Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community
twitlonger.com
twitlonger.com
They might make a not-extremely-guilty person look worse than he is, or make a horrible person somehow sympathetic to people who think he's "also a victim", but they don't help.
If the people he's exploited stay silent, then he can keep doing it!
Going through the legal system isn't much help in a community which is distrustful of it.
Complaining to the person in question, well, they've tried that, and it did nothing.
And if they don't group their stories together, then it's harder for people to find the accusations against him. There is strength, and more importantly in this case, credibility, in numbers.
You could argue you're "helping" more people by believing rape claims, but that's both mob rule(the rights of the many trample the rights of the few) and not necessarily stable in the long run. If people do not need to produce any evidence and feel no fear of reprisal, it's likely the rate of false accusations will climb as people learn to use them as a tool to bludgeon their adversaries.
You know, like most rape victims trying to stop specific rapists from hurting others...
If you are the victim then you don't have to presume; you know precisely what happened.
I'm not supporting or opposing anything in this post, I'm just pointing out that the alleged victims' (and accuser's) calculations are not based on uncertainty like the rest of us.
You go on to say that the peanut gallery - from which perspective "presumed innocent" makes more sense, though its level of applicability to public opinion is far from universally agreed on - should not believe the claims, because it has the potential to both cause injustice in this case and set a bad precedent for the future. That may or may not be true, but it doesn't really respond to the original question of "what would you do", if you were victimized yourself. Well, I suppose it can be seen to respond to some extent: if public shaming creates a bad precedent, that's a drawback even if a victim knows the shame is accurate; and if people respond as you suggest by distrusting these sorts of claims, then making them may do more harm than good to one's case, i.e. give people more ammunition to defend the accused with. (And of course that effect has occurred, though it's harder to say whether the site has done more good or harm overall.)
But that just establishes that public shaming has downsides. The problem is that all the other options suck too, if you're a victim of rape or lesser sexual abuse. Obviously doing nothing sucks; the major remaining option is involving the police. For one thing, if you're successful and end up with a public prosecution and trial, this will end up invoking the court of public opinion anyway, which will not necessarily be satisfied by a not-guilty verdict in real court. I suppose you can at least not actively encourage it, but privacy also has inherent downsides. Even if you have enough emotional strength yourself to face the justice system, face your abuser head-on - and that's a big if, statistically speaking, considering the low reporting rates in general estimated for rape - there may be other victims who do not, who may come forward with their stories, providing more evidence, but only if the case is publicized. And of course, if you don't have adequate proof, then the abuser will not be convicted regardless of your emotional state: which is good policy in general but which you know to be an injustice in your own case.
So what would you do? I don't think there's any good answer. Even if public shaming is the least sucky approach in some cases, that doesn't mean it's not problematic and worthy of criticism. It just means that it may deserve sympathy anyway.
The accused has the right to face his accusers and to bring evidence of his innocence or their perjury.
JA lives in Germany. German cops may be total assholes regarding anti-fascist activism, but they take rape very, very seriously.
In fact there is currently a fairly noteworthy case ongoing in Germany about a Gina-Lisa Lohfink. She's currently trying to repeal a court decision forcing her to pay money to her rapist. The rapist was considered innocent despite clear video evidence because she didn't use force to defend herself and there was no evidence of her being drugged (although the video clearly shows her being totally out of it).
If you're a victim of rape in Germany, you really don't want to go to the police unless you're absolutely sure you fit all the boxes and you definitely don't want to call out a rapist under your real name.
That's not true. She is fighting against a fine (for an allegedly wrong accusation) but that would go to the state and not another involved person.
The attack sites reduce the credibility of the claims to me.
As long as the accusations on that site are made anonymously, it doesn't look like there are any concrete accusations against him.
As with everything involved in talking about abuse, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.
In cases like this with multiple alleged victims, if everyone goes public with allegations at the same time that can reduce the risk of of reprisals; I hope that's what's actually going to happen here, rather than this being a smear campaign.
