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Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

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Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#21

Post by andy_ppp »

draw_down wrote: post #16
peterkelly wrote: post #13

"How covert agents infiltrate the internet to manipulate, deceive, and destroy reputations" https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ "Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activis…

Sure, it was wrong of the people involved to jump to conclusions about Applebaum... but for us, let's go hog wild and assume this was a campaign coordinated by national security agencies!

I think the "god you must be mad spy agencies wouldn't do that" argument went out the window a long time ago.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#22

Post by syngrog66 »

tremon wrote: post #14
syngrog66 wrote: post #10

When I read all the complainers stories my initial reaction was I noticed a fairly consistent style of "spinning" each account in a way to smear Applebaum. They each seemed designed to imply he did evil things, without truly saying it. Today we get this account, from one of Applebaum's supposed "victims" and, surprise surprise, her tale is pretty innocent and de-spun and totally oppositely aligned from the anti-Apple…

Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, that's bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. So much of the skepticism we sometimes see about the former, unfortunately, is because of the latter. This. Thank you for stating it. The attackers should accept blame for making life harder for real victims.

you're welcome!

I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".)

Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#23

Post by pdkl95 »

rhblake wrote: post #18
syngrog66 wrote: post #10

When I read all the complainers stories my initial reaction was I noticed a fairly consistent style of "spinning" each account in a way to smear Applebaum. They each seemed designed to imply he did evil things, without truly saying it. Today we get this account, from one of Applebaum's supposed "victims" and, surprise surprise, her tale is pretty innocent and de-spun and totally oppositely aligned from the anti-Apple…

Re: NSA, state actors, billion dollar budgets... I think you're giving Appelbaum way too much credit here. While he's been splendid at marketing himself, consider that he might not actually be that important to the causes he's been championing. As others have pointed out: if said state actors wanted to hurt Tor and related projects, he'd be pretty far down the list of targets.

Did you forget that Appelbaum was involved in the release of the NSA ANT catalog[1], or his involvement with Laura Poitras and the Snowden documents? Never mind his involvement with Tor (which has been a recent target of various state actors). I'm sure many intelligence community want Appelbaum only slightly less than they want Snowden.

Or do you want to argue that the NSA doesn't care about the person that revealed a catalog of their tools to the public?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#24

Post by andy_ppp »

rhblake wrote: post #7
TillE wrote: post #4

"Wonder about the witnesses in all these stories, who coincidentally always seem to consist of the same set of people." Yeah... From what I've seen, the confirmed first-person stories suggest that Appelbaum is probably a huge asshole, but the worst stuff is contained in anonymous accounts filtered through a handful of people, at least one of whom has a weird axe to grind about "plagiarism". Something feels very off a…

I think the first-person stories of @hypatiadotca [0] and @violetblue [1] suggest more than that. [0] https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/07/he-said-they-said/ [1] https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446500891860992 / https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446782505779200 / etc. (argh twitter)

I think these people would be wise to go to the police rather than writing blog posts/twitter comments that imply vague wrong doing without any clear crimes involved.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#25

Post by prutschman »

andy_ppp wrote: post #24
rhblake wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the first-person stories of @hypatiadotca [0] and @violetblue [1] suggest more than that. [0] https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/07/he-said-they-said/ [1] https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446500891860992 / https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446782505779200 / etc. (argh twitter)

I think these people would be wise to go to the police rather than writing blog posts/twitter comments that imply vague wrong doing without any clear crimes involved.

If no clear crime was committed, why on earth would going to the police have done any good?

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#26

Post by syngrog66 »

pdkl95 wrote: post #23
rhblake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: NSA, state actors, billion dollar budgets... I think you're giving Appelbaum way too much credit here. While he's been splendid at marketing himself, consider that he might not actually be that important to the causes he's been championing. As others have pointed out: if said state actors wanted to hurt Tor and related projects, he'd be pretty far down the list of targets.

