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Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment

239 points by rdl 10y ago

anc84 10y ago
Nick was one of my favourite people at any hacker meeting I've been at. His positivity and selfless support have been a huge inspiration to me. It pains me to read this, people can suffer in silence so much and you never know until they manage to share their dread. Get well Nick, I hope some day you will be able to continue brightening up other peoples' lifes.
- rdl 10y ago
  He's how I discovered CCC and started attending. Ironically even after he stopped going to CCC events himself, still was able to make a bunch of introductions and be super helpful, and it's obvious the people he's met through these events were super appreciative of him. I hope he comes back into the infosec scene!
elcapitan 10y ago
I've been to quite a few C3s and always thought of Nick Farr as kind of part of the inventory, he was so much part of the culture there. He was one of the people introducing the main talks and always cheered up the crowd. I wondered why he wasn't at the recent events, now I know and this really hurts to read. His account and Meredith L. Pattersons, who has also given talks on most C3s I went to, make these accusations very real and very credible. I hope there will be more than just this internet campaign coming out of it (which I think is really not doing any good there and puts a lot of people off because it really looks like an attempt of character assassination).
- busterarm 10y ago
  I don't know Nick very well, but I've seen him around and spoken to him at hacker events for most of my life now. He's an incredibly stand-up dude and when I think about it really the heart of the community. When you compare him to other folks with any notoriety, he's drama-free and sqeauky-clean. If he says this is what Jake did to him, I can't imagine it isn't just like he says.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    I also agree, both Nick and Meredith are incredibly stand-up decent people. But this is the danger of accepting "a story" based solely on your impression of a person. Jake's been around a long time, and people respect his work, so they either didn't believe or didn't care about the stories about him. Now Nick has a story, and because we know and like Nick, we choose to believe that. In the end, we're all just taking sides. Here's the other problem with this whole scenario: there are accusations of everything from "he made fun of me" to "he harassed and intimidated me" to straight up rape. Now it just looks like people just don't like him, removing credibility from the most serious accusations. And to be fair, i've known of him being a douchebag for over 10 years. But that also doesn't prove or disprove anything, it just makes things seem more plausible. So while I believe Nick's story, I don't know any of the other people with stories, so my opinion of them is still undecided.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      You bring up great points, honestly. It's hard for me to look past Nick's pattern of being awesome and past Jake's pattern of being a dick.
chris_wot 10y ago
If you ever deal with a sociopath, just learn to accept that nothing you can do will defeat them and get the hell away from this person as quickly as you possibly can. I've dealt with three people in my life who I consider sociopaths or pyschopaths. The first time I had no idea what to expect, so it was a massive shock. The second time, I watched them turn on me incredibly rapidly, and from going from being supportive to being entirely bent on destroying me and my reputation in a day, this time I wasn't shocked but just felt a sick feeling inside: it was happening again. This time I knew what to do though. I was pulled into a meeting after my 21st day of non-stop work. The meeting was attended by my boss who the psycopath had just been telling me he would "end" because of his sheer incompetence. Durimg the meeting I was told that adding a synthetic key column was unacceptable (the pysopath couldn't wrap his mind around why you would do this) he told me he had countermanded my request for the change in the ETL process but hadn't told me. When I pointed out I had proceeded under the understanding from my then boss that this was an approved change, he called me a liar, and when I protested that he hadn't told me he threatened to ensure that everything would be sent to me in writing. Then he told me he would be having a meeting with me and the CEO on the next day, a Monday. I excused myself from the meeting. He had a smirk, because he felt he now had power and I could be used as a pawn to destroy the CEO, who had recently pretty much given the man's wife a nervous breakdown. It was clear what the man's goal was: take down the CEO by any means necessary, even if it meant destroying those who had actually made every attempt to protect his wife (who was my manager before she left). I suddenly realised that his plan to bring down the CEO was to remove all competent employees and effectively neuter the CEO, which - truth be told - wasn't very difficult as the CEO was an arrogant twerp who thought he knew about management and IT, but in reality had no idea. Faced with a situation where I was being undermined by my immediate manager, whose incompetence was literally destroying the company, and caught between the anger of a man I consider to be a psychopath, and on the other side dealing with an arrogant, unethical and unheeding CEO, I realised that with my level of burnout and exhaustion my mental health was going to suffer very badly. For me, this was unacceptable - at my most stressed I get thoughts of suicide, but I have a young family who I love... Faced with this, I quietly wrote my resignation letter, ensured it said pleasant things and wasn't critical of anyone, printed it out, put it on the CEO's desk and left the building. If you get targeted by a psychopath, know that as you aren't one yourself they are almost impossible to fight back against because, unlike you, they have no guilt and no compunction against using other people as tools to achieve whatever means they deem necessary. If their best option is to be nice to you, then that's what they'll use. If they realise that you can be used to destroy an enemy, then they'll do whatever it takes to manipulate you into undertaking their actions. They will be very effective at this, and often you won't know till too late you've become entrapped in their machinations. They certainly won't hesitate to drop you at the first sign you can't be manipulated or you have realised what they are up to. So if you meet such a person, you probably have not much realistic chance of beating them at their own game - they are much, much better at it than you. Don't feel bad about this though: the reason they are better at it than you is because they have no sense of guilt or shame, and have almost zero empathy. There is something deeply wrong with them, but they either don't know it or don't care. They are a cancer on society, and you should feel happy you aren't them. But what it does mean is that to beat them, and protect yourself, you must starve them of oxygen, and to do so you must remove yourself from their presence as quickly and abruptly as possible. In my case, I'm glad I did. Six weeks later the incompetent manager was forced to resign when it became apparent that it really was him who destroyed everything. Nine month later, and through his own unethical behaviour and sheer incompetence, arrogance and stupidity the CEO has been sacked. The one who engineered this is now in charge and has taken over the CEO's position - just as I predicted. My former colleagues are in shock, but seem amazed at what I predicted has come to pass.
chinathrow 10y ago
> One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative. Appelbaums reaction to this occurence seems quite strong. That other person wasn't the only one thinking the same. Too bad that talk never happened.
- fit2rule 10y ago
  I agree. One can only hope that this will be Streisand'ed out into the public sphere eventually, however ..
brerlapn 10y ago
Read this back to back with grugq's post today, although standing on its own the level of vitriol Farr describes over the LT would give me pause: http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263 http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263 "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements" Never met Farr, but it's always sad to hear stories where positive contributors are ground down by this sort of unacceptable behavior.
- lolc 10y ago
  Thanks, that was a very interesting read given the context I'm in. My situation is nowhere near as bad as the experiences described, but it helps me in understanding what I'm doing and why.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
9918819911 10y ago
I get the impression that almost everyone in this space overreacts and throws dirt at each other. Here is how others of the Tor project reacted in a similar situation: https://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/ https://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/
- nickfarr 10y ago
  This is why it took me so long to come out with this story. The last thing I want to do is put myself out there only to be dismissed as part of a larger smear campaign (as I was at the time.) Further: This is a direct description of what I have come to know as Jake's M.O. Not an isolated incident. This has to do with one person's behavior, it has nothing to do with the projects that person was involved with. Maybe what Jake did to me wasn't all that bad. Maybe I deserved it. Fine, call me whatever form of coward or weakling you want but in the end, this was my hobby and I found other things to do with my life where I didn't have to put up with this level of stress.
  - Twirrim 10y ago
    Life is too short to waste it spending time either around, or dealing with, toxic people!
  - nullc 10y ago