> As with everything involved in talking about abuse, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.
And how does this not go both ways, being accused of abuse? You're damned if there is evidence, you're damned if there's none, because it's your fault there is none. That's what you said means.
As that tweet goes:
> Tick Tock. Your time has come rapist. Tick tock.
"shit is complicated, this is too important for any due diligence or details, chaaarge!", that's how I would sum a lot of this up.
Saying the website is not linked with this account is just something to save legal butt - in spirit the site and that message and acount handle are the same, it's ultimately just "he's doubleplusungood and must be destroyed". Literal death threat or not, Appelbaum obviously was supposed to be discarded with any huge interest in proof, even for the plagiarism. Which, by the way, are very unlike abuse in that if someone backs them up, they win (as does the originator who gets the credit they deserve), if they don't, that's weird.
edit: Especially considering the possibility or even likelihood he's a real piece of work and an abusive person, I would be more thorough, not more sloppy. The heavier the accusations, the more precise you have to be, not the other way around, which is what internet justice seems to look like. To write about how he "makes people think you're the problem", and then not even trying to not come across like a virtual lynch mob, is just about the worst way to go about this. Then when some people actually do believe that this might not be entirely fair, one can't just say "see? you side with the abuser, it's always the same!".
And then there is the fact that abuse breeds abuse. If you acknowledge to have been abused, you absolutely do have to watch out for being abusive yourself. Wanting to destroy a person while saying they're someone who destroys people is not healthy. Understandable, but people who aren't directly affected can't be expected to just go "makes sense". From the outside perspective, this is probably two parties being in the wrong in various ways. It's hard to tell who is worse atm.
But that also means there's enough info that the same people could easily speak up in Appelbaum's defense if the allegations are untrue - since they're a lot about stuff he's done in public. They haven't so far.
Putting specific details to the allegations on the other hand would make that quite possible - a lack of defense in that case would be an indication that the accusations were true. But without specifics that's not the case.
The prior claims of Jake plagiarizing that I've seen are patently untrue, and I think I refuted them conclusively the last time I saw them made: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.otr.devel/155...
Something like this, perhaps: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-June/04...
TL;DR: neutral court of arbitration hears the case with all the private details; does not disclose those private details; hears defense etc etc.; makes a judgement; everyone else acknowledges and adheres to that judgement.
Disclaimers: (1) not that there aren't problems and points of weakness with this approach, of course; (2) personally I am very much inclined to trust what Andrea Shepard and Nick Farr say - I'm just saying that some separation of powers and being careful with smear campaigns (note, I don't think that what Nick Farr said is anything akin to smear, though, and I applause his courage here) may do more good in the end.
Tweets, a smear site... these dont stop rapists. Cops and courts regularly do. Not always but many times. This is a police matter but treated as an internet game.
There are many cases where law enforcement and the legal system fail victims in a variety of ways (e.g., blaming the victim, improper handling of rape kits, police themselves might be predators looking for victims to target, etc). To put ones faith and protection entirely in the hands of 'the authorities' would be a dogmatic insistence on a single point of failure.
And an awareness campaign (or "tweets" and a "smear site" as you put it) can have merit. Consider predators such as Bill Cosby or Jerry Sandusky, who were powerful and had enough gravitas to cover up their crimes for decades. It was only when there was a public awareness campaign that numerous witnesses and victims had enough courage to come forward and actual charges could be filed.
> I SAW SOME DIFFERENT TWITTER ACCOUNTS CLAIMING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SITE. IS THAT YOU?
> No. Since it is no longer possible to create a Twitter acocunt without a phone number and because we believe anonymity is important, we opted to boycott direct Twitter presence for this site. We don't have a Twitter account.
> We have seen the accounts you're talking about and they aren't associated with us. We don't know who is running them, and some of us are disturbed by their incendiary statements and graphics. We don't condone calls for violence or for Jake to self-harm.
Really?
So much for growth.
That is obvious form the name, before considering the content at all.
