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"The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed" I'm one of those people who understand the importance of reputation and integrity. One bad d

"The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed" I'm one of those people who understand the importance of reputation and integrity. One bad deal might ruin mine forever. You needed resources to expand your privacy business. Did you try and fail to partner with reputable businesses such as Mozilla, get funding from governments/foundations, etc? Did you try to get with amoral companies whose background or business wasn't harmful to privacy? And, after that, settle for the one company that was interested which could damage your brand? I have a feeling you didn't since I'm sure there's plenty of companies, non-profits, or cooperatives that might have worked with you who don't have that background. Although I can't prove that, I see investments and partnerships all the time with organizations that raise less eyebrows. That you went with that company will undermine trust. I'm no longer recommending PIA. I do appreciate that, before this change, your company went as far as defending its users' rights when FBI was after them. I'll still give you credit for that. Edit re hiring security people: You also keep justifying hiring con men for second chances or doing business with intelligence assets like there were no other alternatives. I've met all kinds of security professionals and cryptographic researchers who haven't taken malicious contracts or damaged others [that I'm aware of]. Quite a few have turned down work because they're ideologically opposed to it or just don't harm others. I'm one of those. So, my next bit of skepticism is that you really couldn't find anyone better than folks like Karpeles. You could've asked here or at Black Hat and probably got a ton of candidates who might be more trustworthy with your customers' privacy.

rasengan 7y ago
We actually did reach out to many groups including some of those you mentioned. You would be surprised to find that “non profit” doesn’t always mean “for the public good.” As for others that were willing to partner with us, they wouldn’t sign a no log pact so I had no interest to work with them. It’s shocking how many private VPNs are shadily logging and/or selling your data.
- codezero 7y ago
  Why don’t you out them? You haven’t had much trouble slinging mud on HN in the past, and to be clear, it has been appreciated.
  - rasengan 7y ago
    I think if you do some “negative” google searches on many of the most loved organizations, you’ll see they toyed with their users and their data countless times in the name of “experimentation” among other things.
- willstrafach 7y ago
  I have tried to get in touch with you all, but got no response from the e-mail address provided via Twitter when inquiring about collaboration. No log pact sounds wonderful.
rasengan 7y ago
You don’t know a person until you see them in the toughest of situations. Mark is a good man and a great developer who fought on the front lines and I’ve known for a long time. I’m not comfortable blindly trusting a random person I meet at a conference with our users’ privacy. You really don’t know who is a current spook, or spy, or worse. Lastly, to put this to bed in a way that only developers and those that understand could appreciate (like you), we severely limit the people who have infrastructure access as we practice defense in depth, and Mark isn’t one of them.
- MertsA 7y ago
  >Mark is a good man He stole more money from me than I make in a year. There's surely plenty of other people in this very thread who he also cost dearly because of his callous disregard for our money. He knew the whole time that MtGox was insolvent and he used my cash, everyone's cash, as a giant slush fund. He had no problem pocketing that cash and paying himself a comfy salary knowing full well that he had tons of customers who made the mistake of trusting him with their money and he already lost it. Not to mention trying to make off with the domain and data from his old employer and then after they revoked the domain transfer that Mark fraudulently made he tried to extort it out of them. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-english.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-eng... >and a great developer We know exactly what kind of developer Mark is. MtGox didn't even use any form of version control. We have leaked copies of Mark's handiwork and it's absolutely horrifying that someone with his lack of talent was managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of money. https://github.com/mtgoxleaker/mtgoxphp/blob/90822722620407ee72eaae7538d974923afb5ac8/mtgoxsource.php https://github.com/mtgoxleaker/mtgoxphp/blob/90822722620407e... We're talking about the guy whose legal defense was that he was just incompetent and not malicious. He quite literally just completely forgot about a cold wallet filled with what was at the time worth well over 100 million dollars. No reasonable person would ever conclude that Mark is "a great developer". I'd be much more comfortable trusting some rando from Defcon than a serial con man that has done nothing but lie and defraud customers and employers for well over a decade. And he's woefully incompetent to boot. Hiring Mark Karpeles as CTO is nothing but bald faced nepotism.
- SahAssar 7y ago

rasengan 7y ago

We actually did reach out to many groups including some of those you mentioned. You would be surprised to find that “non profit” doesn’t always mean “for the public good.” As for others that were willing to partner with us, they wouldn’t sign a no log pact so I had no interest to work with them. It’s shocking how many private VPNs are shadily logging and/or selling your data.

codezero 7y ago
Why don’t you out them? You haven’t had much trouble slinging mud on HN in the past, and to be clear, it has been appreciated.
- rasengan 7y ago
  I think if you do some “negative” google searches on many of the most loved organizations, you’ll see they toyed with their users and their data countless times in the name of “experimentation” among other things.
willstrafach 7y ago
I have tried to get in touch with you all, but got no response from the e-mail address provided via Twitter when inquiring about collaboration. No log pact sounds wonderful.

rasengan 7y ago

You don’t know a person until you see them in the toughest of situations. Mark is a good man and a great developer who fought on the front lines and I’ve known for a long time. I’m not comfortable blindly trusting a random person I meet at a conference with our users’ privacy. You really don’t know who is a current spook, or spy, or worse. Lastly, to put this to bed in a way that only developers and those that understand could appreciate (like you), we severely limit the people who have infrastructure access as we practice defense in depth, and Mark isn’t one of them.

MertsA 7y ago
>Mark is a good man He stole more money from me than I make in a year. There's surely plenty of other people in this very thread who he also cost dearly because of his callous disregard for our money. He knew the whole time that MtGox was insolvent and he used my cash, everyone's cash, as a giant slush fund. He had no problem pocketing that cash and paying himself a comfy salary knowing full well that he had tons of customers who made the mistake of trusting him with their money and he already lost it. Not to mention trying to make off with the domain and data from his old employer and then after they revoked the domain transfer that Mark fraudulently made he tried to extort it out of them. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-english.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-eng... >and a great developer We know exactly what kind of developer Mark is. MtGox didn't even use any form of version control. We have leaked copies of Mark's handiwork and it's absolutely horrifying that someone with his lack of talent was managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of money. https://github.com/mtgoxleaker/mtgoxphp/blob/90822722620407ee72eaae7538d974923afb5ac8/mtgoxsource.php https://github.com/mtgoxleaker/mtgoxphp/blob/90822722620407e... We're talking about the guy whose legal defense was that he was just incompetent and not malicious. He quite literally just completely forgot about a cold wallet filled with what was at the time worth well over 100 million dollars. No reasonable person would ever conclude that Mark is "a great developer". I'd be much more comfortable trusting some rando from Defcon than a serial con man that has done nothing but lie and defraud customers and employers for well over a decade. And he's woefully incompetent to boot. Hiring Mark Karpeles as CTO is nothing but bald faced nepotism.
SahAssar 7y ago