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Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

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Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#121
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting it to the police is an amazingly stressful process that requires you to relive it again and again, being tried in the public eye, opening yourself up to claims of being a slut, etc. Just being able to admit you were raped is a strength a lot of victims don't have.

Creating a site that alleges you are a rapist is an amazingly stressful process for the presumed innocent person, requiring him to respond to a torrent of media and social hate and shunning, being tried in the public eye, open to claims of being a "monster", etc. You could argue you're "helping" more people by believing rape claims, but that's both mob rule(the rights of the many trample the rights of the few) and no…

> Creating a site that alleges you are a rapist is an amazingly stressful process for the presumed innocent person

If you are the victim then you don't have to presume; you know precisely what happened.

I'm not supporting or opposing anything in this post, I'm just pointing out that the alleged victims' (and accuser's) calculations are not based on uncertainty like the rest of us.

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#122
post #116
post #54

This Medium post summarizes my take on this statement better than I can. TLDR "I can’t directly say the allegations are false." https://medium.com/@frabyn/decoding-jake-appelbaum-9fa75d060...

That dissection is pretty poorly made. First, the author “paraphrases” Applebaum’s use of “vicious and spurious”: > I can’t directly say the allegations are false. Then, a few lines below, the author quotes Applebaum as saying: >> I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false. I’m not taking sides here (it’s important that possible abuse is brought to light!) but this…

If you quote Appelbaum, quote the Bynum's "translation" too:

> Appelbaum: I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.

> Bynum's translation: I’ll never be convicted of a crime.

That is, Bynum claims that Appelbaum never claims "I haven't done it" and instead intentionally uses "criminal" (versus "civil," for example).

http://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil-cases-v...

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#123
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, neither of your statements is entirely true. There are many cases where law enforcement and the legal system fail victims in a variety of ways (e.g., blaming the victim, improper handling of rape kits, police themselves might be predators looking for victims to target, etc). To put ones faith and protection entirely in the hands of 'the authorities' would be a dogmatic insistence on a single point of f…

There is a risk where the law might fail. I could see an awareness campaign as an alternative strategy. Yet, tptacek already showed it works to tune of 60,000+ convictions a year here. Their stated goal is protecting people from him along with getting the truth out. So, legal system should be first consideration.

> There is a risk where the law might fail.

It's easy to dismiss the risk and the costs from our position, talking about it on an Internet bulletin board. It's a very serious consideration for rape victims.

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#124
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842301 with this [0] notable comment "Now that Nick has written his story however, it goes back on the front page of HN and the comments here basically support it as totally credible. ... Don't get me wrong, I very very much think that Nick should write up his story and feelings. But I think a lot of people need to examine themselves closely for why they couldn't believe the…

> "But I think a lot of people need to examine themselves closely for why they couldn't believe the women who shared their stories yesterday, but now can today." I think this shows how putting your reputation on the line when you accuse someone makes the accusation itself far more powerful and likely to believed; remember that no-one has yet publicly and non-anonymously(1) accused him of rape directly, but rather, ha…

> I think this shows how putting your reputation on the line when you accuse someone makes the accusation itself far more powerful and likely to believed

I agree, but that has to be balanced with the costs, and especially the costs to rape victims.

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#125
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I argue that it is uncomfortably low? The estimated percentage of women that are the victims of sexual assault is an order of magnitude higher. (See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_S... ) > 23 percent of women and 4 percent of men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact Even worse, 3% of false positives is a twenty-eighth of the percentage of unreported rapes: https:/…

No you may not. Sexual assualt is a despicable crime and offenders ought to be castrated, but it does in no way neccesitate nor does it excuse false accusations. Furthermore if your argument should have any validity it should count for other crimes as well. In that case what is the comfortable amount of false accusations of murder? theft? or any other horrible crime you could possibly come up with. To top it off lets…

I make no excuse, nor is it an argument. I expected the number of false positives to be on par with the number of false negatives. Said otherwise, the number of false accusations is way lower than the number of instances of rape that never even go reported.

To me, it goes without saying that I wish all of those numbers to converge to the lowest possible value.

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#126
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look how how rape victims are treated by police and the courts. It's not surprising that people are reluctant to report rape and sexual assault. Here's one, where the perpetrator was seen by other people assaulting someone who was passed out drunk: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/stanford-sexu... He still said the sex was consensual, and his lawyers put that women through hell.

I guess you mean they're treated badly? The legal system in western countries is very biased in favour of rape accusers. Shield laws are a concrete manifestation of that. Often police are told to automatically believe any rape accusation even if their common sense is telling them it's likely to be false. And so on. Yes, if you make a serious accusation against someone, their defence lawyer is going to ask difficult q…

> The legal system in western countries is very biased in favour of rape accusers.

Could you back this up somehow?