Notably, Lewman volunteers at Transition House (http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/10/01/technology-used-as-wea...), founded IPVTech (Intimate Partner Violence tech), and appears to work/volunteer with other organizations associated with victims of domestic and/or sexual abuse (http://wiki.lewman.is/CV#work-with-trauma-victims-including-...).
Perhaps Lewman was unaware (this seems unlikely given the DailyDot article's reporting of "mishandling" or "botching" the situation), but it would surprise me if someone with that orientation turned a blind eye to the alleged behavior.
At least that's my impression from the outside. This is not some kind of government orchestrated smear campaign, rather an effort to prevent harm.
It has no value. We who are outsiders in the drama can't contribute and our impressions can be false. Some of use are just drawn into the drama and can't avoid taking sides.
Creating impressions is how internet drama works.
So what? The majority can, and often is, wrong. People cover their own asses first and defend the truth second.
I've gotten really draconian about "accusations" nowadays. If it isn't worth going through the legal system, it's mob justice and a priori false unless there is real, physical evidence.
Assuming they are true: make sure to create a safe space (virtually, in real live, and in discourse) for potential victims. Don't put the accused person on sensitive community functions. Take (this and further) accusations very seriously. If someone doesn't want to deal with him, don't push the matter and don't ask why. You want to avoid retraumatization of potential victims, and you want to create a climate where affected people can feel safe. You should give people raising these accusations the benefit of doubt, and resist the urge to dig for proof or to argue about what actually happened or not. Especially given how hard it is for victims to get recognition and justice by going through the "official" channels, i.e. court. (This is basically the idea that is discussed as "power of definition" among feminists in Germany; I'm not sure how it's referred to in other countries, a quick search didn't come up with much.)
Assuming they are false: It's rarer than most people think that accusations of sexual abuse are falsely raised, but it is still a possibility. Especially given that he is a exposed public figure and possible target for "character assassination". Any scenario could be possible, from personal revenge to a smear campaign by an intelligence agency. One should protect oneself from this possibility, whether it is real or not. Don't exclude him from your communities. Don't stop using his software, don't judge or punish him. Don't give him the punishment of shunning.
Basically you have to do an impossible balancing act. You don't want to perpetuate this patriarchal shit that lets men often get away with sexualized violence. But you also don't want whoever might be abusing this claim (agencies, personal enemies, ...) to win. So the only sane course is to be all about protection of victims, providing a safe space etc., but not punishing anybody.
You absolutely can and should treat the complainant with respect and support; nobody accused them of a crime and they should not be treated with suspicion or doubt.
It's also worth being aware of the possibility that Jacob Appelbaum is himself an agent of an intelligence agency (either a plant, or someone turned informant once they realized they could blackmail him and that a creep is a useful informant), and his behavior is a way to maintain his power and in turn the intelligence agency's.
Argument 1: https://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-...
Argument 2: https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...
"But really, I thought, why would Jake be so defensive about some random [lightning talk] that might have otherwise gone completely unnoticed? If I were a government operative hell-bent on destroying the global hacker community, what would I do differently from what Jake is doing now?"
I don't think this is particularly likely over the simpler explanation that he's a non-government-affiliated creep, but if we're going to give credence to "A government agency that hates Tor was behind this," it's worth looking at all the possible ways a government agency might get an advantage out of the situation.
One is working for spooks, whether harmlessly or not. It's just not Jake that's the one. Strange the conspiracy theories focus on him instead of Tor.
Second, a question: exactly what is it that people think Jacob Appelbaum did to make him Public Enemy #1 of any government? He's not an especially important Tor contributor. Tor is not only funded by the US Government, but it began as a project at the Naval Research Lab.
He's a spokesperson for Wikileaks, and Wikileaks has gotten itself engaged in serious legal issues with the US Government, but he's far from the only person who's done that, and it's not at all clear why anyone should believe he's ever had an important operational role with WL (as opposed to being an advocate).
