Tor/Appelbaum Separation Agreement [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Tor/Appelbaum Separation Agreement [pdf]

cryptome.org

76 pointsaburan2848 comments

From the outside it's very difficult to know what's going on here. Maybe Appelbaum is a jerk. Maybe he's carried out sexual harrassment/rape. I don't know. But these things are not proven by a clearly orchestrated character assassination: aggressive twitter accounts, anonymous testimony, a website which is misleading and attempts to deceive people. These things don't help anyone and only undermine the claims by the alleged victims.

Given who Appelbaum is, it's entirely possible that outside actors are also getting involved to exacerbate tensions.

In summary: Applebaum has left. TOR can move on. If there are criminal matters, they can be decided in the courts. Witch hunts and character assassinations are not productive.

> aggressive twitter accounts,

There appears to be some false flags in those accounts, as the main site with the rape allegations has claimed that they do not endorse the threats uttered in those accounts.

Don't endorse? That's first and foremost words -- the website, "TimeToDieJake" and the picture of the guillotine chopping of his penise, that's more real.

Their plausible deniability doesn't translate into "confirmed false flags". It can't be confirmed either way, I'd say, since we can't read minds. "endorse" just means "not publically support", which in turn just means "we're not that insane". But you're right, it's AFAIK not entirely right to speak of aggressive twitter accountS, but I for one didn't buy their "we're not related" about TimeToDieJake for one second. Can't prove it, but it'll take you hard proof to convince me otherwise.

I agree you can't blame people directly for all of anyone out there does now, I'm sure plenty of people enjoy stirring the pot. But you can blame adults at least partially for the storm they unleashed and the way in which they did it, and how unable they are to even see, much less acknowledge that. Stirring up hatred against someone and then saying you don't endorse hateful messages against them might be useful in a court, but beyond that? To me, generating hatred against Appelbaum was the whole and the sole point of the exercise. I mean, while we're at accepting "this seems plausible" as good enough, then that's a somewhat reasonable assumption I'd say.

For me so far the claims of Appelbaum being a super psycho are hearsay, some of it plausible, sure, and nobody coming out for real against it - but I also see manipulation, using others to destroy someone, not wanting to lay it out in the open, and so on. Those are also red flags. And that's not because Appelbaum is playing his narcissist mind games on me, and makes me blame his doings on the victims, that's simply the stuff I see.

I see a whole lot of disagreeing with downvotes instead of people using their words, too, and that is also a signal. For people who claim to be against abuse, some people are mighty abusive.

I'll just leave this here, you know, for posterity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11882458

There's something deeply alarming here, whatever the nature of the claims against Appelbaum.

There's pretty extensive evidence of an attempt to impersonate him here. There's also a lot of stuff that's alarming from a philosophical standpoint for anyone involved with privacy/anonymity - a link to an "ioerrror" (instead of "ioerror") github is a clear attempt to deceive, and it's deeply questionable to do to visitors to the site, independent of any effects on Appelbaum.

It's pretty obvious that there's serious character assassination happening here, and it's only going to tar the reputation of everyone involved - alleged victims, Appelbaum, and Tor alike. No matter who you're siding with, this is still an ugly and counterproductive episode.

There is the issue of troll communities on the internet.

People running a campaign to do something or another might not have any other involvement, they could just be in it for the lulz.

> There's pretty extensive evidence of an attempt to impersonate him here.

What? Where? Just because of the github account that they chose? The site doesn't say that Jacob Appelbaum wrote any of it. They call themselves a victims' collective:

http://jacobappelbaum.net/#faq

I am guessing that they chose to plaster Jacob's face all over it just to make the site about him, and I find it very credible that most victims would want to remain anonymous given the kind of hounding and harassment that they are likely to receive otherwise:

    How old are you? How much do you weigh? What did you eat that day?
    Well what did you have for dinner? Who made dinner? Did you drink
    with dinner? No, not even water? When did you drink? How much did
    you drink? What container did you drink out of? Who gave you the
    drink? How much do you usually drink? Who dropped you off at this
    party? At what time? But where exactly? What were you wearing? Why
    were you going to this party? What’ d you do when you got there?
    Are you sure you did that? But what time did you do that? What
    does this text mean? Who were you texting? When did you urinate?
    Where did you urinate? With whom did you urinate outside? Was your
    phone on silent when your sister called? Do you remember silencing
    it? Really because on page 53 I’d like to point out that you said
    it was set to ring. Did you drink in college? You said you were a
    party animal? How many times did you black out? Did you party at
    frats? Are you serious with your boyfriend? Are you sexually
    active with him? When did you start dating? Would you ever cheat?
    Do you have a history of cheating? What do you mean when you said
    you wanted to reward him? Do you remember what time you woke up?
    Were you wearing your cardigan? What color was your cardigan? Do
    you remember any more from that night? No? Okay, well, we’ll let
    Brock fill it in.

The fucked up barrage of questions is from here, btw: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/06/04...

The github account, along with a 'tweet' button that explicitly misleads about the nature of the site, and a twitter account that put out threats while claiming to be associated with the victims (who rejected those threats).

