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Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

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Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#31

Post by mtgx »

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.

> "When I flew away for an appointment, I installed four alarm systems in my apartment," Appelbaum told the paper after discussing other situations which he said made him feel uneasy. "When I returned, three of them had been turned off. The fourth, however, had registered that somebody was in my flat - although I'm the only one with a key. And some of my effects, whose positions I carefully note, were indeed askew. My computers had been turned on and off."

http://www.dw.com/en/snowden-ally-appelbaum-claims-his-berli...

And other similar and very recent account of the US gov harassing Tor developers:

https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#32

Post by mtgx »

rhblake wrote: post #29
pdkl95 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/operati…

He was on the short list for having all of Snowden's documents. If that doesn't make him a primary target for the US government, I don't know what would.

Remember Greenwald's partner was harassed and detained all the way in UK at the request of the US government because he was close to one of the people on this short list of Snowden documents holders.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#33

Post by mtgx »

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…

Kind of how I felt about it from the beginning. All of the stories seemed to be mostly about him being kind of a jerk to women or maybe in general (which may be quite true), but were painted in a way to sound like he almost raped someone.

And that's indeed a very good parallel with what happened to Assange. The issue was never about rape, but that's basically how the story was being told in the media and what most people got out of it.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#34

Post by pdkl95 »

rhblake wrote: post #29
pdkl95 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/operati…

> (after she, Greenwald and MacAskill had done the most important part)

They are also targets. I made no claim about the relative importance of Appelbaum's involvement, which is completely off-topic. He gave the talk at 30c3, which makes him a figurehead and thus a target.

> he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view

So what? That doesn't make him any less of a target from agencies that are pissed off about their documents being leaked to the public. The TLAs would love to make an example out of any of the people involved.

> I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.

That's your interpretation. To be clear, I haven't stated my interpretation, as my only point was that Appelbaum is absolutely on the short list of people we know are the target of state agencies so dismissing the possibility of their involvement is foolish.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#35

Post by rhblake »

mtgx wrote: post #32
rhblake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/operati…

He was on the short list for having all of Snowden's documents. If that doesn't make him a primary target for the US government, I don't know what would. Remember Greenwald's partner was harassed and detained all the way in UK at the request of the US government because he was close to one of the people on this short list of Snowden documents holders.

What short list? I know he's had access to some of them, along with other journalists, but I've never seen anything about him having all of them.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#36

Post by CoffeeDregs »

I'm confused. This was on the front page a moment ago. Now it is not.

This article was

119 points @ 3 hours

Current front page contains (sampled):

38 points @ 2 hours

87 points @ 4 hours

59 points @ 3 hours

26 points @ 2 hours

110 points @ 6 hours

35 points @ 7 hours

Or am I just not seeing it?

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#37

Post by rhblake »

pdkl95 wrote: post #34
rhblake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/operati…

> (after she, Greenwald and MacAskill had done the most important part) They are also targets. I made no claim about the relative importance of Appelbaum's involvement, which is completely off-topic. He gave the talk at 30c3, which makes him a figurehead and thus a target. > he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view So what? That doesn't make him any less of a target from agencies that are pissed…

So a number of high-profile, veteran, respected, typically anti-authoritarian members of the hacking community - including multiple Tor project members - have spoken out against Applebaum in the past week. That it's all being orchestrated by some three-letter agency is theoretically possible, sure, but I think that's extremely unlikely. Applying some Occam I just end up with a tragic case of an abusive asshole.

(I don't personally know Appelbaum, nor his accusers, although I've spoken to several of them and seen them at conferences throughout the years. I thought Appelbaum was great at promoting Tor. I also remember my second conversation with him, at 26C3 in 2009: he bragged about how he'd stayed at a squat during his visit in Stockholm the month before and fucked some anarchist girl. Which, at the time, I thought was a bit odd bringing up in casual conversation with someone he didn't know.)

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#38

Post by scott_s »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #36

I'm confused. This was on the front page a moment ago. Now it is not. This article was 119 points @ 3 hours Current front page contains (sampled): 38 points @ 2 hours 87 points @ 4 hours 59 points @ 3 hours 26 points @ 2 hours 110 points @ 6 hours 35 points @ 7 hours Or am I just not seeing it?

Stories that get flagged by users will drop in their rankings; this story was probably flagged by users.

Re: Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

#39

Post by rhblake »

mtgx wrote: post #31
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.

> "When I flew away for an appointment, I installed four alarm systems in my apartment," Appelbaum told the paper after discussing other situations which he said made him feel uneasy. "When I returned, three of them had been turned off. The fourth, however, had registered that somebody was in my flat - although I'm the only one with a key. And some of my effects, whose positions I carefully note, were indeed askew. M…

> And other similar and very recent account of the US gov harassing Tor developers:

> https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html

It could be noted that the core Tor developer (@isislovecruft) who wrote that post has also spoken out against Appelbaum.

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