Why would Appelbaum be singled out for "black ops" like this while Glenn Greenwald is spared? Greenwald had an operational role in leaking intelligence secrets from the US Government; not only that, but he's still sitting on a large cache of documents and gradually leaking them out.
A Wired article today suggested that Appelbaum had "close to rock-star status" in the hacker community. Which community would that be? His reputation in the security hacker is minimal; he's known primarily for being known.
What's so important about Appelbaum that he'd be a state-level target? For any government?
It suggests to me that this particular cohort of Internet message board nerds shouldn't be trying to debate this particular topic.
I studied spooks and black ops a long time, though. They wouldn't waste effort on him.
Agreed. I wish a banner was at the top of the page: Unless you have well-substantiated information to add, don't add any information.
It's clear that his force of personality -- his "rock-star status", his "known for being known", etc. -- was able to censor talks at 30C3 (if Nick Farr's story is true, which I think it is). Is it so unlikely that this is the only time he did something like that? There are other reports of him passing off research as his own when it was actually by other people, and people being advised to let it go and not draw his ire. He's able to silence people in the security community, which is very powerful.
It's implausible that he himself is an enemy for his own work, but that's not what a mole or informant is for. It's somewhat more plausible (though, again, I think still unlikely) that he was a long-time informant, and his goal was to provide coercion about specific things being done in the security community and to silence specific voices.
Where are those reports though?
https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/739672273783652353
https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/739672512720576513
I recall seeing a few other claims along these lines on Twitter, but Twitter's ability to search your own timeline is atrocious.
Here's one: https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/302261054497509376
And a couple of months ago, Appelbaum talked about how he and others are unfairly characterised as "mere activists" and denied the protections journalists get[0]. I say talk, some would say he made a passionate plea, others a bride-burning rant (his demeanour towards The Guardian was vicious).
Uh, maybe because he could roll over on Assange?
I have personally witnessed mysterious people engage Jake in conversation, try repeatedly to get him to admit to committing fraud in the course of his security research, and even try to literally hand him incriminating evidence presumably to get his prints upon it.
There are quite a lot of people in the security research field (or whatever you want to call it) that really dislike Appelbaum, so I am not at all surprised that he gets messed with.
Testify against him. Have you never seen a cop show? :-)
I ask because Assange seems to be just about as implicated in the Manning leak as it is possible to be without being Chelsea Manning, and it's still unclear (read: unlikely) that any of that involvement leaves him culpable for any crime in the US.
Seriously? https://www.google.com/?q=wikileaks+grand+jury
> Doesn't the same logic then apply to, like, anyone else in the world?
Presumably most people are not in a position to testify in an ongoing investigation.
> Are people trying to do the same thing to Trump?
How would I know? What does this even have to do with it?
Something had to be done. That was something. They did it. Nothing came of it.
This same kind of logic is used to justify Assange not reporting back to Sweden to answer to prosecutors. "They might extradite him to the US". But legally it's even easier to extradite him from where he is now!
The reality is he's not going to be extradited.
According to Wikipedia:
> Assange has said he would go to Sweden if provided with a diplomatic guarantee that he would not be turned over to the United States, to which the Swedish foreign ministry stated that Sweden's legislation does not allow any judicial decision like extradition to be predetermined
Tell me how it's easier to extradite him from where he is now?
Which community would that be?
It's not hand-wavey to be able to give a voice to ideas, provide insight through speaking and interacting with a crowd, and people make careers off of this sort of activity in many fields, and not just technology. It's the same sort of dichotomy you'll see in other hard sciences, where there are experimentalists and theorists.
So he's not shocking audiences by injecting malicious payloads and keylogging the shit out of people, or deploying wi-fi pineapples or pen testing corporate clients. There are other vectors into the field, and sometimes skill sets are multi-disciplinary Venn diagrams.
You'd suggest that he's a Paris Hilton, but there's more to it than that.
We don't have to speculate about this, because we already know that major social networking sites received court orders (with gag orders) to turn over his information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks-related_Twitter_cour...
