The 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.
On the contrary, I am impressed by the author's ability to maintain a sequence of events, while being tossed from one office to another.
If you found this account to be "meandering", imagine what it would be like, trying to follow procedures in the face of this conflicting, and (in my opinion) intentionally manipulative instructions from your boss, your boss' boss, the HR department...
Wow this blog post makes djb sound like such a scumbag. The idea that he would ask people to consider the allegations "false" is absurd (there's a difference between presuming innocence vs presuming the the allegations are false). I would love to hear his side of the story.
The emails don't show djb as a scumbag, just a little bit cold and rule-oriented. The kind of guy that is generally regarded as writing the most secure unclassified crypto code is going to be rule-oriented. Think of Immanuel Kant, who (roughly) said that the golden rule was the ultimate law, and required him to always tell the truth, even if a murderer showed up at his door, and asked whether his target was upstairs. DJB is simply saying he's willing to be the guy's confidant, but if he wants him to act in a formal, legal way, he wants him to tell him all the things he's willing to have exposed to a legal process. He doesn't want to assume that just because he's filing a complaint, that everything that his friend has told him in confidence is now potentially public record, and so he wants him to repeat what he wants to be on the record. To me, that's the mark of a good friend.
I am one of the people who upvoted this article. How else do you want people to bring problems out in to the open? The author of the article used their real name, made several references to other people and told their side of the story. Now its up to the accused to tell their side of the story. Even take legal action if the story is untrue. For an industry trying to get more females to take part in it, sentiments lik…
> For an industry trying to get more females to take part in it, sentiments like this against possible victims is not what we should hold. I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations (let's not pretend there haven't been some rather high profile false allegations) are career ending. On balance this guy does sound like a creep, but I don't think issue's like this should be tackled in public wit…
> I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations [...] are career ending.
You seem to assume sexual misconduct only happens when women are in the workplace, which is plain wrong. You do know that sexual misconduct can happen between two people who aren't women, right? The misogyny in your comment is pretty overwhelming.
It's been nearly a year already since the ball got rolling on this.
I stand corrected. Apparently a bunch of people came forward and the guy got fired, because the accusations were true.
I didn't know getting fired from your job was proof and conviction of a crime. Or that you only get fired because allegations are true (subtext: you don't).
I think it's likely Jacob's as much of a creep as some people say. Especially when people like Nick Farr say so, but I'm going to wait for charges and a conviction before I go spreading hearsay everywhere. I've been the victim of false accusations (not rape) before and incidents and truths absolutely get manufactured along social allegiances. It's the least pleasant thing that's ever happened to me beating out the time I almost died.
But this article is more about character assassinating djb than anything. Don't know the guy, but it doesn't sit right with me.
It's hard enough getting eye drops in when both of you want them in, let alone when one side is unwilling.
Some people claim similar things about rape and try to use that as evidence showing that the accusation is false ("she could just have kept her legs together"). It's a bit disgusting.
And there are good reasons for that, it's to protect innocent people from false accusations. It looks like he'd be well within his rights to sue over this allegation.
> For an industry trying to get more females to take part in it, sentiments like this against possible victims is not what we should hold. I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations (let's not pretend there haven't been some rather high profile false allegations) are career ending. On balance this guy does sound like a creep, but I don't think issue's like this should be tackled in public wit…
> I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations [...] are career ending. You seem to assume sexual misconduct only happens when women are in the workplace, which is plain wrong. You do know that sexual misconduct can happen between two people who aren't women, right? The misogyny in your comment is pretty overwhelming.
How is it misogyny? It's not a hatred, contempt or prejudice against women, just a statement of what I consider to be the lesser of two bad outcomes.
> You do know that sexual misconduct can happen between two people who aren't women, right?
The modern definition, yes. A lot of what is considered sexual harassment is considered to just be banter when it's between men.
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 positio…
I don't disagree -- presumably some of their conversation happened verbally, so the claim 'I don't take notes or have records of confidential things' makes more sense? Seems likely, I frequently discuss things in person first.
I also agree with your characterization of the other side of this -- that it seems like he's using a technicality to excuse not doing something important. I'm not advocating anything, just trying to summarize a pretty long email chain.
This sort of stuff, character assassination based on hearsay, used to be considered tabloid journalism, something no one with half a brain would read. Now it get's up voted every time on HN.
> This sort of stuff, character assassination based on hearsay It's interesting you say it's "hearsay" when Jacob Appelbaum voluntarily resigned his job at Tor after allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations which Tor then hired an independent investigator to follow-up who found them to be largely true. But sure, "hearsay"...
Those actions are barely touched upon in the article, which adds a lot of new accusations against him and others.