James Dolan, co-creator of SecureDrop, has died

Thanks for the succinct summary. I feel much the same.

The role model I think about the most is David Foster Wallace. from all viewpoints but his own, a hugely successful author, journalist, and professor. Always precocious, He stuck his head through a window and got a view of marketing/consumption/entertainment/addiction/education/the direction of life in modern America that he just couldn't come back from.

He committed suicide 10 years into writing "The Pale King", a book on the IRS/tax system that explores in his words "the deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all of our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from".

Keep fighting the good fight - you never know who might end up reading or hearing your words, what new ideas might come into existence from another meeting your mind, or what tomorrow might bring.

I had to research a bit as I recall an identical story about JStor and a computer programmer from a few years ago.

http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of-aar...

Seems incredibly similar to this situation and on both accounts this is terribly sad to see.

I'll admit I thought this was a repost from years ago - this is just incredibly similar.

Yes, Aaron Swartz is mentioned 6 times in the article above.

Healthy suspicion is not baseless speculation. Often conspiracies are only unmasked when someone starts from a position of intuitive suspicion otherwise unsupported by evidence and starts digging. It is only in the digging that evidence is unearthed.

The fact that both Aaron Swartz and James Dolan committed suicide does, indeed, smell. In the past, our government has shown itself capable of [grabbing people off the street for mind control experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra). It has shown itself capable of secretly [infiltrating legitimate political groups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) and engaging in all manners of counterintelligence to disrupt them. And those are just the ones we have confirmation of due to the often extraordinarily heroic actions of whistleblowers and activists.

I wouldn't put it past parts of our security apparatus to assassinate dissident activists it views as threatening its ability to surveil or prevent leaks. It does not serve us to be overly skeptical of conspiracies like this. Lack of proof is not the same as proof of lack and the only way we can hold our government accountable for shit like this is to keep and open mind and follow stuff up when it smells.

Note, that is not the same as arguing that all conspiracies should be uncritically believed. Just that we should be suspicious of stuff like this and support those interested in investigating.