13 ms·

Jacob Appelbaum Leaves the Tor Project

206 points by ikeboy 10y ago

weinzierl 10y ago
This explains his tweet from a few days ago: "Changing of the guards." https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/736259103790632960 https://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.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Damn, that's a really short statement and notice. I was hoping for more details.
mcantelon 10y ago
I wonder what the backstory is on this.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Indeed. The terseness of the announcement is quite conspicuous.
- masmullin 10y ago
  He's pursuing a PH.d. Think this is simply him dedicating more of his time to schooling.
  - netik 10y ago
    As far as I know he never went to college, so he's going to have to pursue his BaCS and MaCS first.
    - wnoise 10y ago
      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.
      - pen2l 10y ago
        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.
        djcapelis 10y ago
        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...
        abecedarius 10y ago
        Gregor Kiczales told me he had no bachelor's before his PhD. I expect this has been getting rarer over time.
    - nwalfield 10y ago
      He is listed by Tanja Lange as one of her PhD students: http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/ http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/
    - dave2000 10y ago
      You can't blame college admissions staff for trying it on, but no.
hackuser 10y ago
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.
- thaeli 10y ago
  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.
  - benevol 10y ago
    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.
    - jefurii 10y ago
      Seems oddly reminiscent of the Julian Assange case.
      - ullus12 10y ago
        this
      - dfraser992 10y ago
        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.
nickysielicki 10y ago
I wonder if this is related to the @isislovecruft story [1] from a couple weeks back. [2] [1]: https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/732593939719593984 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/732593939719593984 [2]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi...
- masmullin 10y ago
  More likely this story. https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/638735997396774912 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/638735997396774912
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - zaroth 10y ago
    Please just quote the tweet; Today is my first day as a PhD student with @hyperelliptic and @hashbreaker at @tue_mcs. #pqc
Raed667 10y ago
ioerror is one of most amazing activists I have ever met. This is definitively a loss for Tor.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > activists 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. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78 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.
  - unlinker 10y ago
    That's his opinion, but taking into account the very low % of people who actually engage in the democratic game, I'd say "activist" is a proper term.
  - Raed667 10y ago
    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. [0] https://twitter.com/Raed667/status/608297894651772929 https://twitter.com/Raed667/status/608297894651772929
  - tptacek 10y ago
    He has a problem with the word "activist" being substituted in by journalists, for other journalists. Not with the concept of "activism".
- dates 10y 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!
d33 10y ago
Is he now going to get back to creating sex toys? ;) http://www.wired.com/2007/10/so-who-wants-to/ 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 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=appelbaum+ccc
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
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reallifestuff 10y ago
And nothing of value was lost. Those who know, know he's all talk and no skill.
- unlinker 10y ago
  Then share what you know.
  - reallifestuff 10y ago
    As outlined elsewhere he's an "activist." He talks a lot but he's not a coder.
    - untog 10y ago
      You sound an awful lot like a developer that doesn't think they need a project manager and is oblivious to the chaos that surrounds them.
    - byoogle 10y ago
      Having had several technical discussions with Jacob, I’m certain he’s technically skilled. (I’m a former Google engineer, have worked on privacy and security software [I created Disconnect, have contributed to HTTPS Everywhere].)
      - sounds 10y ago
        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)
    - joepie91_ 10y ago
      Are you meaning to imply that "activists" cannot or do not do anything productive? If so, you might want to reevaluate that belief.
- 10y ago
valarauca1 10y ago
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. https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/735230102154448898 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73523010215444889... https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/738581432893743104 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73858143289374310... https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817
- r3bl 10y ago
  I saw that and tried googling around and the only thing I found was him defending his stance that Assange is not a rapist by default in 2012. Those are quite serious accusations. I really hope we'll learn more about this.
- towelrod 10y ago
  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.
  - gshulegaard 10y ago
    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: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376 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 misrepresenting the whole ordeal again. Rape is a serious thing, but I am not going to take anything she says at face value.
redthrowaway 10y ago
Meredith Patterson's pulling no punches: https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  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 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376 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 misrepresenting the whole ordeal again. Rape is a serious thing, but I am not going to take anything she says at face value.
AceJohnny2 10y ago
Interesting to see the second response put his name in triple-parentheses. (ref: https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-symbol-neo-nazis-use-to-target-jews-online https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-sy... )
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Checking that person's other tweets they appear to be some flavor of neo-Nazi.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  It's an alt-right thing. Called an "echo". It's used to highlight Jews.
  - zymhan 10y ago
    Oh is this why Andrea's reply to someone asking about the rape allegations is "fuck off Nazis"?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- DanBC 10y ago
  Here's the recent discussion about that article when it got submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647
- dang 10y ago
  Since this was thoroughly discussed yesterday, it's probably best to treat it as off-topic here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11831759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11831759.
whazor 10y ago
I am going to guess that he is too busy being a Ph.D. student.
Joof 10y ago
Working on the tor project sounds dangerous which is rather sad.
unlinker 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Please stop posting ideologically inflammatory comments to Hacker News. That is not what this site is for. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
redkeen 10y ago
bs.. so these people decided to tweet about it simultaneously ? k
- RickS 10y ago
  1) no: https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/735230102154448898 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73523010215444889... 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.
redkeen 10y ago
bs.. so these people decided to tweet about it simultaneously ? k
deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago
[Removed low quality comment.]
- dang 10y ago
  I asked you not to do this here, and you deleted the comment and reposted it. If you don't want to use HN in good faith, please don't post here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
  - hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago
    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.
    - dang 10y ago
      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.)
      - hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago
        It's okay, was a very reasonable assumption! I'll make sure I comment on HN appropriately in the future.
unlinker 10y ago
dong removed the comment I had left here, so I'll just replace it with this: https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/738814992569536514 https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/738814992569536514
- dang 10y ago
  Since you've made it clear that you don't want to use this site as intended, I'm banning your latest account. (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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
rdl 10y ago
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.
- cm3 10y ago
  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.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Serious, straightforward question: what was Appelbaum's operational role with Tor, that his departure would be something they'd need to "survive"?
  - rdl 10y ago
    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.
  - rdl 10y ago
    Apparently he also edited 53 lines of code, although that's more than I assumed.
tptacek 10y ago
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.
- djcapelis 10y ago
  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.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    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?
    - djcapelis 10y ago
      Nope. 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.
Fej 10y ago
Is it possible that this story was planted by the NSA/CIA? I mean, I doubt it, but it's nowhere near beyond the realm of possibility.
malandrew 10y ago
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": http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 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/1554 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/ 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.
AlSweigart 10y ago
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. For those thinking these are government-sponsored lies, do you think [Meredith Patterson](https://twitter.com/maradydd https://twitter.com/maradydd) of [Status 451 Blog](https://status451.com/ https://status451.com/) is working with the government? https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738801590333624320 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738801590333624320 > [blog.torproject.org/blog/jacob-appelbaum-leaves-tor-project …](https://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 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 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/ 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/ 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 http://inventwithpython.com/hacking/proceeds)
- apecat 10y ago

