> This is the message to would-be activists anywhere: Stay out of the big boy pool or we'll make you regret it.
The thing is they did this so systematically, Jacob Applebaum also got hit with rape allegations and that took out a very vocal person in the OPSEC/INFOSEC community at TOR who openly engaged in the various communities that were most afflicted by Imperialism and needed this tech the most in the developed World.
I don't know Jacob, and never met him in person the closest being with him on a few chatrooms I joined late around one of the CCC conferences; it was very telling that after Julian's rape charges were dropped Jacob (a very well known cypherpunk within Julian's circle) had his fall from grace at the height of the me-too craze and this happened when Laura's documentary came out on Julian Assange after Edward Snowden's had come out earlier in 2014.
The cynic in me said this looked like typical Media Blackout but with Nation-State repercussions. The State of the Onion was always covered in so many media outlets, and Jacob's candor and open hostility towards tyrants was partly the reason for that. I still remember the face of all the suits when he went to Egypt after the Arab Spring and told off the Telecoms for being aligned with the Mubarack regime until the last days, all while trying to play up the idea of Egyptian solidarity post-collapse.
I doubt this will ever entirely deter whistleblowing and freedom fighting entirely, it's never been a large segment of the population, either. But those who do so have an immense impact is often felt all over the World: Steven Donziger after being jailed, and now released on house arrest, seems undeterred from continuing what he started [0]:
> Donziger, who had already spent over two years under house arrest before his prison sentence, vowed to continue fighting for his freedom and to hold Chevron accountable for its crimes.
People forget that prior to Wikileaks, and the Cypherpunk mailing list, Julian was the son of a politically active, anti-nuclear mother and that he had hacked into several departments of the DoD, supposedly to find more intel on Nuclear sites. He pleaded guilty in 1994 and got a fine and it only made him more determined than he was before. He was a known target by the intelligence agencies for some time.
Having been in the CCC (I miss these so much as they were the best part of this time of year for me) and Bitcoin community for over 10 years Julian was always around; Julian thanking the US for making Wikileaks millions (from donation appreciation in 2010 onward) after denying Wikileaks Visa and MC payment processing and forcing them to use Bitcoin was the highlight of that year for me.
It has been hard to see what has happened to him since he was forced to stay in the Ecuadorian embassy, it was clear his mental health was degrading and the once flamboyant and silver-tongued activist was slowly being destroyed from within.
I'm not sure how much of him is left anymore, and I even spoke to a friend about this over the summer during the hearings, that the guy in prison is likely no longer the same person who ran wikileaks. He seems like a shell of his former self that I'm afraid to say seems in poor physical and mental after all he has gone through--it's why I don't be grudge Jacob from simply fading into oblivion, it's simply self-perseverance. I say this with a hjeavy heart: I doubt he would even make it to trail at this rate.
A part of me always wondered if this was always going to be Julian's fate, hoping it never would of course, but when you're this prominent and this big a threat to the intelligence agencies of the only super power left in the World known to commit crimes against Humanity you have to believe you're probably on borrowed time the moment they know who you are.
Which to me is why projects like anon-based whistle blowing, an early Bitcoin project that never gained much traction and eventually abandoned, was always fundamental in order to avoid situations like these while still enuring a viable option for those who want to release info to the public. I fear a World in which whistle blowing doesn't take place, and I don't mean the kind like Frances Haugen who is looking at an immense payday for stating the obvious on a platform that is becoming less relevant by the day and have even re-branded entirely, but those like: Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Bill Binney etc...
May those who do have the courage to come forward have unwavering souls, because the World is a darker place without them.
0: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/10/headlines/environmen...