I don't buy the conspiracy angle myself, but I don't really know enough that I'd place a bet either way. Clearly he is targeted by state-level actors, however.
Unfortunately, I think the simpler explanation – that humanity fails at being both human and humane – is more probable.
Disclaimer: it seems to me the claims are true.
That said:
I don't think the above observation has a great deal of predictive value in this context, where "this context" is "sexual assault allegations against a public figure". The fact that most sexual assault allegations picked out of all sexual assault allegations happen to be true, does not tell you much about sexual assault allegations against public figures when the ratio of reported sexual assaults against public figures to the number of reported sexual assaults in total, is very, very low.
Indeed, every sexual assault allegation against a public figure could be false, and it wouldn't move the needle at all on the likelihood that the typical allegation is true.
with this [0] notable comment "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. ... 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."
Jake doesn't mention Nick Farr's accusation. I've been missing Nick the last years at C3 too. Now I know Nick's side of the story, I wonder how the CCC Vorstand [1] and Jake react to censoring the Lightning Talk?
I think this shows how putting your reputation on the line when you accuse someone makes the accusation itself far more powerful and likely to believed; remember that no-one has yet publicly and non-anonymously(1) accused him of rape directly, but rather, have only said that others have accused him.
I hope that if these allegations are true, people in addition to Nick Farr will have the bravery to go public with them - that's what's needed to actually put a stop to abusers.
1) In this context, "non-anonymously" includes commonly used pseudonyms of course - the legal names of people aren't what's important, but rather the identities they commonly use.
I agree, but that has to be balanced with the costs, and especially the costs to rape victims.
First, both the accusers and the accused should have their day in court. It should not be debated any other way.
That being said the TOR project had an obligation to be transparent about this situation and failed to do so..
Some of us do in fact run open source projects and should we abide by TOR's example when we are confronted with the situation of accusations of illegal acts by a project contributor?
You can't always be transparent.
* Publicizing a victim's rape, or their names, without their consent is considered publicly shaming them. It's a very bad idea.
* Publicizing an accusation against someone that you can't substantiate, especially something very damaging to their reputation such as rape, could be slander. You could be sued (and rightfully so).
* Publicizing any private HR issues is also often illegal and/or wrong.
1: https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...
So you fire anyone who gets accused of something? Hope you are a big fan of the Salem Witch Trials.
The US operates on innocent until proven guilty for a reason.
https://github.com/cephurs/jacobappelbaum.net
Cephurs was an op in a channel run by the law enforcement folks who took down LulzSec:
http://www.xeroflux.net/uploads/Operation_Anon_Rat.pdf
Kinda suspicious.
Maybe Jacob Appelbaum raped someone, maybe he didn't. That's not anyone's business except Appelbaum's, his accusers', and the legal system's. It certainly is not a public concern, and it's irrelevant to Tor.
The technically incompetent but socially competent taking credit away from where it is due ought to be a well understood phenomenon here at HN. Why give him a pass if this is the case as well?
https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74046605073149952...
https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74046629719723212...
Also whatever he might have done will now be drowned out by these false accusations. Mob mentality is as bad as whatever he might have done.
Now, in the interest of speculation, I have some conspiracy theories to suggest. Normally I wouldn't post conspiracy theories, but I think conspiracies have way more validity when you're talking about the security community.
So, check out these links:
- https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
- https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-t...
Then consider these conspiracy theories:
1) Jacob Appelbaum works for an intelligence service and was compromised, and this is their way of pulling him from the field
2) Jacob Appelbaum works for an intelligence service and was compromised, and this is a rival intelligence service's way of pulling him from the field
3) Jacob Appelbaum does not work for an intelligence service, but rather is the victim of a smearing campaign by an intelligence service
My personal opinion is that the guy is an asshole, his (ex-)friends are fed up with him, and they severely overstepped their bounds in attacking him. The line about "what you have to do with a sociopath" (paraphrasing) was particularly alarming for me; that was a clear signal of desire for vindication.
How do you determine this?