206 points by ikeboy 10y ago

This explains his tweet from a few days ago: "Changing of the guards." https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/736259103790632960 https://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.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Damn, that's a really short statement and notice. I was hoping for more details.

mcantelon 10y ago

I wonder what the backstory is on this.

kafkaesq 10y ago
Indeed. The terseness of the announcement is quite conspicuous.
masmullin 10y ago
He's pursuing a PH.d. Think this is simply him dedicating more of his time to schooling.
- netik 10y ago
  As far as I know he never went to college, so he's going to have to pursue his BaCS and MaCS first.
  - wnoise 10y ago
    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.
    - pen2l 10y ago
      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.
      - djcapelis 10y ago
        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...
      - abecedarius 10y ago
        Gregor Kiczales told me he had no bachelor's before his PhD. I expect this has been getting rarer over time.
  - nwalfield 10y ago
    He is listed by Tanja Lange as one of her PhD students: http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/ http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/
  - dave2000 10y ago
    You can't blame college admissions staff for trying it on, but no.

hackuser 10y ago

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.

thaeli 10y ago
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.
- benevol 10y ago
  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.
  - jefurii 10y ago
    Seems oddly reminiscent of the Julian Assange case.
    - ullus12 10y ago
      this
    - dfraser992 10y ago
      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.

nickysielicki 10y ago

I wonder if this is related to the @isislovecruft story [1] from a couple weeks back. [2] [1]: https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/732593939719593984 https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/732593939719593984 [2]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/17/technology/tor-developer-fbi...

masmullin 10y ago
More likely this story. https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/638735997396774912 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/638735997396774912
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zaroth 10y ago
  Please just quote the tweet; Today is my first day as a PhD student with @hyperelliptic and @hashbreaker at @tue_mcs. #pqc

Raed667 10y ago

ioerror is one of most amazing activists I have ever met. This is definitively a loss for Tor.

pdkl95 10y ago
> activists 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. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78 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.
- unlinker 10y ago
  That's his opinion, but taking into account the very low % of people who actually engage in the democratic game, I'd say "activist" is a proper term.
- Raed667 10y ago
  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. [0] https://twitter.com/Raed667/status/608297894651772929 https://twitter.com/Raed667/status/608297894651772929
- tptacek 10y ago
  He has a problem with the word "activist" being substituted in by journalists, for other journalists. Not with the concept of "activism".
dates 10y 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!

