When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are • Hacker News Board

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#81

Post by sulam » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:58 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #46

hawkice wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr DJB was approached with a complaint, and thought it was a situation where he would give advice and his counterparty expected he would maintain his confidence. After he heard about the frustration the complainant was experiencing, asked the person to file a formal complaint, or at least send a self-contained email (explicitly acknowledged as not confidential) that he could use to move forward, in order to not br…

> But DJB doesn't _keep_ records of confidential things -- hence his insistence that they start from the beginning. I call BS on this, if we're talking about adults at university positions. The reasonable response in that case is: "I do not have any archives. Please resend everything you've got.", not starting from the beginning without communicating that fact clearly. If someone fails to act properly in that positio…

You're talking about a crypto researcher here. Their behavior absolutely does include a much higher level of awareness around the handling of confidential information. He may well have a policy that all confidential communication is treated separately, including being automatically wiped after some period of time. This would need to be standard for his work as it relates to investigating 0day and other vulnerabilities that must be confidentially disclosed to third parties.

This does not make him a nice guy, and he would likely have been in violation of Title IX, which means any US govt funding for his lab is potentially at risk as a result of this case.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#82

Post by tempestn » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:00 AM UTC

wehere wrote: post #58

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "Dan has written at some length about the importance of “due process”, both internally to the research group and externally to the world. But it’s telling to notice that in every such discussion, Dan carefully avoided any mention of concrete processes: he did not define the “different procedures” suddenly required for him to take action, nor what “proper procedures” should be followed." This is pate…

i mean those e-mails by Dan you quoted are pretty incriminating themselves

Incriminating in what way? They sounded pretty reasonable to me.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#83

Post by sulam » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:02 AM UTC

hartator wrote: post #34

belovedeagle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you throw enough shit at a wall, eventually some of it will stick. That's exactly the strategy being used here.

I would argue there is no smoke without fire. The wikipedia section about his sexual abuses is citing close to 30 sources.

Yes, and there is strong evidence of his Wikipedia profile being whitewashed. At some point there is a pattern of behavior that clearly is resulting in accusations. This is well past that point.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#84

Post by sethherr » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:05 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #51

knieveltech wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there now? By all means describe what objectively differentiates inappropriate from harassment.

Farting is inappropriate but not harassment (usually). There is a huge range of behaviour that's can be inappropriate but not harassment.

That's a reasonable example, but doesn't answer the question: what differentiates it?

I'd say it's something like "involving people without their consent" - e.g. farting on them.

Which includes forcing people to listen to tales of your sexual exploits.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#85

Post by DashRattlesnake » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:06 AM UTC

spraak wrote: post #69

It looks like this has disappeared from the front page?

With good reason. The post and its discussion are basically scandal and identity politics.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#86

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:07 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #64

stale2002 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. Apparently a bunch of people came forward and the guy got fired, because the accusations were true.

I didn't know getting fired from your job was proof and conviction of a crime. Or that you only get fired because allegations are true (subtext: you don't). I think it's likely Jacob's as much of a creep as some people say. Especially when people like Nick Farr say so, but I'm going to wait for charges and a conviction before I go spreading hearsay everywhere. I've been the victim of false accusations (not rape) befo…

[deleted]

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#87

Post by viraptor » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:09 AM UTC

sulam wrote: post #81

viraptor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But DJB doesn't _keep_ records of confidential things -- hence his insistence that they start from the beginning. I call BS on this, if we're talking about adults at university positions. The reasonable response in that case is: "I do not have any archives. Please resend everything you've got.", not starting from the beginning without communicating that fact clearly. If someone fails to act properly in that positio…

You're talking about a crypto researcher here. Their behavior absolutely does include a much higher level of awareness around the handling of confidential information. He may well have a policy that all confidential communication is treated separately, including being automatically wiped after some period of time. This would need to be standard for his work as it relates to investigating 0day and other vulnerabilitie…

I don't care who he is, or what his daily email routine is. It doesn't matter. At any level, if someone you're superior to in your organisation comes to you and reports abuse from another person in the org, you either follow up immediately, or you shouldn't be superior to them. Any kind of follow up should produce report of that. If the person taking to you doesn't want you to report it further, then it's your business to have a record of that and never lose it. I know it from normal decency and numerous company trainings and I've never even been a manager.

His research topic, or even whether the report is true don't matter. It's in his interest to follow up on his own and keep records. If not because it's right, at least to protect the university and himself from what's happening right now.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#88

Post by pseudalopex » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:09 AM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #62

pfarnsworth wrote: post #4

Wow this blog post makes djb sound like such a scumbag. The idea that he would ask people to consider the allegations "false" is absurd (there's a difference between presuming innocence vs presuming the the allegations are false). I would love to hear his side of the story.

The emails don't show djb as a scumbag, just a little bit cold and rule-oriented. The kind of guy that is generally regarded as writing the most secure unclassified crypto code is going to be rule-oriented. Think of Immanuel Kant, who (roughly) said that the golden rule was the ultimate law, and required him to always tell the truth, even if a murderer showed up at his door, and asked whether his target was upstairs.…

Both of them describe Bernstein as a manager, not a friend.

I think Bernstein may simply have meant that the written complaint had to be specific, but that took a close reading and some charity. His direction to leave out "any reference to the previous conversation" first struck me as wanting to pretend there hadn't been one.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#89

Post by sulam » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:19 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #87

sulam wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a crypto researcher here. Their behavior absolutely does include a much higher level of awareness around the handling of confidential information. He may well have a policy that all confidential communication is treated separately, including being automatically wiped after some period of time. This would need to be standard for his work as it relates to investigating 0day and other vulnerabilitie…

I don't care who he is, or what his daily email routine is. It doesn't matter. At any level, if someone you're superior to in your organisation comes to you and reports abuse from another person in the org, you either follow up immediately, or you shouldn't be superior to them. Any kind of follow up should produce report of that. If the person taking to you doesn't want you to report it further, then it's your busine…

Sometimes your best protection is a policy that all electronic communications are automatically deleted after a retention period. Many companies have such policies, and they have them on advice of their legal council, specifically to avoid discovery issues in the event of a suit. You can argue this doesn't apply here from a moral perspective and I would agree with you, but IT and legal policies often do not follow an ethical code.

Crypto research exacerbates this because the likelihood of such suits is higher than with other kinds of research, sometimes rising to the level of nation states getting grumpy at you with all that could entail. Finally, while I can't make any excuse for the behavior, he would be far from the first graduate advisor to have less than stellar management training or skills.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#90

Post by tempestn » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:20 AM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #88

cameldrv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emails don't show djb as a scumbag, just a little bit cold and rule-oriented. The kind of guy that is generally regarded as writing the most secure unclassified crypto code is going to be rule-oriented. Think of Immanuel Kant, who (roughly) said that the golden rule was the ultimate law, and required him to always tell the truth, even if a murderer showed up at his door, and asked whether his target was upstairs.…

Both of them describe Bernstein as a manager, not a friend. I think Bernstein may simply have meant that the written complaint had to be specific, but that took a close reading and some charity. His direction to leave out "any reference to the previous conversation" first struck me as wanting to pretend there hadn't been one.

That's not the impression I got. It sounded to me like there had been a long, confidential conversation, perhaps spanning different media, and he just wanted an authoritative email laying out the full issue, which he could then act on, without needing to try to accurately recall all past conversation and determine which parts should be confidential or not.

I'm not saying it was the ideal response, just that if we give the benefit of the doubt it doesn't appear to be a malicious one.