    Hi Nick. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience. :( But your document contains serious allegations which the body of it does not support: > Jake has targeted, abused and silenced many close friends of mine, many of whom are researchers you probably know and respect. Whether it’s ripping off research or just harassing someone into submission, somehow we all felt powerless to do anything about it. He’s the perfect bully. > Every criticism of him is met with suspicion, every accusation is some government-conspiracy-takedown. > Those that tried to stand up to him were destroyed, one even took his own life after Jake stole his research. But that’s not my story to tell. If you're not going to support these claims, you shouldn't make them. Now I get to feel like shit for calling this out-- and potentially causing you stress, because I am sympathetic to your experience... I think your message would carry more weight if it was limited to your message, rather than setting the framing with a large number of serious but unsubstantiated claims.
Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
I met JA at one of the C3 conventions . he's an extremely charismatic guy. you get sucked in. But then after a while he started to behave very badly towards one in the group. Shaming her and being a jerk in general, but with a smile. I dont know if everyone got what he was doing because it was delivered in such an underhanded way. I couldn't stand it and walked away, and I still regret I didn't tell him to shut the fuck up. I just made an excuse for myself andhave felt like a coward ever since.
- cm3 10y ago
  But if the accusations are true, maybe you dodged a bullet by not getting on his radar. So, I wouldn't feel bad about it. It maybe was your defense mechanism, sensing something bad and taking the exit.
- fit2rule 10y ago
  I've seen this pattern of behaviour with him a number of times. I think he sort of has a patter to how he approaches the weeding of his flock. I've named the folks who follow him around at these events the "Applebaum Laugh Track" and have seen a few of those bad apples fall from the tree for not laughing hard enough/having the gumption to question Dear Leader in some critical way. Essentially, what I think we all have to understand, is that "cult'ing" is habit-forming and when you are the Hacker Messiah, nothing stands in your way of adoration from the filthy masses. Nothing.
- dfraser992 10y ago
  It's comments like this that need a trigger warning to prevent me from having flashbacks about the few situations I have been in </NotEntirelyJustAJoke> A fundamental lesson that I came away with from the whole mess was that a measure of a person is how they treat others. You can allow for some variance in temperament, or the stress of a situation (I have flamed people back in the day), but as long as one acknowledges overreaching, or the wrong of getting too personal... it shows a basic fundamental respect for other people. The psychopath I had to deal with had none of that - it took time to gather enough data to see through his charming behavior and "acknowledge" whatever compliments he may dish out never quite felt sincere, considering the bulk of his behaviors were essentially bullying behaviors. As for your feelings of regret, I am there too. I should have been more assertive, in retrospect, to get this person to back down - we were always butting heads in some fashion, but it was more sniper fire-ish - when he did cross the line, a thorough public chewing out (as professional as possible) on Facebook (that was the comm channel he insisted everyone use for business purposes) might have taught him some respect. Or enraged him so much that he would have finally tipped his hand about his true nature. But the group's standard response "well, that's Peter... he really needs to get off social media once in awhile, his dog is sick, his mother just died...." Rationalizations But over time, the cognitive dissonance builds up enough that you can't ignore it all anymore.
djcapelis 10y ago
Meredith and Andrea were, according to too many people yesterday: untrustworthy and biased. Many comments here urged everyone to suspend judgement, not rush to conclusions and not take allegations overly seriously. (Not always a bad idea, but apparently much less important today.) Now that Nick has written his story however, it goes back on the front page of HN and the comments here basically support it as totally credible. (Which of course, Nick is pretty solid, so it likely is. Just as Meredith, Andrea and many others are solid and credible.) Don't get me wrong, I very very much think that Nick should write up his story and feelings. But I think a lot of people need to examine themselves closely for why they couldn't believe the women who shared their stories yesterday, but now can today. This is why women come forward less often. People have a shocking tendency not to believe them, no matter how credible or well known they are. Please learn from this.
- powera 10y ago
  I'm not sure why people would have thought that Meredith and Andrea were biased. All they said was "Jacob was accused of sexual harassment", and they said it before the Tor release confirming exactly what they said. On the other hand, the http://jacobappelbaum.net/ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ site is clearly biased. If the only thing you can see is that all of those are women accusing Jacob of sexual harassment, you're probably sexist.
- rdl 10y ago
  I was equally slow to fully believe Nick until he posted details (which he did). In general I'll evaluate someone's own claims on their merit (including personal credibility), but am a lot less likely to base actions on third party hearsay. If any of the rape accusers posts a similarly detailed account with verifiable facts (easier under his or her own name, but still can be anonymous) those can be taken seriously too. Nick's account isn't the end of the process; it is the beginning. Now you have to evaluate, give the other parties a chance to respond, etc. Not pre-judging doesn't mean never judging.
  - djcapelis 10y ago
    Hey Ryan, Let me just start by saying I think you're a totally reasonable person and I respect your thoughts,[1] so let's talk some more about why we've come down seeing things a bit differently here. So first off, I think that I've seen a lot more consistency from you than from other parts of the Internet. And that's cool, consistency is worth doing and I also agree skepticism is good. It's a value I hold. It's a value I know Meredith holds too. What is also true though, and I think anyone who examines this closely will also come to the conclusion that claims women make get a much higher degree of skepticism, accusations of bias and face a much higher bar before being accepted or believed. So even when you just compare responses to tweets people made (Nick tweeted yesterday too) or longer form stories that people wrote (that one site has collected a bunch now) you'll see the stark difference in how people respond to things posted by women vs. things posted by men. It contributes a lot to why being on the Internet as a woman is a much more problematic thing and why women don't get taken seriously. It's a real thing, and it'd be best if we were able to learn more from it. Please feel free to spend some more time to examine various threads and comments in various places. I'm sure you'll come to your own conclusions and I'll be interested to hear what you think. [1] You may not know me, but we've got some mutual friends and I've generally appreciated your commentary before being pretty on the level!
danso 10y ago
> One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative. I LOLed. After a few rounds of encrypted e-mail pestering and a few texts, they insisted on being put on the schedule. I did so to appease, as was my strategy at the time, with every intention of pulling them off after they inevitably failed to follow directions. You can go look at the wiki histories for any LT I organized to show this was what I often did with dubious presentations. This doesn't excuse the level of JA's alleged continued hostility, but this is an example of why, for conference-level situations, talks and topics should be discussed by a group of people, rather than just having one person make the decision. I could see why a talk accusing JA of being an informant might be funny in a close-knit group, but it sounds like people actively hated JA by this time, and this conflict, combined with the paranoia that is probably natural in this field, would add to JA seeing this as an aggressive act of hostility. With one decision-maker who has a quirky sense of humor and/or more laid back attitude, such a talk could seem harmless. But I think if another person had been part of the talk-filtering process, they would've seen the proposed talk as unnecessary antagonism. But while JA had a right to be angry about the proposal, that doesn't justify harassing Farr, or demanding the private details of the proposer, or obviously, any of the other allegations against JA. Good for Farr for standing up for the privacy of the individual who proposed the talk.
- anc84 10y ago
  As far as I understand it there was no decision made by Nick except when the organisers intervened. The lightning talks always were chaotic. Nick wrote that the more risky presenters usually did not show anyways, at least that's how I understood it. I think it is awesome to have the LTs not vetted by commitee but being open for anyone who adheres to their format.
- nickfarr 10y ago
  I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post, but I had no intention of letting the talk go forward unless the presenter could bring up some really solid evidence of some sort. Slides, some kind of visual element or documentation were required to earn/keep your LT slot and, for understandable reasons, some people wait until the last minute to submit the final draft of those. To be crass, I threw this person on the schedule and gave them a deadline with every intention of removing them the next day to shut them up so I could go to sleep. The LT schedules change up to and during the event itself and I've rejected a lot of talks once it was clear that the slides or revisions contained inappropriate material. The goal of the event is to give everyone a chance to take the stage, the point is to not curate beyond clustering similar topics together. People sing songs, do dances and any number of crazy little things and sometimes will blow you away with an amazing idea. That being said, I started training my potential replacements for the LTs at the 30c3 for the reasons you stated, among others. I believe today, the talks are assembled by a team of three people with each person taking the helm on a particular day.