d33 10y ago

Is he now going to get back to creating sex toys? ;) http://www.wired.com/2007/10/so-who-wants-to/ 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 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=appelbaum+ccc

deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago

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reallifestuff 10y ago

And nothing of value was lost. Those who know, know he's all talk and no skill.

unlinker 10y ago
Then share what you know.
- reallifestuff 10y ago
  As outlined elsewhere he's an "activist." He talks a lot but he's not a coder.
  - untog 10y ago
    You sound an awful lot like a developer that doesn't think they need a project manager and is oblivious to the chaos that surrounds them.
  - byoogle 10y ago
    Having had several technical discussions with Jacob, I’m certain he’s technically skilled. (I’m a former Google engineer, have worked on privacy and security software [I created Disconnect, have contributed to HTTPS Everywhere].)
    - sounds 10y ago
      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)
  - joepie91_ 10y ago
    Are you meaning to imply that "activists" cannot or do not do anything productive? If so, you might want to reevaluate that belief.
10y ago

valarauca1 10y ago

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. https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/735230102154448898 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73523010215444889... https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/738581432893743104 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73858143289374310... https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817

r3bl 10y ago
I saw that and tried googling around and the only thing I found was him defending his stance that Assange is not a rapist by default in 2012. Those are quite serious accusations. I really hope we'll learn more about this.
towelrod 10y ago
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.
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  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: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376 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 misrepresenting the whole ordeal again. Rape is a serious thing, but I am not going to take anything she says at face value.

redthrowaway 10y ago

Meredith Patterson's pulling no punches: https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738802983173922817

gshulegaard 10y ago
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 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376 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 misrepresenting the whole ordeal again. Rape is a serious thing, but I am not going to take anything she says at face value.

AceJohnny2 10y ago

Interesting to see the second response put his name in triple-parentheses. (ref: https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-symbol-neo-nazis-use-to-target-jews-online https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-sy... )

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Checking that person's other tweets they appear to be some flavor of neo-Nazi.
redthrowaway 10y ago
It's an alt-right thing. Called an "echo". It's used to highlight Jews.
- zymhan 10y ago
  Oh is this why Andrea's reply to someone asking about the rape allegations is "fuck off Nazis"?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
DanBC 10y ago
Here's the recent discussion about that article when it got submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647
dang 10y ago
Since this was thoroughly discussed yesterday, it's probably best to treat it as off-topic here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11831759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11831759.

whazor 10y ago

I am going to guess that he is too busy being a Ph.D. student.

Joof 10y ago

Working on the tor project sounds dangerous which is rather sad.

unlinker 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
Please stop posting ideologically inflammatory comments to Hacker News. That is not what this site is for. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.

redkeen 10y ago

bs.. so these people decided to tweet about it simultaneously ? k

RickS 10y ago
1) no: https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/735230102154448898 https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/73523010215444889... 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.

redkeen 10y ago

bs.. so these people decided to tweet about it simultaneously ? k

deleted 10y ago

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hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago

[Removed low quality comment.]

dang 10y ago
I asked you not to do this here, and you deleted the comment and reposted it. If you don't want to use HN in good faith, please don't post here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.
- hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago
  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.
  - dang 10y ago
    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.)
    - hwhatwhatwhat 10y ago
      It's okay, was a very reasonable assumption! I'll make sure I comment on HN appropriately in the future.

unlinker 10y ago

dong removed the comment I had left here, so I'll just replace it with this: https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/738814992569536514 https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/738814992569536514

dang 10y ago
Since you've made it clear that you don't want to use this site as intended, I'm banning your latest account. (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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832322 and marked it off-topic.

rdl 10y ago

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.

cm3 10y ago
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.
tptacek 10y ago
Serious, straightforward question: what was Appelbaum's operational role with Tor, that his departure would be something they'd need to "survive"?
- rdl 10y ago
  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.
- rdl 10y ago
  Apparently he also edited 53 lines of code, although that's more than I assumed.

tptacek 10y ago

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.

djcapelis 10y ago
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.
- tptacek 10y ago
  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?
  - djcapelis 10y ago
    Nope. 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.

Fej 10y ago

Is it possible that this story was planted by the NSA/CIA? I mean, I doubt it, but it's nowhere near beyond the realm of possibility.

malandrew 10y ago

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": http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/1546 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/1554 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/ 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.

AlSweigart 10y ago

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. For those thinking these are government-sponsored lies, do you think [Meredith Patterson](https://twitter.com/maradydd https://twitter.com/maradydd) of [Status 451 Blog](https://status451.com/ https://status451.com/) is working with the government? https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738801590333624320 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/738801590333624320 > [blog.torproject.org/blog/jacob-appelbaum-leaves-tor-project …](https://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 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 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/ 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/ 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 http://inventwithpython.com/hacking/proceeds)

apecat 10y ago