Tor Project Statement on Jacob Appelbaum

While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I think it's very important to consider the social and legal repercussions of the accusations when taking into account the level of proof required. Being an asshole in general with regard to business is not the same as sexual harassment, much less sexual assault. One can get you labelled as someone bad to work for, but in general many might not care because they are focused on results, while the other can get you ostracized from friends and family or convicted of a felony, depending on circumstance. Regardless of guilt. The burden of proof should, necessarily, be higher when the punishment is so much greater.

This doesn't excuse the behavior of publicly stating guilt or that one party is lying without evidence. That's horrible behavior and happens on both sides.

"just"? Sorry no, but even that doesn't excuse this kind of stuff and more:

> Jake enjoys manipulating people through his built-up social capital, influence, and power, in order to get what he wants.

> If you spurn Jake or attempt to stand up to him, he'll go after the people you care about the most next, doing whatever he can to humiliate and harm them.

> Jake is known to do whatever it takes to get others to do all the work, but have his name listed first on the paper "because the names should be alphabetically sorted." He's also quite happy to do the same with code, projects, articles, whatever he can to increase his level of power and influence.

> It is these people, not people like Jacob, that should be the leaders of our community.

This does seem to be about "a kind of person" rather than deeds. Check out the suggested tweet via icon at the bottom, too, huh. And this tweet makes no sense to me either:

> Tor had the chance to nip this in the bud back when Jake was just a plagiarist. They ignored it, and he graduated to sexual assault.

Unless there is more about that plagiarism claim than what is on that mailing list, and unless it's about more than that document, that'd be kind of rich anyway. But even more importantly, nip what in the bud, exactly? If he's such a rapist sociopath, how would kicking him off TOR have helped anyone? As another tweet goes

> You don't just kick sociopaths down the road and play like you've done the necessary. That's extending their social license to operate.

Instead you do what, exactly? I guess actually diagnosing someone a sociopath before calling them that isn't what one does. I guess it just means he has no rights and must be destroyed. This is actually nastier than anything I read in the allegiations so far.

> How often do we find out that multiple parties accusing a single person of sexual assault were wrong?

Two friends and anonymous accounts, unless I'm mistaken? And what are the accusations exactly - groping a drunk sleeping person, then stopping when they say so? That's it? I'm not saying that's okay, hell no, but it's also not my business, and certainly not enough to treat him like some monster unfit to breathe. It's like saying Appelbaum beats his child, sure, that's horrible, but that just means I wouldn't want to be his friend, doesn't take anything away from his work.

How often do you find victims of abuse forming a "collective" complete with a twitter account named TimeToDieJake dedicated to smearing the supposed perpetrator, but not so much to proving their allegiations? Is this really the kind of precedent you want to let slip by? Is that how you want to dilute the words "rapist" and "sociopath"? To be fired at will, without due process or evidence?

> If this were a consensus algorithm, Jake's data would be overwritten, folks.

For me it doesn't even pass the smell test yet. There is way too much glee and self-righteousness, and saying multiple unknown people can't lie, and to compare this with Cosby, doesn't cut it either. Bring the evidence to the police. If you don't have evidence, well, I for one will pay further attention to this, I expect a whole lot of wheat and chaff to separate, one way or the other.

> This is between the folks involved and the respective legal agencies involved, and nothing is helped by people subtley saying "stupid ladies, they lie about man."

They made a website dedicated solely to assassinating his character, but nobody say anything? This ship has sailed. There are allegiations of assault, and there is this assault on Appelbaum which is already taking place. That's the one assault I can see with my own eyes, right now.

Also, nothing is helped by you putting up a straw man about sexism.

> Let's be fair here, defending the accused inherently means you're calling the victim(s) liars, especially this early in the event cycle. You're immediately assuming the accusers are lying for personal gain. You're being biased.

I can't speak for whatever else you've read, but the comment you're replying to is very general and does not defend anyone or calls anyone a liar. It does sounds skeptical. There is a big difference.

In the age of media meta-narratives, social justice crusades and Twitter attack campaigns presumption of innocence is the only sensible attitude to have.

> I don't see anyone leaping to defend Nest's CEO for his alleged instances of abuse.

People should be skeptical about those accusations as well. Any large company has begrudged employees. That's obvious. It's also pretty obvious that the public is biased against CEOs of large companies.

So what's your point? You're saying that the same biases should be expanded to other groups?

The thing is that there is no proof given to these accusations. No police reports, no suits won, no due process executed to collect evidence, nothing. If even an iota of evidence were produced, then I'd believe it. But alas, there doesn't seem to be anything of that nature.

> Let's be fair here, defending the accused inherently means you're calling the victim(s) liars, especially this early in the event cycle. You're immediately assuming the accusers are lying for personal gain. You're being biased.

There is a difference between calling someone a liar and asking for due process. We don't have assumed guilt in most western courts as they operate on a "innocent until proven guilty" principle.

I'd like to ask, how would one -- if accused of rape -- prove they didn't do it in this situation? I'm fairly sure that the point of contention wasn't all of the parties having stayed with each other. I think the issue here is if there was and sexual acts that did happen.

Again, as soon as I'm given any information other then "he left Tor" and "some people made a website and put stories on it", then hell I'll lend you my pitch fork. But before then, I'm keeping my pitch forks locked in my shed.