Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum investigation

Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by ddevault on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @01:41PM (#12174916)

I wouldn't put it past Tor to fire him even if it was just because of the controversey around his digital lynching, regardless of the truth. Even so, sometimes people make mistakes. Maybe he just pissed people off enough make someone want to falsely acuse him. Yeah, these are big maybes, but the point is that there's not certainty. It's the court's job to establish certainty and the acusers have expicitly asked for that not to happen. Does that justify preventing him from ever being able to fix his mistakes and move on? Or does it lead to a downward spiral where his life is permenantly destroyed because of this and things only get worse?

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by mjg59 on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @01:43PM (#12174936)

That's not the situation I posited. I expressly said that in this hypothetical scenario, the behaviour did not reach the level of criminality, and so there's no way for a court to find the individual guilty. In that scenario, should Tor be allowed to say why they fired them?

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by ddevault on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @01:47PM (#12174969)

No, I'd say not. If they aren't willing to uphold their claims in court then they shouldn't be permitted to levy reputation destroying allegations.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by mjg59 on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @01:49PM (#12174999)

How do you uphold a claim in court when there's no criminal activity involved? Are you seriously arguing that companies should not be permitted to say "We fired this person because they never showed up to work"?

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by ddevault on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @01:54PM (#12175059)

Well, I suppose that's a fair point. I wasn't considering situations that weren't lawbreaking. I'll clarify my position: acusing someone of lawbreaking should not be permissible if you won't back yourself up in court. There's a big difference between being fired because you weren't on time, and being fired because you felt up a coworker.

In either case, however, I don't think Tor's actions would be very professional. How often do you see a company blog about why they fired someone?

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by mjg59 on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:06PM (#12175174)

If your argument is that people shouldn't be allowed to say things that harm the employment prospects of others, whether the accusation meets the threshold of criminal behaviour or not seems irrelevant. So why is crossing that threshold different? Why is it ok to say "We have evidence that this person did not turn up to the office" but not "We have evidence that this person engaged in sexual harassment"?

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by ddevault on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:12PM (#12175223)

Because there's a significant difference between acusing someone of crimes and acusing someone of not being a diligent worker. And no, I'm not arguing that this is related to harming someone's employment prospects, but their reputation in general (which happens to encapsulate their employment prospects).

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by mjg59 on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:31PM (#12175371)

There are crimes I can be accused of that will enhance my reputation rather than diminish it. There are perfectly legal things I could be accused of that would destroy my career and my social relationships. If your argument is about reputational damage, then using criminality as the threshold for "It's not ok to make a public accusation" is entirely arbitrary.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by neom on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:21PM (#12175295)

FYI This is nonsensical, not even wrong, and relatively bizarre.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by dragonwriter on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:18PM (#12175266)

> I'll clarify my position: acusing someone of lawbreaking should not be permissible if you won't back yourself up in court.

That's an interesting position which you haven't presented much reasoning for; its not, however, what the US has generally decided, so if you want it to change, you should probably say why.

The decision the US has mostly come to is this:

(1) You can't impose legal sanction without proving something in court.

(2) If someone is harmed (including by accusation of criminal behavior) by something you say, they can challenge it in court as defamation (e.g., slander, libel). and they must show evidence that it is false.

Your proposal is a fairly radical restriction on free speech.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by neom on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:10PM (#12175208)

Given you have so many opinions, I presume you're aware of what libel laws are, right? So if he had a legal case (I'd imagine he does in fact, not have a legal case) he would be perfectly entitled to rebuke their claim, however, the claims would have to be untrue.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by ddevault on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:34PM (#12175398)

Sure, but the damage has been dealt. Unless he wins his libel case and the subsequent media coverage has as much or more reach as the media coverage over the acusations.

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Re:Our statement on the results of the Jacob Appelbaum inves... by rbanffy on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @02:15PM (#12175240)

Appelbaum can still sue the organization, if he feels he's being slandered.

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