After what happened to Assange, I can't help feeling skeptical of character-assassination pieces on people associated with Wikileaks.
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When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
41–50 of 122 posts
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#42The story would be a lot more powerful if it were vastly more concise and meandered far less. This reads like an angsty teens livejournal entry, which doesn't do the serious nature of the matter justice.
It wasn't written for your entertainment.
It was written to evoke an emotional response though, not to layout a series of events clearly and concisely.
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen instances of Jake behaving inappropriately in front of DJB, and I'm pretty sure he saw. I've heard Jake bragging about his sexual exploits on numerous occasions, including the sawzall story. Not posting under my normal account for obvious reasons.
Any more detail? There is a big gap between inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment and/or the assault allegations made.
Is there now? By all means describe what objectively differentiates inappropriate from harassment.
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#44I tried Jake's menthol eye drops once, he was offering them to lots of people at the time. They burned for a few seconds but I felt no lasting effects. They're something like this, possibly even this brand: http://www.rohtoeyedrops.com/product/rohto-ice/ (the bottle was that shape, anyway).
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#45The story would be a lot more powerful if it were vastly more concise and meandered far less. This reads like an angsty teens livejournal entry, which doesn't do the serious nature of the matter justice.
The name of this fallacy is "tone argument".
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would love to hear his side of the story. Some of his side of the story has been told in the leaked emails: https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt
tl;dr DJB was approached with a complaint, and thought it was a situation where he would give advice and his counterparty expected he would maintain his confidence. After he heard about the frustration the complainant was experiencing, asked the person to file a formal complaint, or at least send a self-contained email (explicitly acknowledged as not confidential) that he could use to move forward, in order to not br…
> But DJB doesn't _keep_ records of confidential things -- hence his insistence that they start from the beginning.
I call BS on this, if we're talking about adults at university positions. The reasonable response in that case is: "I do not have any archives. Please resend everything you've got.", not starting from the beginning without communicating that fact clearly. If someone fails to act properly in that position, they shouldn't be overseeing other people.
He should not stop because of a technicality on his side in that situation.
(Edit: reasonable response == absolute minimum here, he could do much more)
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#47I've also run into exactly this tactic: "When I informed the project reviewer and the other fellows that, in fact, I had resigned due to sexual harassment, Dan sent a response which opened with a long, irrelevant, and inaccurate story about how my work was low-quality, my research contribution was minor, etc. " Myself and a business partner had a web startup that we ran from 2002 to 2008. I was the CTO, he was the CE…
When things go bad, the tendency for people to lie is shocking.
I lived with a business partner, and decided to move out. Him and his girlfriend begged me to stay but I wanted privacy (it was a big house with other roommates).
Few months later we get into a dispute involving our third partner, everything falls apart and suddenly they started telling people I was "evicted" from their house and a terrible person.
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#48Since this post casts djb in an unfavorable light, I feel it's important to post some of his emails here, so that his words can stand alone, uncolored.
From https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt
"Hi everybody,
As most of you know, we hired Jake for a 5-year PhD program, starting with a 50-50 split between Tor and TU/e, and increasing TU/e percentage assuming that the first year goes well.
The Tor Project put up a blog post yesterday afternoon saying that Jake had resigned from Tor. The blog post doesn't say "to concentrate on his PhD studies" or any other explanation. If you look on Twitter you'll find a shocking statement "Jake finally raped enough people that Tor as an organisation couldn't ignore it anymore" from Meredith Patterson, and a rapidly growing pile of comments.
If it's true that Jake raped someone then of course he should go to jail for this heinous crime. If it's not true then the source of the false accusation should be appropriately punished for slander. Clearly _someone_ has broken the law.
But it's not my job to issue punishment, or to figure out who deserves punishment. I'm going to presume _everyone_ innocent until proven guilty. Everyone has a right to due process: being told exactly what the accusations are, having adequate chance to respond, having hearings in front of a neutral judge, etc.
Often people are falsely accused of crimes. I see it as part of my duty, as a member of a civilized society, to avoid prejudging and punishing people who are accused and who have not had their day in court. On the opposite side, often people are correctly accused of crimes, and I also see it as part of my duty to avoid prejudging and punishing accusers who have not had their day in court.
As long as nobody goes to court claiming rape or slander, I would ask that you join me in presuming that the accusations of rape are false, _and_ in presuming that the accusations of slander are false. Assuming that someone _does_ go to court, I would ask that you join me in waiting for judges and juries to do their jobs---no matter how tempting it is to instead join a poorly informed mob on one side or the other. I'm not saying that judges and juries never make mistakes; I'm saying that the alternatives are much worse.
---Dan"
Furthermore, from the article:
"Isis told Tanja their story of being raped by Jacob, without identifing it as theirs. Tanja’s response was to ask “Why were they in the same bed with Jake?”, and when I asked Tanja whether, if someone she knew personally came to her with this story, she would believe them. Tanja said no, not without hearing Jake’s explanation. At this point myself and Isis left in tears, ending the conversation."
From the emails file:
" Dear Harry,
A few weeks ago you initiated a strictly confidential, and ongoing, conversation with me. During this conversation I have been listening carefully to what you've been saying, frequently summarizing to confirm my understanding, asking questions regarding various details, and providing my advice as to the best procedures for you to follow.
I'm deeply concerned about this conversation, for two basic reasons.
