Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
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Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#2Nick was one of my favourite people at any hacker meeting I've been at. His positivity and selfless support have been a huge inspiration to me. It pains me to read this, people can suffer in silence so much and you never know until they manage to share their dread. Get well Nick, I hope some day you will be able to continue brightening up other peoples' lifes.
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#3Nick was one of my favourite people at any hacker meeting I've been at. His positivity and selfless support have been a huge inspiration to me. It pains me to read this, people can suffer in silence so much and you never know until they manage to share their dread. Get well Nick, I hope some day you will be able to continue brightening up other peoples' lifes.
He's how I discovered CCC and started attending. Ironically even after he stopped going to CCC events himself, still was able to make a bunch of introductions and be super helpful, and it's obvious the people he's met through these events were super appreciative of him. I hope he comes back into the infosec scene!
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#4I've been to quite a few C3s and always thought of Nick Farr as kind of part of the inventory, he was so much part of the culture there. He was one of the people introducing the main talks and always cheered up the crowd. I wondered why he wasn't at the recent events, now I know and this really hurts to read.
His account and Meredith L. Pattersons, who has also given talks on most C3s I went to, make these accusations very real and very credible. I hope there will be more than just this internet campaign coming out of it (which I think is really not doing any good there and puts a lot of people off because it really looks like an attempt of character assassination).
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#5If you ever deal with a sociopath, just learn to accept that nothing you can do will defeat them and get the hell away from this person as quickly as you possibly can. I've dealt with three people in my life who I consider sociopaths or pyschopaths. The first time I had no idea what to expect, so it was a massive shock.
The second time, I watched them turn on me incredibly rapidly, and from going from being supportive to being entirely bent on destroying me and my reputation in a day, this time I wasn't shocked but just felt a sick feeling inside: it was happening again.
This time I knew what to do though. I was pulled into a meeting after my 21st day of non-stop work. The meeting was attended by my boss who the psycopath had just been telling me he would "end" because of his sheer incompetence. Durimg the meeting I was told that adding a synthetic key column was unacceptable (the pysopath couldn't wrap his mind around why you would do this) he told me he had countermanded my request for the change in the ETL process but hadn't told me. When I pointed out I had proceeded under the understanding from my then boss that this was an approved change, he called me a liar, and when I protested that he hadn't told me he threatened to ensure that everything would be sent to me in writing. Then he told me he would be having a meeting with me and the CEO on the next day, a Monday.
I excused myself from the meeting. He had a smirk, because he felt he now had power and I could be used as a pawn to destroy the CEO, who had recently pretty much given the man's wife a nervous breakdown.
It was clear what the man's goal was: take down the CEO by any means necessary, even if it meant destroying those who had actually made every attempt to protect his wife (who was my manager before she left). I suddenly realised that his plan to bring down the CEO was to remove all competent employees and effectively neuter the CEO, which - truth be told - wasn't very difficult as the CEO was an arrogant twerp who thought he knew about management and IT, but in reality had no idea.
Faced with a situation where I was being undermined by my immediate manager, whose incompetence was literally destroying the company, and caught between the anger of a man I consider to be a psychopath, and on the other side dealing with an arrogant, unethical and unheeding CEO, I realised that with my level of burnout and exhaustion my mental health was going to suffer very badly. For me, this was unacceptable - at my most stressed I get thoughts of suicide, but I have a young family who I love...
Faced with this, I quietly wrote my resignation letter, ensured it said pleasant things and wasn't critical of anyone, printed it out, put it on the CEO's desk and left the building.
If you get targeted by a psychopath, know that as you aren't one yourself they are almost impossible to fight back against because, unlike you, they have no guilt and no compunction against using other people as tools to achieve whatever means they deem necessary. If their best option is to be nice to you, then that's what they'll use. If they realise that you can be used to destroy an enemy, then they'll do whatever it takes to manipulate you into undertaking their actions. They will be very effective at this, and often you won't know till too late you've become entrapped in their machinations. They certainly won't hesitate to drop you at the first sign you can't be manipulated or you have realised what they are up to.
So if you meet such a person, you probably have not much realistic chance of beating them at their own game - they are much, much better at it than you. Don't feel bad about this though: the reason they are better at it than you is because they have no sense of guilt or shame, and have almost zero empathy. There is something deeply wrong with them, but they either don't know it or don't care. They are a cancer on society, and you should feel happy you aren't them. But what it does mean is that to beat them, and protect yourself, you must starve them of oxygen, and to do so you must remove yourself from their presence as quickly and abruptly as possible.
In my case, I'm glad I did. Six weeks later the incompetent manager was forced to resign when it became apparent that it really was him who destroyed everything. Nine month later, and through his own unethical behaviour and sheer incompetence, arrogance and stupidity the CEO has been sacked. The one who engineered this is now in charge and has taken over the CEO's position - just as I predicted. My former colleagues are in shock, but seem amazed at what I predicted has come to pass.
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#6> One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative.
Appelbaums reaction to this occurence seems quite strong. That other person wasn't the only one thinking the same. Too bad that talk never happened.
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#7Read this back to back with grugq's post today, although standing on its own the level of vitriol Farr describes over the LT would give me pause:
http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263
"Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements"
Never met Farr, but it's always sad to hear stories where positive contributors are ground down by this sort of unacceptable behavior.
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#8I get the impression that almost everyone in this space overreacts and throws dirt at each other. Here is how others of the Tor project reacted in a similar situation:
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#9I met JA at one of the C3 conventions . he's an extremely charismatic guy. you get sucked in. But then after a while he started to behave very badly towards one in the group. Shaming her and being a jerk in general, but with a smile. I dont know if everyone got what he was doing because it was delivered in such an underhanded way. I couldn't stand it and walked away, and I still regret I didn't tell him to shut the fuck up. I just made an excuse for myself andhave felt like a coward ever since.
Re: Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
#10Meredith and Andrea were, according to too many people yesterday: untrustworthy and biased. Many comments here urged everyone to suspend judgement, not rush to conclusions and not take allegations overly seriously. (Not always a bad idea, but apparently much less important today.)
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. (Which of course, Nick is pretty solid, so it likely is. Just as Meredith, Andrea and many others are solid and 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 women who shared their stories yesterday, but now can today.
This is why women come forward less often. People have a shocking tendency not to believe them, no matter how credible or well known they are.
Please learn from this.