this account, from one of Applebaum's supposed "victims" and, surprise surprise, her tale is pretty innocent and de-spun and totally oppositely aligned from the anti-Applebaum portayals we heard initially.
I bet more of the anti-Applebaum tales will start to get debunked. It sounded way too fishy and too much like a coordinated smear. Even the symmetry with how Assange (another big Wikileaks guy) was smeared by his Swedish sex thing seemed like a suspicious coincidence.
There may or may not be some kernal of truth in those anti-Applebaum statements. But there also smells like a lot of poorly disguised bullshit spin wrapped around it.
Keep in mind this space involves the NSA, Wikileaks, state actors, billion dollar budgets, multi-billion dollar empires at stake. False flag ops, bribery and propaganda are a real thing that govs do. Established historical reality.
Also... Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, thats bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. So much of the skepticism we sometimes see about the former, unfortunately, is because of the latter. Truth is sometimes murky and often nuanced, or he-said/she-said.