Did you forget that Appelbaum was involved in the release of the NSA ANT catalog[1], or his involvement with Laura Poitras and the Snowden documents? Never mind his involvement with Tor (which has been a recent target of various state actors). I'm sure many intelligence community want Appelbaum only slightly less than they want Snowden. Or do you want to argue that the NSA doesn't care about the person that revealed…

agreed. I forgot to mention Tor and Snowden explicitly in my OC but agreed that these facts are all relevant to how we need to interpret events in this space. because it gives even more motive for certain actors to smear Applebaum.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#27

Post by xcasex »

the infosec scene is in a place the OSS scene was in ˜13-14 years ago, before the formal introduction of the gnome foundation, kde reorg. guess what both of those projects have? outreach programmes and ombudsmän.

now, guess what the tor project lacks.

as you're probably thinking right now "but how in the f..." simple, OSS has had to deal with toxic enviroments and individuals. one of the cornerstones is, listen, corroborate, recommend, act.

the infosec community as a whole lack formal mature organisations to deal with these kinds of situations.

what we're still lacking in the witness accounts are timeframes, we have something of a picture from very vague details from leaked emails, these can be regarding pretty much anything, aside from one which is about _unspecified_ misconduct at a conference.

the sad thing here is that people can change, victims with trauma live with the trauma, so listen, validate, no-shame or pre-judgement.

but the infosec scene isnt a special snowflake exempt from the social contract of society, we all co-sign it by living in a nationstate, so we need to uphold it because the alternative is chaos.

if there is a legitimate grievance, report it, go through the system. hell, even brokep says as much, and he trusts the system on this, even though the process he has been forced to endure.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#28

Post by pstuart »

syngrog66 wrote: post #22
tremon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, that's bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. So much of the skepticism we sometimes see about the former, unfortunately, is because of the latter. This. Thank you for stating it. The attackers should accept blame for making life harder for real victims.

you're welcome! I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".) Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)

I upvoted your parent comment because it was a worthy contribution to the dialog. I don't consider myself PC (in the now pejorative sense), but when you put quotes around the word rape it can be construed to be discounting it.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#29

Post by rhblake »

pdkl95 wrote: post #23
rhblake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: NSA, state actors, billion dollar budgets... I think you're giving Appelbaum way too much credit here. While he's been splendid at marketing himself, consider that he might not actually be that important to the causes he's been championing. As others have pointed out: if said state actors wanted to hurt Tor and related projects, he'd be pretty far down the list of targets.

Did you forget that Appelbaum was involved in the release of the NSA ANT catalog[1], or his involvement with Laura Poitras and the Snowden documents? Never mind his involvement with Tor (which has been a recent target of various state actors). I'm sure many intelligence community want Appelbaum only slightly less than they want Snowden. Or do you want to argue that the NSA doesn't care about the person that revealed…

No, I didn't forget that he was one of three people involved in writing stories about the NSA ANT catalog, nor that he worked with Poitras (after she, Greenwald and MacAskill had done the most important part). I also did not forget that while he's been good at marketing Tor -- I've seen him at CCC in Berlin/Hamburg a bunch of times 2009-2015, he's become a good speaker -- he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view, from what I understand.

So, yeah, I maintain that there are plenty of juicier targets that Jacob Appelbaum. I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#30

Post by syngrog66 »

pstuart wrote: post #28
syngrog66 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're welcome! I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".) Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)

I upvoted your parent comment because it was a worthy contribution to the dialog. I don't consider myself PC (in the now pejorative sense), but when you put quotes around the word rape it can be construed to be discounting it.

my intent in saying "rape" was as a wildcard to bundle actual rape, plus false rape, plus all the shades of gray and slippery slope thinking involved between those two poles.

Also, considering my OC explicitly said that I think rape is a real thing, and bad, I think its clear I do not discount it. I'm anti-rape. I'm also pro-truth and anti-smearing. Its the nuance in how we as a society handle these stances together that I observe is sometimes lost on certain people.

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