They might make a not-extremely-guilty person look worse than he is, or make a horrible person somehow sympathetic to people who think he's "also a victim", but they don't help.
> I SAW SOME DIFFERENT TWITTER ACCOUNTS CLAIMING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SITE. IS THAT YOU?
> No. Since it is no longer possible to create a Twitter acocunt without a phone number and because we believe anonymity is important, we opted to boycott direct Twitter presence for this site. We don't have a Twitter account.
> We have seen the accounts you're talking about and they aren't associated with us. We don't know who is running them, and some of us are disturbed by their incendiary statements and graphics. We don't condone calls for violence or for Jake to self-harm.
Really?
If the people he's exploited stay silent, then he can keep doing it!
Going through the legal system isn't much help in a community which is distrustful of it.
Complaining to the person in question, well, they've tried that, and it did nothing.
And if they don't group their stories together, then it's harder for people to find the accusations against him. There is strength, and more importantly in this case, credibility, in numbers.
Something like this, perhaps: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-June/04...
TL;DR: neutral court of arbitration hears the case with all the private details; does not disclose those private details; hears defense etc etc.; makes a judgement; everyone else acknowledges and adheres to that judgement.
Disclaimers: (1) not that there aren't problems and points of weakness with this approach, of course; (2) personally I am very much inclined to trust what Andrea Shepard and Nick Farr say - I'm just saying that some separation of powers and being careful with smear campaigns (note, I don't think that what Nick Farr said is anything akin to smear, though, and I applause his courage here) may do more good in the end.
As long as the accusations on that site are made anonymously, it doesn't look like there are any concrete accusations against him.
The attack sites reduce the credibility of the claims to me.
Tweets, a smear site... these dont stop rapists. Cops and courts regularly do. Not always but many times. This is a police matter but treated as an internet game.
That is obvious form the name, before considering the content at all.
Notably, Lewman volunteers at Transition House (http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/10/01/technology-used-as-wea...), founded IPVTech (Intimate Partner Violence tech), and appears to work/volunteer with other organizations associated with victims of domestic and/or sexual abuse (http://wiki.lewman.is/CV#work-with-trauma-victims-including-...).
Perhaps Lewman was unaware (this seems unlikely given the DailyDot article's reporting of "mishandling" or "botching" the situation), but it would surprise me if someone with that orientation turned a blind eye to the alleged behavior.
At least that's my impression from the outside. This is not some kind of government orchestrated smear campaign, rather an effort to prevent harm.
It has no value. We who are outsiders in the drama can't contribute and our impressions can be false. Some of use are just drawn into the drama and can't avoid taking sides.
Creating impressions is how internet drama works.
So what? The majority can, and often is, wrong. People cover their own asses first and defend the truth second.
I've gotten really draconian about "accusations" nowadays. If it isn't worth going through the legal system, it's mob justice and a priori false unless there is real, physical evidence.
Assuming they are true: make sure to create a safe space (virtually, in real live, and in discourse) for potential victims. Don't put the accused person on sensitive community functions. Take (this and further) accusations very seriously. If someone doesn't want to deal with him, don't push the matter and don't ask why. You want to avoid retraumatization of potential victims, and you want to create a climate where affected people can feel safe. You should give people raising these accusations the benefit of doubt, and resist the urge to dig for proof or to argue about what actually happened or not. Especially given how hard it is for victims to get recognition and justice by going through the "official" channels, i.e. court. (This is basically the idea that is discussed as "power of definition" among feminists in Germany; I'm not sure how it's referred to in other countries, a quick search didn't come up with much.)
Assuming they are false: It's rarer than most people think that accusations of sexual abuse are falsely raised, but it is still a possibility. Especially given that he is a exposed public figure and possible target for "character assassination". Any scenario could be possible, from personal revenge to a smear campaign by an intelligence agency. One should protect oneself from this possibility, whether it is real or not. Don't exclude him from your communities. Don't stop using his software, don't judge or punish him. Don't give him the punishment of shunning.