First, I've now heard multiple rumors making me believe that you have been summarizing the contents of this conversation to other people in a highly inaccurate way. Perhaps you weren't paying close attention to what I said, or perhaps you weren't careful in how you summarized it. There are other possible explanations---perhaps the rumors I've heard do not reflect what you actually said; perhaps I seriously miscommunicated something---but the bottom line is that I'm not confident in the reliability of the communication channel.
Second, some of the things you've said sound more severe than simply wanting advice. It seems to me that you're facing problems that you don't feel able to resolve on your own: your goal is for other people, in particular me, to take action. However, a strictly confidential conversation makes action impossible. My role in such a conversation is purely as an advisor; complaints and other requests for action require different procedures.
Given these concerns, I've decided that this message will be the end of our strictly confidential conversation. I recommend that you send me a separate message explaining in detail what problems you're facing--- without any reference to the previous conversation; again, it's procedurally impossible for me to take action that relies even slightly on any portion of a strictly confidential conversation---and explaining what actions you would like me to take.
I'm sorry if this sounds excessively formal, but following proper procedures avoids errors and provides protection for everyone involved.
---Dan"
From a followup email sent by Dan:
" > In fact, I told both Dan and Tanja in June that I felt I had no option
> but to resign, due to sexual harassment, blackmail, and physical abuse
> by another of their students.
Mr. de Valence fails to mention that what he told me was part of a strictly confidential conversation. I was not even at liberty to disclose to you the existence of this conversation.
After careful consideration, given what I now see Mr. de Valence writing, I have concluded that the following limited disclosure is proper: with all due respect, Mr. de Valence is wildly exaggerating the contents of his conversation with me. It is with the utmost care that I am choosing the words "wildly exaggerating".
[...]
> That student, Jacob Appelbaum, was fired this summer from his other
> job, at The Tor Project,
The article cited by Mr. de Valence says that Mr. Appelbaum resigned from the Tor Project. "Was fired" is not an accurate summary.
> on account of other abusive behaviour, as
> described in The New York Times:
> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/technology/tor-project-ja...
I am Mr. Appelbaum's first supervisor. I am aware that Mr. Appelbaum has been accused online of rape. I am also aware of the following articles to the contrary by investigative journalists:
http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-08/jacob-appelbaum-rape-sexua...
https://taz.de/Der-Fall-Jacob-Appelbaum/!5361578/
I don't know which side is correct, and I'm certainly not in a position to judge. Obviously it is important for criminals to be punished, and it is also important for innocent people to be protected against false accusations; this is why we have courts.
[...]
Six days before the deadline, Mr. de Valence said on the chat system that he wouldn't get much done that day or the next day because he felt "quite burnt out from last week and travel and some life crises", and that he would check back in the next day. He then fell silent, with the status of his work far from clear.
Three days later, after the lead student finally managed to track him down by smartphone, Mr. de Valence sent one message saying
Hi, sorry if I was unclear, I merged the WIP code I had into master
so that other people could work on it, because I am burnt out and
can't do both implementation work and the Tor meeting at the same
time.
Two weeks later, to my astonishment, Mr. de Valence gave a public talk at the University of Waterloo on the results of the paper. He had never asked the team for permission; he had never even notified anyone else on the team that he was planning to give a public talk. (I first heard about the talk from a Waterloo tweet two days before the talk.) The only part publicly announced before that, a tweet in September, had clear consensus of the team; the question of what to announce when had been an explicit discussion topic for much longer. As for content, Mr. de Valence's previous slides for a private ECRYPT-NET audience needed quite a few fixes, were missing cryptographic context, and predated tons of work on the paper by the rest of the team. Even today I don't know what his Waterloo slides said; he never replied to my email asking for slides. "
I have to split up this comment in order to post it due to HN's length limit. See my reply below.
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#49Since this post casts djb in an unfavorable light, I feel it's important to post some of his emails here, so that his words can stand alone, uncolored. From https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt "Hi everybody, As most of you know, we hired Jake for a 5-year PhD program, starting with a 50-50 split between Tor and TU/e, and increasing TU/e percentage assuming that the first year goes well. The Tor…
From the article:
"Dan has written at some length about the importance of “due process”, both internally to the research group and externally to the world. But it’s telling to notice that in every such discussion, Dan carefully avoided any mention of concrete processes: he did not define the “different procedures” suddenly required for him to take action, nor what “proper procedures” should be followed."
This is patently false. Dan sent a series of emails that clearly outlined both the procedure to take to file a formal complaint, as well as Dan's reasoning for insisting on these procedures.
I recommend reading https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt in its entirety. It isn't something that can be summarized. I've done my best, but I have cherry-picked quotes here which both support and defend Dan. Why? I feel it's important for someone to point out that insisting that someone file a formal complaint is not the same thing as failing to take action.
Again, the length of https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt and the emotions that are invested in this situation will prevent most readers from actually reading the full emails in their entirety before making a judgement. But I strongly recommend taking the time to do this.
Note that in no way am I condoning or defending anything about Jacob's behavior. There is enough anecdotal evidence to be extraordinarily suspicious of him. But I am uncomfortable with the idea that Dan is getting thrown under the bus solely because he insisted that Henry file a formal complaint, and because Dan refused to take action based on off-the-record conversations.
Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
#50Is this a common thing in the infosec industry? Personally I have known two people who were sexually harassed who work in security. I've also hung out with some and they do seem to have an unrealistic view on the opposite sex.
Some examples I've found of documented cases: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/female-hackers-st... https://www.the-parallax.com/2015/10/26/how-myth-of-meritocr...