ryan-c 10y ago
I was on the 2007 CCC Camp trip that Nick Farr organized. I do remember Jake being an asshole on it, including making many inappropriate sexual comments. Since then, I have heard Jake trash talk Nick Farr quite a few times. Jake's been on my "avoid" list for a long time.
daxorid 10y ago
The notes left on his hotel bed daily are the strangest part. Implying Jake is a Fed, or his supporters were actively compromising his physical security?
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Yeah I'm not sure whether to believe that part. If I found notes on my pillow, I'd nope the fuck out of there and either go back to the conference or the police station. In any case, that story would not have ended where it does now.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Why do you think the police would do anything? We know from the victims of stalkers that the police don't see it as important; they don't care; or if they do care there's not much they can do. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-stalked-singer-police https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-sta... Seven years!
  - nickfarr 10y ago
    I totally understand your skepticism there. Yes, I was totally an idiot for not keeping the notes, not going to the police, etc. etc. If I can offer anything, by the time it got to that point, I had already been told to "stop making drama" about the whole thing and somehow just pacify Jake by many people I trusted. So I bring them a note! I bring them to my hotel room! Let's walk through the scenario in my head: What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper. Who's to say I didn't make the thing up myself to try to get back at Jake? Why would someone believe me just because there's a shred of something. My whole approach up until I couldn't take it anymore was to just ignore, to let it slide, to not think about it and move on. THIS IS WHAT HARASSMENT VICTIMS DO and yes, I should have recognized it at the time.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      Even if you didn't ignore it, it sounds like the well was already poisoned for you. I think you've made the right decision to leave this group, sad though the situation is.
rdl 10y ago
I wish people wouldn't use JA as an abbreviation here; ambiguous with Julian Assange due to overlap.
- DasIch 10y ago
  Well, it's not like Julian Assange is much better.
- 2close4comfort 10y ago
  I was thinking Jackass which seems to fit well. And now that you bring it up they are strikingly similar...
zer00eyz 10y ago
> I want to be part of a community where this kind of behavior isn’t tolerated from the inception. I want to be part of a community where incidents like this are addressed promptly and fairly and not dismissed as “drama”. Admittedly, I could have done more to make this happen... First of all shit happens. Second, anyone who ever finds them selves in these situations, STAND UP and keep standing up. Last, I hope Nick finds the will to go back... He seems to have the support of the community, and has the opportunity to make more like what he wants, and it should be. It is NOT too late.
gravypod 10y ago
> one even took his own life after Jake stole his research Who was this?
- rdl 10y ago
  Pretty obvious, although not my story to tell. Hint: not aaronsw. Fortunately the set of hackers/computer security people in this social circle who have killed themselves in the past 15y is still fairly small.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I've not been involved or looked at anything in the tor or C3 circles up until these allegations. It isn't very obvious because I know no one involved.
    - kurotowa 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723959 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/302264789311299585 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/302264789311299585
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - chris_wot 10y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8643924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8643924
colllectorof 10y ago
It's disturbing that so many tech communities these days seem to be incapable of handling such things without some kind of public showdown that involves social media. If the accusations are false, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where a bunch of people would pile onto someone (for whatever reason) to ruin the person's reputation. If accusations are true, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where someone can be that abusive towards others -- for years -- with impunity. Either way, sounds like a bad place to be at.
- jmcgough 10y ago
  From the FAQ on jacobappelbaum.net: Q: WHY DID YOU MAKE THE SITE? A: We made the site because we wanted other people to be aware of how Jake behaves. There has been a whisper network for years, but it doesn't reach everyone, and even if it could, open secrets do not protect people. We didn't want anyone to be victimized by Jake just because they hadn't been warned about him. Making a public site is the best way to make sure that everybody is aware of the stories about him. Q: MAKING A SITE LIKE THIS SEEMS AWFUL. WHY DIDN'T YOU TRY OTHER WAYS TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS YOU WERE HAVING? A: People have tried lots of things, including speaking directly with Jake and asking him to stop. People have talked about his behavior inside the infosec and internet freedom communities for years, and have tried many strategies for making it harder for him to victimize people. People have complained inside the Tor Project and been dismissed (until now, of course). Jake's behavior has been an open secret, in some circles, for years. He has still kept doing the same things. Q: AFTER JAKE RESIGNED FROM THE TOR PROJECT, WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS SITE ANYWAY? A: When sexual predators are kicked out of one community, they often move on to some other community where they do the same thing. Silence lets them do that. We didn't want him to be able to move to a different community and do the same thing to people there.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  incapable of handling such things without some kind of public showdown that involves social media. But there isn't any formal power structure. The only things "communities" can base decisions on are legal records and social reputation. If you don't want to be at a conference where someone can be abusive to others, what exactly do you suggest they use to determine who can and can't get in? An extralegal quasi-judicial system that weighs rumors and conjecture to keep undesirables out? And how do you keep that process meaningfully distinct from a conference where a bunch of people pile onto someone for whatever reason to ruin a reputation? tl;dr: It's not possible to have it both ways.
PavlovsCat 10y ago
What exactly did he plagiarize, and where is the documentation of that? If it's about giving credit where credit is due, I don't see how just destroying Appelbaum as a "plagiarist" really helps there. I guess my problem is: even assuming all charges are true, the way this is done, and the way it's nodded off by people in the name of being decent (less questions asked = more decent?), while others dismiss it as some SJW stunt or conspiracy or whatever, is just a horrible precedent to me. This all out attack on the totality of a person, this "creating facts on the ground", and this binary dichotomy of "only one party can ever be in the wrong", the extreme polarization. For what it's worth, I know how being gas-lighted feels, I know how it is to see someone go from friendly to snarling with utmost hatred back to friendly. I don't feel like sharing all that, but that's kind of how I know a bit about sociopathy and narcissism to begin with, I had to learn. But that's also why that website kind of struck me as kind of weird, since it talks about sociopathy yet seems not only kind of devoid of compassion, but also reckless, seeing how the destruction of Appelbaum seems to be intended to be total and forever. As in, just because he's no good as a "community leader", who cares what happens to the human being - he didn't care either, he started it after all. No fair judge and no psychologist worth crap would talk like that, and that's why such things should be left to both ultimately. Even sociopaths are people, even after having been clinically diagnosed. Human rights apply even to those who don't afford them to others. This is a principle that is more important than anything else. EVEN if you have to disarm a person, set boundaries, and so on, there is never a point where they're just fair game for anything. You know how free speech is about protecting the speech you despise? Same goes for human rights. Believing in due process for the innocent is easy, believing in due process of a serial killer, now that's where it starts to become more adult, and there is no crime so atrocious the perpetrator loses their status as human being. We know this is hard to grasp for many people, but when "hackers" start forgetting that as well, that's troubling. So I am really not liking this whole thing as it stands, and am also not liking this dichotomy of "either you believe it or don't", since I'd still have all the above questions or objections even granting every claim is 100% true. And the shaming of people who reserve judgement or ask for any evidence, or more substance in general, in light of such a huge, all out attack, also sucks. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, people can "command" their personal friends to "not question, just hug" when that's all they can take (and I don't mean that snarkily, honestly), but that's not something a society or justice can operate on. His character has been effectively assassinated, no matter what comes of this most people who saw that may never see the follow-up, and we can't even ask questions? You can't take abuse seriously and then say "nothing you do to an abuser is ever abuse", that's not justice.
shava23 10y ago
