While conspiracy theory is a risky proposition, in this case the agencies involved are known for such things. COINTELPRO, prism etc, so it's no entirely implausible to raise such concerns.
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.
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.