The real number is impossible to determine, but is uncomfortably high.
Ridiculously low rate of conviction
[0] https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
I've not been able to find the number of rape convictions in 2012. I found a claim of 85000 rapes in 2012 [1], and claims that 3-10% of rapes lead to a conviction.
If one really wanted to do this right, it would be necessary to look at what fraction of those who are convicted and claim they are innocent are able to get a retroactive DNA test on the evidence, and also take into account that such testing often comes after years in prison and so the comparison should be taking into account the rape convictions in the year that someone was sentenced, not the year they their conviction was overturned.
Considering that I was not even able to find a good number on the number of convictions by year, though, I have no hope of reasonably finding the information necessary for the aforementioned analysis. I've been noticing this kind of thing (not being able to find some statistics that I would have expected to be trivially findable in an intuitively obvious way by the most casual searcher) happening quite a lot over the last couple of years, and it puzzles me.
1) I simply don't have time to read the citations of everything I read (and then check the citations' citations).
2) Even with a solid factual basis, it's easy to twist and spin and fool people who lack expertise in the field. For example, the author could simply omit essential facts.
(See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_S...)
> 23 percent of women and 4 percent of men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact
Even worse, 3% of false positives is a twenty-eighth of the percentage of unreported rapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States
> Only 16% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police
I agree it feels very low - the UK has something like 90,000 rapes per year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20982105
> The Independent uses its front page to highlight what it describes as the justice system's failure to protect women - and men - from sexual assault. It reports that research by the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics suggests that about 1,000 rapists are convicted every year despite up to 95,000 people being subjected to rape.
(about 12,000 of those (or maybe as well) are male victims.)
To me, it goes without saying that I wish all of those numbers to converge to the lowest possible value.
>> The real number is impossible to determine, but is uncomfortably high.
> May I argue that it is uncomfortably low? The estimated percentage of women that are the victims of sexual assault is an order of magnitude higher.
If I'm reading you correctly, you seem to think the solution to the problem of rape is to falsely report more men?
How does arresting non-rapists for rape prevent rapists from raping?
EDIT: gender agnostic phrasing
You may; but it is certainly high enough to lend credence to those concerned about false accusations.
I don't know that anyone is claiming it to be "the problem"; but rather "a problem".
False accusations are, like corruption, something that makes the law look bad; and that makes cooperating with the law look bad. It's a problem not only for those falsely accused but also for those who have true accusations to bring!
> If in a community of cats and mice cat's kill 30% of mice, and mice kill 3% of cats, some cats may personally find that 3% to be uncomfortably high for their taste, but they can't say that this constitutes the worrying part of the violence problem in society.
"Now they have two problems."
There have been three major discussions of this story, and two of them spent many hours on the front page, including yesterday. Those were flagged, but not "flagged off the front page".
I'm not convinced that this story belongs on Hacker News. The mandate of the site is "stories that gratify intellectual curiosity", and it seems pretty clear that both the curiosity and gratification here are more voyeuristic than intellectual. Arguably the appropriate scope for the story would be the smaller online community of people who are personally and professionally affected by it.
On the other hand, the HN community is clearly interested, Tor is a longstanding topic here, the discussion has been better than it might (edit: though it has now gotten significantly worse), and if we're going to have it at all we shouldn't have only one side of it. So I've turned off flagging on this post and reduced the software penalties.
I can't imagine what a story on this topic would look like for everyone to agree it belonged on HN.
Maybe that means that none of them do, but I'm not sure that conclusion is right. I think it is best to generally prefer sunlight to silence, even when the sunlight doesn't produce as much value as we'd like to see.
Credit where credit is due - the guy has learned his lesson about how to properly play the part of the social media victim.
https://medium.com/@frabyn/decoding-jake-appelbaum-9fa75d060...
Does 'SeanLuke not know the following definitions of spurious?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spurious
"of a deceitful nature or quality"
"not genuine, sincere, or authentic"
So Appelbaum can claim that he didn't exactly mean "false" (in a sense of "never happened") but "not sincere" (as in, "somebody instructed those people to tell that now, you know, the nasty governments that are after me") if presented with the proofs later.