What we have here is a set of social engineers social engineering an ouster of a fellow social engineer from the fellowship of his fellow social engineers. Welcome to the snake pit. No matter what all of you may think of the stand-up-ness of any of the folks involved, there are strong agendas in whomever is presenting a case here. I, for one, am no longer involved in the Tor Project, but I am the founding executive director, and I haven't so much as spoken to Jake for years -- I believe I ran into him very briefly at a Tor hackathon about three years ago at the MIT Media Lab -- and haven't spoken him to any serious depth for a good nine years. So I don't have a serious horse in this race. I care about the project a good deal more but I've been retired, not on the board, and not particularly volunteering due to a stroke a while back. But this kind of thing bites. Sit down, STFU, and wait for the courts, if any, to settle it out. We went through this with Assange too. It divides people up. There are a few things to say here. The most radical thing you can do for a woman is to believe her. Fine. The most radical thing you can do for an activist, is to believe him or her. Applies to Jake and to Nick, amiright? But. To. Both. The best thing you can do for your community is to stop tearing it up at the roots with gossip, like archetypical old ladies. Which I feel qualified to say, as the local blue hair (ok buzz cut battle ship gray) retiree. Opsec says, every one of these reasonable sounding people is a liar with an agenda. So, much as I would love to believe Jake, the women involved, Nick, and the tooth fairy, all of them are hackers at hacker cons, and you are all my peeps, and I love you. And there is no spoon, no truth, and no use to hacking this out in an internet forum as a form of vigilante justice. My gray haired thought is this is all prurient, for a loooong time. Please chill. This is just the kind of thing that regardless of who is in...error...makes a community spin until it's sick and the good people fly away. If we are wise we'll all work to de-escalate, not justify or discuss, until things can go through normalized channels. I don't expect for an moment that will happen, but I feel compelled to make the appeal. Shava Nerad founding exec dir, The Tor Project, retired 2007 but speaking entirely for myself
- nyolfen 10y ago
  At this point we have multiple respected members of various communities coming out with accusations against JA. This isn't comparable to Assange's situation. Appelbaum has repeatedly come out looking like a scumbag with no one on his side besides mostly anonymous people asking for the benefit of the doubt, and nothing but radio silence from Appelbaum for a week. A guy being a scumbag is frankly much more likely than a conspiratorial multilateral attack on his character.
fit2rule 10y ago
This, to me, is a lesson in just how destructive narcissistic self-importance can be for the culture of creative technology. I've met and engaged both Jake and Nick at various times during their visits to Europe, and I've been left, each time, with the sense that - in both cases - there is a huge desire to create a cult of personality. In Nicks' case, it seems relative benign and harmless - he is a loud, funny guy, very boisterous and entertaining. Jake, also: loud and boisterous, but not so entertaining. Jake seems to travel with a laugh track everywhere he goes (fawning sycophants whose job it is to fill in the gaps between Jake's sentences with laughter).. The point is, these are the kinds of characters that our scene attracts. It should come as no surprise that they are locking horns .. imagine if we were somehow able to harness all the power which either personality cults' provide and somehow channel it for the good of the hacker scene. Jake could do whatever it takes to set himself up as the Hacker Messiah, and Nick could keep the Circus from burning down/feeding itself to the lions. Alas, this won't be the end of it, I'm quite sure. This sort of public dissing is precisely the sort of thing few are really capable of dealing with sanely .. perhaps the mob will just eat itself.
Fej 10y ago
At first I considered that the accusations were planted by some three-letter agency. This has seriously changed my opinion. At one point I sorta considered ioerror a personal hero of mine. Not so much anymore.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
This whole situation is disturbing to me as a solo operator always considering getting deeper into the INFOSEC circle. Ok, here's what's happened in around 24 hours or so: weird tweet done in a style used for evidence; tweet mob claiming the guy is a rapist; entire, styled site goes up with detailed descriptions that he's verbally an asshole + "Coming Soon" placeholders (could be rape claims by now); people claiming claims are legit because people doing smears are standup people; people agreeing its true because it's already known to unknown people; all kinds of people making excuses for why they should say and do everything except file rape charges with due process. Another commenter used the word bizarre. To me, it looks both bizarre and like smear campaigns by trolls that I've seen destroy people that were probably innocent. Now, I know Jake is an asshole and we now have one credible witness, Nick Farr, to extreme bullying. Yet, these are the exact kinds of tactics liars, trolls, SJW's, and spooks use on innocent people. The targets get "convicted by the media" without a trial or any real chance of defense. Many people wrongly assume large number of accounts saying same thing means it's open and shut. They need to knock that stuff off to handle this right anyway. If one or more rapes happened, they need to contact the authorities to give full details on this. That FBI already wants to throw him in a cell with a number of witnesses claiming rape and others claiming bullying should make this easy (read: barely due process). In this case, Jake will be able to tell his side of the story, bring in his witnesses, and so on rather than one side's media campaign being sole decider of his fate. Plus, I find it hypocritical that the website describes its existence is to protect the next community from a "sexual predator." They'll tweet, accuse, make websites... all kinds of talk to "protect" others from a "sociopath"... but won't go to the police to attempt an arrest, conviction, and prison stay for same sociopath. Unheard of reaction in my parts among liberals or conservatives. Always cops involved when it's this public with people usually doing time. I recommend people stay clear of both Jake Appelbaum and any of these idiots in the smear campaign. You can bet they'll do the same shit to you if you piss them off too much. Probably won't be rape claims but you'll be defending an online shitstorm. Nick Farr seems to be an exception who I hope recovers from any abuse he received and gets back to doing the good things people here describe. Definitely hang with him sometime.
saizai 10y ago
Jake's response: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp /via https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/739731362404536320 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/739731362404536320 I note that he does not deny any of Nick's factual claims. The denial is only of "criminal sexual misconduct", which is a legal claim (what misconduct counts as criminal?) rather than a denial of the specific factual allegations made @ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ (however they may be legally construed). I can understand why Jake may not want to engage with them in detail — doing so would almost certainly raise more questions than it answers — but AFAICT, this is functionally a non-denial denial. One thing I don't understand from Nick's piece (etc.) is whether the referenced "plagiarism" means only Jake insisting on alphabetical author order (thus making it seem like he did most of the work when he didn't) or something else. <s>It's also saddening to read of yet another of us committing suicide, whatever the circumstances.</s> Having read other comments, I now realize what this referred to. I suppose it's fortunate that it is not yet another, but that loss is no less saddening for the time passed since. (FWIW, I've stayed with that person's partner at one point. They were incredibly kind to me at time that was difficult for both of us.) … Repeating two comments I made on Nick's Medium article: 1. Nick: in my limited experiences with you, you’ve been one of the most warm & welcoming people in the hacker community. I hope that at some point you get back your health and manage to resume attending conferences. Take care of yourself. 2. Jake espouses very hard line principles of source protection, right to speak, fighting bad speech with more speech, etc. I generally agree with him on those principles. (I’d rather not go into my opinion on his personality.) If Jake had gotten the kind of threats from Nick that Nick describes getting from Jake, there’s no way in hell he’d comply. He’d probably have an aneurism, irretrievably commit the documents to public view after thoroughly anonymizing them, and make it very, very public. Kudos to Nick for both protecting his source and trying to handle this issue with tact. It’s indefensible that Nick was treated this way for doing so, and a loss to the community for him to have come to harm for it.
zealotmonkey 10y ago
In 2013, before, and during 30c3, Jacob Appelbaum suspected, and made claims, including one before the European Parliament, that he was under surveillance[0]. Since at least 2010, Jacob Appelbaum had been detained at airports and had his computer seized, multiple times. Despite this, Nick Farr, at 30c3, during the time period in which Jacob Applebaum heavily suspected he was under surveillance, and was presenting talks about classified NSA material, thought it would be friendly to permit a lightning talk that alleged that Jacob Applebaum was working for an intelligence agency, and then, without the actual talk happening, delete all records of that allegation when Applebaum, who thought he was under surveillance, requested information pertaining to that possibility. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Journalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Detention_and_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Detention_and_...