Basically you have to do an impossible balancing act. You don't want to perpetuate this patriarchal shit that lets men often get away with sexualized violence. But you also don't want whoever might be abusing this claim (agencies, personal enemies, ...) to win. So the only sane course is to be all about protection of victims, providing a safe space etc., but not punishing anybody.
You absolutely can and should treat the complainant with respect and support; nobody accused them of a crime and they should not be treated with suspicion or doubt.
Disclaimer: it seems to me the claims are true.
That said:
I don't think the above observation has a great deal of predictive value in this context, where "this context" is "sexual assault allegations against a public figure". The fact that most sexual assault allegations picked out of all sexual assault allegations happen to be true, does not tell you much about sexual assault allegations against public figures when the ratio of reported sexual assaults against public figures to the number of reported sexual assaults in total, is very, very low.
Indeed, every sexual assault allegation against a public figure could be false, and it wouldn't move the needle at all on the likelihood that the typical allegation is true.
It's also worth being aware of the possibility that Jacob Appelbaum is himself an agent of an intelligence agency (either a plant, or someone turned informant once they realized they could blackmail him and that a creep is a useful informant), and his behavior is a way to maintain his power and in turn the intelligence agency's.
Argument 1: https://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-...
Argument 2: https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...
"But really, I thought, why would Jake be so defensive about some random [lightning talk] that might have otherwise gone completely unnoticed? If I were a government operative hell-bent on destroying the global hacker community, what would I do differently from what Jake is doing now?"
I don't think this is particularly likely over the simpler explanation that he's a non-government-affiliated creep, but if we're going to give credence to "A government agency that hates Tor was behind this," it's worth looking at all the possible ways a government agency might get an advantage out of the situation.
with this [0] notable comment "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. ... 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."
Jake doesn't mention Nick Farr's accusation. I've been missing Nick the last years at C3 too. Now I know Nick's side of the story, I wonder how the CCC Vorstand [1] and Jake react to censoring the Lightning Talk?
I think this shows how putting your reputation on the line when you accuse someone makes the accusation itself far more powerful and likely to believed; remember that no-one has yet publicly and non-anonymously(1) accused him of rape directly, but rather, have only said that others have accused him.
I hope that if these allegations are true, people in addition to Nick Farr will have the bravery to go public with them - that's what's needed to actually put a stop to abusers.
1) In this context, "non-anonymously" includes commonly used pseudonyms of course - the legal names of people aren't what's important, but rather the identities they commonly use.
First, both the accusers and the accused should have their day in court. It should not be debated any other way.
That being said the TOR project had an obligation to be transparent about this situation and failed to do so..
Some of us do in fact run open source projects and should we abide by TOR's example when we are confronted with the situation of accusations of illegal acts by a project contributor?
1: https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...
You can't always be transparent.
* Publicizing a victim's rape, or their names, without their consent is considered publicly shaming them. It's a very bad idea.
* Publicizing an accusation against someone that you can't substantiate, especially something very damaging to their reputation such as rape, could be slander. You could be sued (and rightfully so).
* Publicizing any private HR issues is also often illegal and/or wrong.
So you fire anyone who gets accused of something? Hope you are a big fan of the Salem Witch Trials.
The US operates on innocent until proven guilty for a reason.
https://github.com/cephurs/jacobappelbaum.net
Cephurs was an op in a channel run by the law enforcement folks who took down LulzSec:
http://www.xeroflux.net/uploads/Operation_Anon_Rat.pdf
Kinda suspicious.
Maybe Jacob Appelbaum raped someone, maybe he didn't. That's not anyone's business except Appelbaum's, his accusers', and the legal system's. It certainly is not a public concern, and it's irrelevant to Tor.
https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74046605073149952...
https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74046629719723212...
Also whatever he might have done will now be drowned out by these false accusations. Mob mentality is as bad as whatever he might have done.