In short, read carefully yourself, take the dictionary and consider what was actually written and what wasn't. My impression, Franklin Bynum correctly recognized one weasel word
Open source projects are completely ruined these days by the ballast that surrounds them and drags them down.
> I can’t directly say the allegations are false.
Then, a few lines below, the author quotes Applebaum as saying:
>> I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.
I’m not taking sides here (it’s important that possible abuse is brought to light!) but this lawyer is straining his credibility.
> Appelbaum: I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.
> Bynum's translation: I’ll never be convicted of a crime.
That is, Bynum claims that Appelbaum never claims "I haven't done it" and instead intentionally uses "criminal" (versus "civil," for example).
http://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil-cases-v...
Citation needed.
I don't know about the US, but in Canada the Jian Ghomeshi trial is one recent example that comes to mind. Both the Ghomeshi trial and the Canadian trial of Gregory Alan Elliott show that there are indeed types of people out there who lie to bring charges, or increase the weight of charges bought against someone. And it shows they will lie all the way up to and through a court case, until cross examination (or in Elliott's case an insider tip off of conspiracy) unravel the lies.
I don't know what to think in this case but it is not something you can rule out completely.
Just because Eric Raymond says a thing doesn't make it true.
It's not surprising that people are reluctant to report rape and sexual assault.
Here's one, where the perpetrator was seen by other people assaulting someone who was passed out drunk: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/stanford-sexu...
He still said the sex was consensual, and his lawyers put that women through hell.
The legal system in western countries is very biased in favour of rape accusers. Shield laws are a concrete manifestation of that. Often police are told to automatically believe any rape accusation even if their common sense is telling them it's likely to be false. And so on.
Yes, if you make a serious accusation against someone, their defence lawyer is going to ask difficult questions. You're attempting to make their life literally hell, by jailing them for a long time. Being asked a few questions is in no way comparable.
This is patently false. Conviction rates for rape are far lower compared to other crimes[1]
>Shield laws are a concrete manifestation of that
Shield laws make it so news reporters cannot be forced to reveal their sources, I don't see what this has to do with rape cases.
>Being asked a few questions is in no way comparable.
Being forced to re-experience a traumatic event by a party determined to discredit you is pretty horrible.
Also, you should look at the case linked. The accused was found assaulting the girl in an alley by third party witnesses, and received six months probation.
[1]Kelly, Lovett and Regan, A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, 2005
There are 'rape shield laws' which is what I was referring to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_shield_law
> Being forced to re-experience a traumatic event by a party determined to discredit you is pretty horrible.
So what? Being accused of rape is also pretty horrible and being jailed for it is VERY horrible. People who aren't willing to go in front of a judge and jury for these cases are one source of dropouts and the low conviction rate, but they must have known that'd be a part of the process when they made a complaint.
If there routinely isn't enough evidence to convict an accused rapist, that would imply that the system isn't biased against the accused.
>There are 'rape shield laws' which is what I was referring to:
Sorry, I should have caught that. It appears this term refers to a bunch of different laws pertaining to rape cases in different jurisdictions. The general idea, that the victim's sexual history is not admissible evidence, makes sense to me. Whether or not the victim had multiple sexual partners or was promiscuous is irrelevant to the facts of the case, and serves only to hurt the victim's reputation. In many of these cases all we have to go on is the testimony of the accuser and the accused, so it is easy for these cases to devolve into character assassination. Obviously this has to be done in such a way that it does not infringe on the rights of the accused to mount a defense. Is there some specific provision in these laws you disagree with, or the entire concept?
Could you back this up somehow?
Our forefathers envisioned a fair and impartial judicial branch, with the accuser and the accused on equal ground. The accused party should always be presumed innocent, instead of guilty.
Additionally, this is also the hacking community. Most hackers don't trust the police at all.