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#127
post #30
post #10

So far, the only thing I'm fairly sure of is the "jacobappelbaum.net" and "@DieJakeDie" social media efforts are doing more harm than good, and were a horrible idea. They might make a not-extremely-guilty person look worse than he is, or make a horrible person somehow sympathetic to people who think he's "also a victim", but they don't help.

For what it's worth, the web site denies involvement with the twitter account: > I SAW SOME DIFFERENT TWITTER ACCOUNTS CLAIMING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SITE. IS THAT YOU? > No. Since it is no longer possible to create a Twitter acocunt without a phone number and because we believe anonymity is important, we opted to boycott direct Twitter presence for this site. We don't have a Twitter account. > We have seen the…

> No. Since it is no longer possible to create a Twitter acocunt without a phone number

Really?

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#128
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While conspiracy theory is a risky proposition, in this case the agencies involved are known for such things. COINTELPRO, prism etc, so it's no entirely implausible to raise such concerns.

First: no, this is not plausible. Second, a question: exactly what is it that people think Jacob Appelbaum did to make him Public Enemy #1 of any government? He's not an especially important Tor contributor. Tor is not only funded by the US Government, but it began as a project at the Naval Research Lab. He's a spokesperson for Wikileaks, and Wikileaks has gotten itself engaged in serious legal issues with the US Gov…

For what it's worth, I was under the impression that Appelbaum also has or had access to the Snowden documents and was instrumental in the whole thing (Laura Poitras approached him), and it's easy to find articles saying so, but of course you never know.

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

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#129
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a great analysis. It's a superficial recitation of details about Appelbaum from someone with just a casual acquaintance of who he is. That it would seem to anyone like a great analysis is extremely worrying. It suggests to me that this particular cohort of Internet message board nerds shouldn't be trying to debate this particular topic.

I assumed you did research on the man and topic before posting about it. Turns out it's accidentaly great as it matches detailed write-ups Ive read from multiple authors. Only difference is claimed amount of field-work he did deploying Tor. Some say a lot, some a little. That would make him important in privacy circles but again I get conflicting reports. I studied spooks and black ops a long time, though. They would…

"research" that extends beyond google?

Re: Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

#130
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting it to the police is an amazingly stressful process that requires you to relive it again and again, being tried in the public eye, opening yourself up to claims of being a slut, etc. Just being able to admit you were raped is a strength a lot of victims don't have.

Creating a site that alleges you are a rapist is an amazingly stressful process for the presumed innocent person, requiring him to respond to a torrent of media and social hate and shunning, being tried in the public eye, open to claims of being a "monster", etc. You could argue you're "helping" more people by believing rape claims, but that's both mob rule(the rights of the many trample the rights of the few) and no…

Hold on, you're confusing different viewpoints. The people who contributed stories to the site, and would be the ones to report to the police, are the alleged victims. From their perspective, there is no "presumed innocent". If they are telling the truth about having experienced abuse first-hand, then they know he is guilty of at least their own abuse story and very likely the others, in which case the repercussions you mention would be well-deserved. If they are lying, then obviously their behavior is reprehensible regardless of what exactly the target suffers.

You go on to say that the peanut gallery - from which perspective "presumed innocent" makes more sense, though its level of applicability to public opinion is far from universally agreed on - should not believe the claims, because it has the potential to both cause injustice in this case and set a bad precedent for the future. That may or may not be true, but it doesn't really respond to the original question of "what would you do", if you were victimized yourself. Well, I suppose it can be seen to respond to some extent: if public shaming creates a bad precedent, that's a drawback even if a victim knows the shame is accurate; and if people respond as you suggest by distrusting these sorts of claims, then making them may do more harm than good to one's case, i.e. give people more ammunition to defend the accused with. (And of course that effect has occurred, though it's harder to say whether the site has done more good or harm overall.)

But that just establishes that public shaming has downsides. The problem is that all the other options suck too, if you're a victim of rape or lesser sexual abuse. Obviously doing nothing sucks; the major remaining option is involving the police. For one thing, if you're successful and end up with a public prosecution and trial, this will end up invoking the court of public opinion anyway, which will not necessarily be satisfied by a not-guilty verdict in real court. I suppose you can at least not actively encourage it, but privacy also has inherent downsides. Even if you have enough emotional strength yourself to face the justice system, face your abuser head-on - and that's a big if, statistically speaking, considering the low reporting rates in general estimated for rape - there may be other victims who do not, who may come forward with their stories, providing more evidence, but only if the case is publicized. And of course, if you don't have adequate proof, then the abuser will not be convicted regardless of your emotional state: which is good policy in general but which you know to be an injustice in your own case.

So what would you do? I don't think there's any good answer. Even if public shaming is the least sucky approach in some cases, that doesn't mean it's not problematic and worthy of criticism. It just means that it may deserve sympathy anyway.

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