239 points by rdl 10y ago

anc84 10y ago

Nick was one of my favourite people at any hacker meeting I've been at. His positivity and selfless support have been a huge inspiration to me. It pains me to read this, people can suffer in silence so much and you never know until they manage to share their dread. Get well Nick, I hope some day you will be able to continue brightening up other peoples' lifes.

rdl 10y ago
He's how I discovered CCC and started attending. Ironically even after he stopped going to CCC events himself, still was able to make a bunch of introductions and be super helpful, and it's obvious the people he's met through these events were super appreciative of him. I hope he comes back into the infosec scene!

elcapitan 10y ago

I've been to quite a few C3s and always thought of Nick Farr as kind of part of the inventory, he was so much part of the culture there. He was one of the people introducing the main talks and always cheered up the crowd. I wondered why he wasn't at the recent events, now I know and this really hurts to read. His account and Meredith L. Pattersons, who has also given talks on most C3s I went to, make these accusations very real and very credible. I hope there will be more than just this internet campaign coming out of it (which I think is really not doing any good there and puts a lot of people off because it really looks like an attempt of character assassination).

busterarm 10y ago
I don't know Nick very well, but I've seen him around and spoken to him at hacker events for most of my life now. He's an incredibly stand-up dude and when I think about it really the heart of the community. When you compare him to other folks with any notoriety, he's drama-free and sqeauky-clean. If he says this is what Jake did to him, I can't imagine it isn't just like he says.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  I also agree, both Nick and Meredith are incredibly stand-up decent people. But this is the danger of accepting "a story" based solely on your impression of a person. Jake's been around a long time, and people respect his work, so they either didn't believe or didn't care about the stories about him. Now Nick has a story, and because we know and like Nick, we choose to believe that. In the end, we're all just taking sides. Here's the other problem with this whole scenario: there are accusations of everything from "he made fun of me" to "he harassed and intimidated me" to straight up rape. Now it just looks like people just don't like him, removing credibility from the most serious accusations. And to be fair, i've known of him being a douchebag for over 10 years. But that also doesn't prove or disprove anything, it just makes things seem more plausible. So while I believe Nick's story, I don't know any of the other people with stories, so my opinion of them is still undecided.
  - busterarm 10y ago
    You bring up great points, honestly. It's hard for me to look past Nick's pattern of being awesome and past Jake's pattern of being a dick.

chris_wot 10y ago

If you ever deal with a sociopath, just learn to accept that nothing you can do will defeat them and get the hell away from this person as quickly as you possibly can. I've dealt with three people in my life who I consider sociopaths or pyschopaths. The first time I had no idea what to expect, so it was a massive shock. The second time, I watched them turn on me incredibly rapidly, and from going from being supportive to being entirely bent on destroying me and my reputation in a day, this time I wasn't shocked but just felt a sick feeling inside: it was happening again. This time I knew what to do though. I was pulled into a meeting after my 21st day of non-stop work. The meeting was attended by my boss who the psycopath had just been telling me he would "end" because of his sheer incompetence. Durimg the meeting I was told that adding a synthetic key column was unacceptable (the pysopath couldn't wrap his mind around why you would do this) he told me he had countermanded my request for the change in the ETL process but hadn't told me. When I pointed out I had proceeded under the understanding from my then boss that this was an approved change, he called me a liar, and when I protested that he hadn't told me he threatened to ensure that everything would be sent to me in writing. Then he told me he would be having a meeting with me and the CEO on the next day, a Monday. I excused myself from the meeting. He had a smirk, because he felt he now had power and I could be used as a pawn to destroy the CEO, who had recently pretty much given the man's wife a nervous breakdown. It was clear what the man's goal was: take down the CEO by any means necessary, even if it meant destroying those who had actually made every attempt to protect his wife (who was my manager before she left). I suddenly realised that his plan to bring down the CEO was to remove all competent employees and effectively neuter the CEO, which - truth be told - wasn't very difficult as the CEO was an arrogant twerp who thought he knew about management and IT, but in reality had no idea. Faced with a situation where I was being undermined by my immediate manager, whose incompetence was literally destroying the company, and caught between the anger of a man I consider to be a psychopath, and on the other side dealing with an arrogant, unethical and unheeding CEO, I realised that with my level of burnout and exhaustion my mental health was going to suffer very badly. For me, this was unacceptable - at my most stressed I get thoughts of suicide, but I have a young family who I love... Faced with this, I quietly wrote my resignation letter, ensured it said pleasant things and wasn't critical of anyone, printed it out, put it on the CEO's desk and left the building. If you get targeted by a psychopath, know that as you aren't one yourself they are almost impossible to fight back against because, unlike you, they have no guilt and no compunction against using other people as tools to achieve whatever means they deem necessary. If their best option is to be nice to you, then that's what they'll use. If they realise that you can be used to destroy an enemy, then they'll do whatever it takes to manipulate you into undertaking their actions. They will be very effective at this, and often you won't know till too late you've become entrapped in their machinations. They certainly won't hesitate to drop you at the first sign you can't be manipulated or you have realised what they are up to. So if you meet such a person, you probably have not much realistic chance of beating them at their own game - they are much, much better at it than you. Don't feel bad about this though: the reason they are better at it than you is because they have no sense of guilt or shame, and have almost zero empathy. There is something deeply wrong with them, but they either don't know it or don't care. They are a cancer on society, and you should feel happy you aren't them. But what it does mean is that to beat them, and protect yourself, you must starve them of oxygen, and to do so you must remove yourself from their presence as quickly and abruptly as possible. In my case, I'm glad I did. Six weeks later the incompetent manager was forced to resign when it became apparent that it really was him who destroyed everything. Nine month later, and through his own unethical behaviour and sheer incompetence, arrogance and stupidity the CEO has been sacked. The one who engineered this is now in charge and has taken over the CEO's position - just as I predicted. My former colleagues are in shock, but seem amazed at what I predicted has come to pass.

chinathrow 10y ago

> One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative. Appelbaums reaction to this occurence seems quite strong. That other person wasn't the only one thinking the same. Too bad that talk never happened.

fit2rule 10y ago
I agree. One can only hope that this will be Streisand'ed out into the public sphere eventually, however ..

brerlapn 10y ago

Read this back to back with grugq's post today, although standing on its own the level of vitriol Farr describes over the LT would give me pause: http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263 http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263 "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements" Never met Farr, but it's always sad to hear stories where positive contributors are ground down by this sort of unacceptable behavior.

lolc 10y ago
Thanks, that was a very interesting read given the context I'm in. My situation is nowhere near as bad as the experiences described, but it helps me in understanding what I'm doing and why.
deleted 10y ago
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9918819911 10y ago

I get the impression that almost everyone in this space overreacts and throws dirt at each other. Here is how others of the Tor project reacted in a similar situation: https://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/ https://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/

nickfarr 10y ago
This is why it took me so long to come out with this story. The last thing I want to do is put myself out there only to be dismissed as part of a larger smear campaign (as I was at the time.) Further: This is a direct description of what I have come to know as Jake's M.O. Not an isolated incident. This has to do with one person's behavior, it has nothing to do with the projects that person was involved with. Maybe what Jake did to me wasn't all that bad. Maybe I deserved it. Fine, call me whatever form of coward or weakling you want but in the end, this was my hobby and I found other things to do with my life where I didn't have to put up with this level of stress.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Life is too short to waste it spending time either around, or dealing with, toxic people!
- nullc 10y ago
  Hi Nick. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience. :( But your document contains serious allegations which the body of it does not support: > Jake has targeted, abused and silenced many close friends of mine, many of whom are researchers you probably know and respect. Whether it’s ripping off research or just harassing someone into submission, somehow we all felt powerless to do anything about it. He’s the perfect bully. > Every criticism of him is met with suspicion, every accusation is some government-conspiracy-takedown. > Those that tried to stand up to him were destroyed, one even took his own life after Jake stole his research. But that’s not my story to tell. If you're not going to support these claims, you shouldn't make them. Now I get to feel like shit for calling this out-- and potentially causing you stress, because I am sympathetic to your experience... I think your message would carry more weight if it was limited to your message, rather than setting the framing with a large number of serious but unsubstantiated claims.

