It's clear that his force of personality -- his "rock-star status", his "known for being known", etc. -- was able to censor talks at 30C3 (if Nick Farr's story is true, which I think it is). Is it so unlikely that this is the only time he did something like that? There are other reports of him passing off research as his own when it was actually by other people, and people being advised to let it go and not draw his ire. He's able to silence people in the security community, which is very powerful.

It's implausible that he himself is an enemy for his own work, but that's not what a mole or informant is for. It's somewhat more plausible (though, again, I think still unlikely) that he was a long-time informant, and his goal was to provide coercion about specific things being done in the security community and to silence specific voices.

And a couple of months ago, Appelbaum talked about how he and others are unfairly characterised as "mere activists" and denied the protections journalists get[0]. I say talk, some would say he made a passionate plea, others a bride-burning rant (his demeanour towards The Guardian was vicious).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY

  Which community would that be?

It's not hand-wavey to be able to give a voice to ideas, provide insight through speaking and interacting with a crowd, and people make careers off of this sort of activity in many fields, and not just technology. It's the same sort of dichotomy you'll see in other hard sciences, where there are experimentalists and theorists.

So he's not shocking audiences by injecting malicious payloads and keylogging the shit out of people, or deploying wi-fi pineapples or pen testing corporate clients. There are other vectors into the field, and sometimes skill sets are multi-disciplinary Venn diagrams.

You'd suggest that he's a Paris Hilton, but there's more to it than that.

We don't have to speculate about this, because we already know that major social networking sites received court orders (with gag orders) to turn over his information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks-related_Twitter_cour...

I don't buy the conspiracy angle myself, but I don't really know enough that I'd place a bet either way. Clearly he is targeted by state-level actors, however.

Uh, maybe because he could roll over on Assange?

I have personally witnessed mysterious people engage Jake in conversation, try repeatedly to get him to admit to committing fraud in the course of his security research, and even try to literally hand him incriminating evidence presumably to get his prints upon it.