Now, in the interest of speculation, I have some conspiracy theories to suggest. Normally I wouldn't post conspiracy theories, but I think conspiracies have way more validity when you're talking about the security community.
So, check out these links:
- https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
- https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-t...
Then consider these conspiracy theories:
1) Jacob Appelbaum works for an intelligence service and was compromised, and this is their way of pulling him from the field
2) Jacob Appelbaum works for an intelligence service and was compromised, and this is a rival intelligence service's way of pulling him from the field
3) Jacob Appelbaum does not work for an intelligence service, but rather is the victim of a smearing campaign by an intelligence service
My personal opinion is that the guy is an asshole, his (ex-)friends are fed up with him, and they severely overstepped their bounds in attacking him. The line about "what you have to do with a sociopath" (paraphrasing) was particularly alarming for me; that was a clear signal of desire for vindication.
How do you determine this?
The real number is impossible to determine, but is uncomfortably high.
(See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_S...)
> 23 percent of women and 4 percent of men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact
Even worse, 3% of false positives is a twenty-eighth of the percentage of unreported rapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States
> Only 16% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police
I'm not convinced that this story belongs on Hacker News. The mandate of the site is "stories that gratify intellectual curiosity", and it seems pretty clear that both the curiosity and gratification here are more voyeuristic than intellectual. Arguably the appropriate scope for the story would be the smaller online community of people who are personally and professionally affected by it.
On the other hand, the HN community is clearly interested, Tor is a longstanding topic here, the discussion has been better than it might (edit: though it has now gotten significantly worse), and if we're going to have it at all we shouldn't have only one side of it. So I've turned off flagging on this post and reduced the software penalties.
There have been three major discussions of this story, and two of them spent many hours on the front page, including yesterday. Those were flagged, but not "flagged off the front page".
Credit where credit is due - the guy has learned his lesson about how to properly play the part of the social media victim.
https://medium.com/@frabyn/decoding-jake-appelbaum-9fa75d060...
> I can’t directly say the allegations are false.
Then, a few lines below, the author quotes Applebaum as saying:
>> I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.
I’m not taking sides here (it’s important that possible abuse is brought to light!) but this lawyer is straining his credibility.
> Appelbaum: I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.
> Bynum's translation: I’ll never be convicted of a crime.
That is, Bynum claims that Appelbaum never claims "I haven't done it" and instead intentionally uses "criminal" (versus "civil," for example).
http://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil-cases-v...
Open source projects are completely ruined these days by the ballast that surrounds them and drags them down.
Does 'SeanLuke not know the following definitions of spurious?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spurious
"of a deceitful nature or quality"
"not genuine, sincere, or authentic"
So Appelbaum can claim that he didn't exactly mean "false" (in a sense of "never happened") but "not sincere" (as in, "somebody instructed those people to tell that now, you know, the nasty governments that are after me") if presented with the proofs later.
In short, read carefully yourself, take the dictionary and consider what was actually written and what wasn't. My impression, Franklin Bynum correctly recognized one weasel word
Additionally, this is also the hacking community. Most hackers don't trust the police at all.
It's not surprising that people are reluctant to report rape and sexual assault.
Here's one, where the perpetrator was seen by other people assaulting someone who was passed out drunk: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/stanford-sexu...
He still said the sex was consensual, and his lawyers put that women through hell.
The legal system in western countries is very biased in favour of rape accusers. Shield laws are a concrete manifestation of that. Often police are told to automatically believe any rape accusation even if their common sense is telling them it's likely to be false. And so on.
Yes, if you make a serious accusation against someone, their defence lawyer is going to ask difficult questions. You're attempting to make their life literally hell, by jailing them for a long time. Being asked a few questions is in no way comparable.
Our forefathers envisioned a fair and impartial judicial branch, with the accuser and the accused on equal ground. The accused party should always be presumed innocent, instead of guilty.