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago

I met JA at one of the C3 conventions . he's an extremely charismatic guy. you get sucked in. But then after a while he started to behave very badly towards one in the group. Shaming her and being a jerk in general, but with a smile. I dont know if everyone got what he was doing because it was delivered in such an underhanded way. I couldn't stand it and walked away, and I still regret I didn't tell him to shut the fuck up. I just made an excuse for myself andhave felt like a coward ever since.

cm3 10y ago
But if the accusations are true, maybe you dodged a bullet by not getting on his radar. So, I wouldn't feel bad about it. It maybe was your defense mechanism, sensing something bad and taking the exit.
fit2rule 10y ago
I've seen this pattern of behaviour with him a number of times. I think he sort of has a patter to how he approaches the weeding of his flock. I've named the folks who follow him around at these events the "Applebaum Laugh Track" and have seen a few of those bad apples fall from the tree for not laughing hard enough/having the gumption to question Dear Leader in some critical way. Essentially, what I think we all have to understand, is that "cult'ing" is habit-forming and when you are the Hacker Messiah, nothing stands in your way of adoration from the filthy masses. Nothing.
dfraser992 10y ago
It's comments like this that need a trigger warning to prevent me from having flashbacks about the few situations I have been in </NotEntirelyJustAJoke> A fundamental lesson that I came away with from the whole mess was that a measure of a person is how they treat others. You can allow for some variance in temperament, or the stress of a situation (I have flamed people back in the day), but as long as one acknowledges overreaching, or the wrong of getting too personal... it shows a basic fundamental respect for other people. The psychopath I had to deal with had none of that - it took time to gather enough data to see through his charming behavior and "acknowledge" whatever compliments he may dish out never quite felt sincere, considering the bulk of his behaviors were essentially bullying behaviors. As for your feelings of regret, I am there too. I should have been more assertive, in retrospect, to get this person to back down - we were always butting heads in some fashion, but it was more sniper fire-ish - when he did cross the line, a thorough public chewing out (as professional as possible) on Facebook (that was the comm channel he insisted everyone use for business purposes) might have taught him some respect. Or enraged him so much that he would have finally tipped his hand about his true nature. But the group's standard response "well, that's Peter... he really needs to get off social media once in awhile, his dog is sick, his mother just died...." Rationalizations But over time, the cognitive dissonance builds up enough that you can't ignore it all anymore.

djcapelis 10y ago

Meredith and Andrea were, according to too many people yesterday: untrustworthy and biased. Many comments here urged everyone to suspend judgement, not rush to conclusions and not take allegations overly seriously. (Not always a bad idea, but apparently much less important today.) Now that Nick has written his story however, it goes back on the front page of HN and the comments here basically support it as totally credible. (Which of course, Nick is pretty solid, so it likely is. Just as Meredith, Andrea and many others are solid and credible.) Don't get me wrong, I very very much think that Nick should write up his story and feelings. But I think a lot of people need to examine themselves closely for why they couldn't believe the women who shared their stories yesterday, but now can today. This is why women come forward less often. People have a shocking tendency not to believe them, no matter how credible or well known they are. Please learn from this.

powera 10y ago
I'm not sure why people would have thought that Meredith and Andrea were biased. All they said was "Jacob was accused of sexual harassment", and they said it before the Tor release confirming exactly what they said. On the other hand, the http://jacobappelbaum.net/ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ site is clearly biased. If the only thing you can see is that all of those are women accusing Jacob of sexual harassment, you're probably sexist.
rdl 10y ago
I was equally slow to fully believe Nick until he posted details (which he did). In general I'll evaluate someone's own claims on their merit (including personal credibility), but am a lot less likely to base actions on third party hearsay. If any of the rape accusers posts a similarly detailed account with verifiable facts (easier under his or her own name, but still can be anonymous) those can be taken seriously too. Nick's account isn't the end of the process; it is the beginning. Now you have to evaluate, give the other parties a chance to respond, etc. Not pre-judging doesn't mean never judging.
- djcapelis 10y ago
  Hey Ryan, Let me just start by saying I think you're a totally reasonable person and I respect your thoughts,[1] so let's talk some more about why we've come down seeing things a bit differently here. So first off, I think that I've seen a lot more consistency from you than from other parts of the Internet. And that's cool, consistency is worth doing and I also agree skepticism is good. It's a value I hold. It's a value I know Meredith holds too. What is also true though, and I think anyone who examines this closely will also come to the conclusion that claims women make get a much higher degree of skepticism, accusations of bias and face a much higher bar before being accepted or believed. So even when you just compare responses to tweets people made (Nick tweeted yesterday too) or longer form stories that people wrote (that one site has collected a bunch now) you'll see the stark difference in how people respond to things posted by women vs. things posted by men. It contributes a lot to why being on the Internet as a woman is a much more problematic thing and why women don't get taken seriously. It's a real thing, and it'd be best if we were able to learn more from it. Please feel free to spend some more time to examine various threads and comments in various places. I'm sure you'll come to your own conclusions and I'll be interested to hear what you think. [1] You may not know me, but we've got some mutual friends and I've generally appreciated your commentary before being pretty on the level!

danso 10y ago

> One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative. I LOLed. After a few rounds of encrypted e-mail pestering and a few texts, they insisted on being put on the schedule. I did so to appease, as was my strategy at the time, with every intention of pulling them off after they inevitably failed to follow directions. You can go look at the wiki histories for any LT I organized to show this was what I often did with dubious presentations. This doesn't excuse the level of JA's alleged continued hostility, but this is an example of why, for conference-level situations, talks and topics should be discussed by a group of people, rather than just having one person make the decision. I could see why a talk accusing JA of being an informant might be funny in a close-knit group, but it sounds like people actively hated JA by this time, and this conflict, combined with the paranoia that is probably natural in this field, would add to JA seeing this as an aggressive act of hostility. With one decision-maker who has a quirky sense of humor and/or more laid back attitude, such a talk could seem harmless. But I think if another person had been part of the talk-filtering process, they would've seen the proposed talk as unnecessary antagonism. But while JA had a right to be angry about the proposal, that doesn't justify harassing Farr, or demanding the private details of the proposer, or obviously, any of the other allegations against JA. Good for Farr for standing up for the privacy of the individual who proposed the talk.

anc84 10y ago
As far as I understand it there was no decision made by Nick except when the organisers intervened. The lightning talks always were chaotic. Nick wrote that the more risky presenters usually did not show anyways, at least that's how I understood it. I think it is awesome to have the LTs not vetted by commitee but being open for anyone who adheres to their format.
nickfarr 10y ago
I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post, but I had no intention of letting the talk go forward unless the presenter could bring up some really solid evidence of some sort. Slides, some kind of visual element or documentation were required to earn/keep your LT slot and, for understandable reasons, some people wait until the last minute to submit the final draft of those. To be crass, I threw this person on the schedule and gave them a deadline with every intention of removing them the next day to shut them up so I could go to sleep. The LT schedules change up to and during the event itself and I've rejected a lot of talks once it was clear that the slides or revisions contained inappropriate material. The goal of the event is to give everyone a chance to take the stage, the point is to not curate beyond clustering similar topics together. People sing songs, do dances and any number of crazy little things and sometimes will blow you away with an amazing idea. That being said, I started training my potential replacements for the LTs at the 30c3 for the reasons you stated, among others. I believe today, the talks are assembled by a team of three people with each person taking the helm on a particular day.

ryan-c 10y ago

I was on the 2007 CCC Camp trip that Nick Farr organized. I do remember Jake being an asshole on it, including making many inappropriate sexual comments. Since then, I have heard Jake trash talk Nick Farr quite a few times. Jake's been on my "avoid" list for a long time.

daxorid 10y ago

The notes left on his hotel bed daily are the strangest part. Implying Jake is a Fed, or his supporters were actively compromising his physical security?

lucb1e 10y ago
Yeah I'm not sure whether to believe that part. If I found notes on my pillow, I'd nope the fuck out of there and either go back to the conference or the police station. In any case, that story would not have ended where it does now.
- DanBC 10y ago
  Why do you think the police would do anything? We know from the victims of stalkers that the police don't see it as important; they don't care; or if they do care there's not much they can do. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-stalked-singer-police https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-sta... Seven years!
- nickfarr 10y ago
  I totally understand your skepticism there. Yes, I was totally an idiot for not keeping the notes, not going to the police, etc. etc. If I can offer anything, by the time it got to that point, I had already been told to "stop making drama" about the whole thing and somehow just pacify Jake by many people I trusted. So I bring them a note! I bring them to my hotel room! Let's walk through the scenario in my head: What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper. Who's to say I didn't make the thing up myself to try to get back at Jake? Why would someone believe me just because there's a shred of something. My whole approach up until I couldn't take it anymore was to just ignore, to let it slide, to not think about it and move on. THIS IS WHAT HARASSMENT VICTIMS DO and yes, I should have recognized it at the time.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Even if you didn't ignore it, it sounds like the well was already poisoned for you. I think you've made the right decision to leave this group, sad though the situation is.

rdl 10y ago

I wish people wouldn't use JA as an abbreviation here; ambiguous with Julian Assange due to overlap.

DasIch 10y ago
Well, it's not like Julian Assange is much better.
2close4comfort 10y ago
I was thinking Jackass which seems to fit well. And now that you bring it up they are strikingly similar...

zer00eyz 10y ago

> I want to be part of a community where this kind of behavior isn’t tolerated from the inception. I want to be part of a community where incidents like this are addressed promptly and fairly and not dismissed as “drama”. Admittedly, I could have done more to make this happen... First of all shit happens. Second, anyone who ever finds them selves in these situations, STAND UP and keep standing up. Last, I hope Nick finds the will to go back... He seems to have the support of the community, and has the opportunity to make more like what he wants, and it should be. It is NOT too late.

gravypod 10y ago

> one even took his own life after Jake stole his research Who was this?

rdl 10y ago
Pretty obvious, although not my story to tell. Hint: not aaronsw. Fortunately the set of hackers/computer security people in this social circle who have killed themselves in the past 15y is still fairly small.
- gravypod 10y ago
  I've not been involved or looked at anything in the tor or C3 circles up until these allegations. It isn't very obvious because I know no one involved.
  - kurotowa 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723959 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/302264789311299585 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/302264789311299585
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8643924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8643924

colllectorof 10y ago

It's disturbing that so many tech communities these days seem to be incapable of handling such things without some kind of public showdown that involves social media. If the accusations are false, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where a bunch of people would pile onto someone (for whatever reason) to ruin the person's reputation. If accusations are true, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where someone can be that abusive towards others -- for years -- with impunity. Either way, sounds like a bad place to be at.

jmcgough 10y ago
From the FAQ on jacobappelbaum.net: Q: WHY DID YOU MAKE THE SITE? A: We made the site because we wanted other people to be aware of how Jake behaves. There has been a whisper network for years, but it doesn't reach everyone, and even if it could, open secrets do not protect people. We didn't want anyone to be victimized by Jake just because they hadn't been warned about him. Making a public site is the best way to make sure that everybody is aware of the stories about him. Q: MAKING A SITE LIKE THIS SEEMS AWFUL. WHY DIDN'T YOU TRY OTHER WAYS TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS YOU WERE HAVING? A: People have tried lots of things, including speaking directly with Jake and asking him to stop. People have talked about his behavior inside the infosec and internet freedom communities for years, and have tried many strategies for making it harder for him to victimize people. People have complained inside the Tor Project and been dismissed (until now, of course). Jake's behavior has been an open secret, in some circles, for years. He has still kept doing the same things. Q: AFTER JAKE RESIGNED FROM THE TOR PROJECT, WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS SITE ANYWAY? A: When sexual predators are kicked out of one community, they often move on to some other community where they do the same thing. Silence lets them do that. We didn't want him to be able to move to a different community and do the same thing to people there.
- deleted 10y ago
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forgottenpass 10y ago
incapable of handling such things without some kind of public showdown that involves social media. But there isn't any formal power structure. The only things "communities" can base decisions on are legal records and social reputation. If you don't want to be at a conference where someone can be abusive to others, what exactly do you suggest they use to determine who can and can't get in? An extralegal quasi-judicial system that weighs rumors and conjecture to keep undesirables out? And how do you keep that process meaningfully distinct from a conference where a bunch of people pile onto someone for whatever reason to ruin a reputation? tl;dr: It's not possible to have it both ways.

PavlovsCat 10y ago

What exactly did he plagiarize, and where is the documentation of that? If it's about giving credit where credit is due, I don't see how just destroying Appelbaum as a "plagiarist" really helps there. I guess my problem is: even assuming all charges are true, the way this is done, and the way it's nodded off by people in the name of being decent (less questions asked = more decent?), while others dismiss it as some SJW stunt or conspiracy or whatever, is just a horrible precedent to me. This all out attack on the totality of a person, this "creating facts on the ground", and this binary dichotomy of "only one party can ever be in the wrong", the extreme polarization. For what it's worth, I know how being gas-lighted feels, I know how it is to see someone go from friendly to snarling with utmost hatred back to friendly. I don't feel like sharing all that, but that's kind of how I know a bit about sociopathy and narcissism to begin with, I had to learn. But that's also why that website kind of struck me as kind of weird, since it talks about sociopathy yet seems not only kind of devoid of compassion, but also reckless, seeing how the destruction of Appelbaum seems to be intended to be total and forever. As in, just because he's no good as a "community leader", who cares what happens to the human being - he didn't care either, he started it after all. No fair judge and no psychologist worth crap would talk like that, and that's why such things should be left to both ultimately. Even sociopaths are people, even after having been clinically diagnosed. Human rights apply even to those who don't afford them to others. This is a principle that is more important than anything else. EVEN if you have to disarm a person, set boundaries, and so on, there is never a point where they're just fair game for anything. You know how free speech is about protecting the speech you despise? Same goes for human rights. Believing in due process for the innocent is easy, believing in due process of a serial killer, now that's where it starts to become more adult, and there is no crime so atrocious the perpetrator loses their status as human being. We know this is hard to grasp for many people, but when "hackers" start forgetting that as well, that's troubling. So I am really not liking this whole thing as it stands, and am also not liking this dichotomy of "either you believe it or don't", since I'd still have all the above questions or objections even granting every claim is 100% true. And the shaming of people who reserve judgement or ask for any evidence, or more substance in general, in light of such a huge, all out attack, also sucks. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, people can "command" their personal friends to "not question, just hug" when that's all they can take (and I don't mean that snarkily, honestly), but that's not something a society or justice can operate on. His character has been effectively assassinated, no matter what comes of this most people who saw that may never see the follow-up, and we can't even ask questions? You can't take abuse seriously and then say "nothing you do to an abuser is ever abuse", that's not justice.

shava23 10y ago

What we have here is a set of social engineers social engineering an ouster of a fellow social engineer from the fellowship of his fellow social engineers. Welcome to the snake pit. No matter what all of you may think of the stand-up-ness of any of the folks involved, there are strong agendas in whomever is presenting a case here. I, for one, am no longer involved in the Tor Project, but I am the founding executive director, and I haven't so much as spoken to Jake for years -- I believe I ran into him very briefly at a Tor hackathon about three years ago at the MIT Media Lab -- and haven't spoken him to any serious depth for a good nine years. So I don't have a serious horse in this race. I care about the project a good deal more but I've been retired, not on the board, and not particularly volunteering due to a stroke a while back. But this kind of thing bites. Sit down, STFU, and wait for the courts, if any, to settle it out. We went through this with Assange too. It divides people up. There are a few things to say here. The most radical thing you can do for a woman is to believe her. Fine. The most radical thing you can do for an activist, is to believe him or her. Applies to Jake and to Nick, amiright? But. To. Both. The best thing you can do for your community is to stop tearing it up at the roots with gossip, like archetypical old ladies. Which I feel qualified to say, as the local blue hair (ok buzz cut battle ship gray) retiree. Opsec says, every one of these reasonable sounding people is a liar with an agenda. So, much as I would love to believe Jake, the women involved, Nick, and the tooth fairy, all of them are hackers at hacker cons, and you are all my peeps, and I love you. And there is no spoon, no truth, and no use to hacking this out in an internet forum as a form of vigilante justice. My gray haired thought is this is all prurient, for a loooong time. Please chill. This is just the kind of thing that regardless of who is in...error...makes a community spin until it's sick and the good people fly away. If we are wise we'll all work to de-escalate, not justify or discuss, until things can go through normalized channels. I don't expect for an moment that will happen, but I feel compelled to make the appeal. Shava Nerad founding exec dir, The Tor Project, retired 2007 but speaking entirely for myself

nyolfen 10y ago
At this point we have multiple respected members of various communities coming out with accusations against JA. This isn't comparable to Assange's situation. Appelbaum has repeatedly come out looking like a scumbag with no one on his side besides mostly anonymous people asking for the benefit of the doubt, and nothing but radio silence from Appelbaum for a week. A guy being a scumbag is frankly much more likely than a conspiratorial multilateral attack on his character.

fit2rule 10y ago

This, to me, is a lesson in just how destructive narcissistic self-importance can be for the culture of creative technology. I've met and engaged both Jake and Nick at various times during their visits to Europe, and I've been left, each time, with the sense that - in both cases - there is a huge desire to create a cult of personality. In Nicks' case, it seems relative benign and harmless - he is a loud, funny guy, very boisterous and entertaining. Jake, also: loud and boisterous, but not so entertaining. Jake seems to travel with a laugh track everywhere he goes (fawning sycophants whose job it is to fill in the gaps between Jake's sentences with laughter).. The point is, these are the kinds of characters that our scene attracts. It should come as no surprise that they are locking horns .. imagine if we were somehow able to harness all the power which either personality cults' provide and somehow channel it for the good of the hacker scene. Jake could do whatever it takes to set himself up as the Hacker Messiah, and Nick could keep the Circus from burning down/feeding itself to the lions. Alas, this won't be the end of it, I'm quite sure. This sort of public dissing is precisely the sort of thing few are really capable of dealing with sanely .. perhaps the mob will just eat itself.

Fej 10y ago

At first I considered that the accusations were planted by some three-letter agency. This has seriously changed my opinion. At one point I sorta considered ioerror a personal hero of mine. Not so much anymore.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

This whole situation is disturbing to me as a solo operator always considering getting deeper into the INFOSEC circle. Ok, here's what's happened in around 24 hours or so: weird tweet done in a style used for evidence; tweet mob claiming the guy is a rapist; entire, styled site goes up with detailed descriptions that he's verbally an asshole + "Coming Soon" placeholders (could be rape claims by now); people claiming claims are legit because people doing smears are standup people; people agreeing its true because it's already known to unknown people; all kinds of people making excuses for why they should say and do everything except file rape charges with due process. Another commenter used the word bizarre. To me, it looks both bizarre and like smear campaigns by trolls that I've seen destroy people that were probably innocent. Now, I know Jake is an asshole and we now have one credible witness, Nick Farr, to extreme bullying. Yet, these are the exact kinds of tactics liars, trolls, SJW's, and spooks use on innocent people. The targets get "convicted by the media" without a trial or any real chance of defense. Many people wrongly assume large number of accounts saying same thing means it's open and shut. They need to knock that stuff off to handle this right anyway. If one or more rapes happened, they need to contact the authorities to give full details on this. That FBI already wants to throw him in a cell with a number of witnesses claiming rape and others claiming bullying should make this easy (read: barely due process). In this case, Jake will be able to tell his side of the story, bring in his witnesses, and so on rather than one side's media campaign being sole decider of his fate. Plus, I find it hypocritical that the website describes its existence is to protect the next community from a "sexual predator." They'll tweet, accuse, make websites... all kinds of talk to "protect" others from a "sociopath"... but won't go to the police to attempt an arrest, conviction, and prison stay for same sociopath. Unheard of reaction in my parts among liberals or conservatives. Always cops involved when it's this public with people usually doing time. I recommend people stay clear of both Jake Appelbaum and any of these idiots in the smear campaign. You can bet they'll do the same shit to you if you piss them off too much. Probably won't be rape claims but you'll be defending an online shitstorm. Nick Farr seems to be an exception who I hope recovers from any abuse he received and gets back to doing the good things people here describe. Definitely hang with him sometime.

saizai 10y ago

Jake's response: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp /via https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/739731362404536320 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/739731362404536320 I note that he does not deny any of Nick's factual claims. The denial is only of "criminal sexual misconduct", which is a legal claim (what misconduct counts as criminal?) rather than a denial of the specific factual allegations made @ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ (however they may be legally construed). I can understand why Jake may not want to engage with them in detail — doing so would almost certainly raise more questions than it answers — but AFAICT, this is functionally a non-denial denial. One thing I don't understand from Nick's piece (etc.) is whether the referenced "plagiarism" means only Jake insisting on alphabetical author order (thus making it seem like he did most of the work when he didn't) or something else. <s>It's also saddening to read of yet another of us committing suicide, whatever the circumstances.</s> Having read other comments, I now realize what this referred to. I suppose it's fortunate that it is not yet another, but that loss is no less saddening for the time passed since. (FWIW, I've stayed with that person's partner at one point. They were incredibly kind to me at time that was difficult for both of us.) … Repeating two comments I made on Nick's Medium article: 1. Nick: in my limited experiences with you, you’ve been one of the most warm & welcoming people in the hacker community. I hope that at some point you get back your health and manage to resume attending conferences. Take care of yourself. 2. Jake espouses very hard line principles of source protection, right to speak, fighting bad speech with more speech, etc. I generally agree with him on those principles. (I’d rather not go into my opinion on his personality.) If Jake had gotten the kind of threats from Nick that Nick describes getting from Jake, there’s no way in hell he’d comply. He’d probably have an aneurism, irretrievably commit the documents to public view after thoroughly anonymizing them, and make it very, very public. Kudos to Nick for both protecting his source and trying to handle this issue with tact. It’s indefensible that Nick was treated this way for doing so, and a loss to the community for him to have come to harm for it.

zealotmonkey 10y ago

In 2013, before, and during 30c3, Jacob Appelbaum suspected, and made claims, including one before the European Parliament, that he was under surveillance[0]. Since at least 2010, Jacob Appelbaum had been detained at airports and had his computer seized, multiple times. Despite this, Nick Farr, at 30c3, during the time period in which Jacob Applebaum heavily suspected he was under surveillance, and was presenting talks about classified NSA material, thought it would be friendly to permit a lightning talk that alleged that Jacob Applebaum was working for an intelligence agency, and then, without the actual talk happening, delete all records of that allegation when Applebaum, who thought he was under surveillance, requested information pertaining to that possibility. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Journalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Detention_and_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Applebaum#Detention_and_...