If this isn't an attempt to mislead, I could understand the website choice as a way to increase visibility for an important concern, but the choice of github account and tweet trouble me. I wouldn't want to click that tweet link and have a claim under my name that misrepresented what I was putting out.

None of this is germane to what Appelbaum did - I have no reason to distrust Nick Farr or others, nor do I see any evidence this is an act by alleged victims instead of some other party. But there's still a clear attempt to impersonate and mislead, and I worry that it's going to do more harm to the victims and community than anything else.

(I want to be very clear here. My reaction to the apparent impersonation is entirely distinct from any views on Appelbaum, the abuse claims, Nick Farr's post, or the Tor project's formal response. The extensive quote from the story of an unrelated assault makes me worry that you think I'm trivializing the victims; I am not in any way speaking to their claims or actions.)

Oh, you're talking about the original way that the website and Twitter account were created, which has since changed. I had to rtfa to see what you were referring to.

Oh gotcha. I started from the article (because I missed the initial furor), hence my confusion.

Yeah, the initial day(s) of the website and account are what makes me uncomfortable, not the ongoing claims. Those seem depressingly widespread and well substantiated.

> I missed the initial furor

Here you go, in a way:

https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor/blob/mast...

I would probably reach a similar conclusion, but many of the people speaking out against him are people that I know and respect. People who have been contributing meaningful cryptography research for decades are not suddenly going to become part of some nebulous government-sponsored smear campaign.

What has happened is that Jake has been, let's say, rather manipulative and self-promotional for many years. I've never had any issues with him, but I've witnessed him grandstanding and attacking people who he felt represented a threat to his influence. His elevated profile in the media and the platform that ToR gave him allowed him to do this successfully.

Now that it's ok to criticize him, the floodgates have opened and all the enemies he's made over the years feel that they can speak up. Maybe this looks like some kind of "orchestrated campaign" from the outside?

As for the hyperbolic sockpuppet Twitter accounts or whatever, consider that they have only served to sow doubt about the people coming forward.

I don't mean to condemn the accusations, or attribute this to a shady three letter agency (Farr's piece ought to give lie to that claim at the very least).

My only intent was to say that the initial nature of the website and twitter account were fairly alarming, and seemed to show a pretty bad faith intent to misrepresent their nature and identity. That doesn't speak to who set up any given thing; it could be the victims, but it could equally well be a destructive third party, or even a false-false-flag attempt to muddy the waters to undermine the charges.

All I really mean to say is that the initial misrepresentation of identity is something I'm uncomfortable with regardless of the charges, and that it's something I hope well intentioned supporters of the victims won't engage in (I can hardly ask 2nd party bad actors or 3rd party trolls to change their behavior). The situation is a mess, and I can't do much more than discourage certain tactics and offer sympathy to the victims.

> There's something deeply alarming here

You need to broaden your gaze. In the wider world, this follows a very familiar pattern of defamation mixed with mass accusations but no legal involvement. It fits a narrative.

>by a clearly orchestrated character assassination

What about Nick Farr's story? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842301

I don't think the "character assassination" is meant to be any statement on whether the claims are true. Regardless of that question, there seems to be an attempt to impersonate and misrepresent Appelbaum, an attempt to mislead about that attempt, and a collection of threats and other statements made under false claims of support from the primary complainants.

There are two different events here: the claims, which if unproved are certainly credible; and an effort to impersonate and mislead which is troubling no matter how the first issue stands.

Well, he didn't back up the plagiarism claims he repeats either, mentioned emails "from Jake and important CCC people" without quoting those emails, mentioned notes he didn't even take photos of for some reason, and says nothing about any sexual conduct, or what exactly he said to whom and in what way he was claimed to be the troublemaker. It's not very verbose in many parts I would like it to be more verbose about.

For me, that people (I don't know at all) trust Nick Farr (whom I don't know at all) about Appelbaum (whom I don't know at all) being a sociopath is certainly something I wouldn't easily dismiss, but it's also not something I can go by, you know? One thing I notice about the story is how short it is, and that Nick didn't answer my questions to it. That's literally the only interaction I have and it's negative, so there. What I consider a much stronger "signal" is that nobody who knows Jake personally came out saying what a great and prude guy he is, to exaggerate. That I did notice.

And even if the claims are true, it's still orchestrated character assassination in a way (even that is putting it mildly, that is, not the full picture, considering the "TimeToDieJake" account and the image with a guillotine) since "rapist, plagiarist, sociopath" is now supposed to be his tagline. Trying to push that in an orchestrated fashion is character assassination, not in the sense of totally fabricating things out of thin air, but certainly in the sense of taking some truth, mixing in a lot of hyperbole and uncertainty and making a huge hammer and a virtual death sentence out of it.

You might find this chart interesting for thinking about the uses of discussion outside of courts: https://twitter.com/scriptjunkie1/status/739545814150746113

Except the sentencing as "rapist, sociopath, plagiarist", seems to already have taken place.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any discussion, but this wasn't just discussion. It was more the presenting of a sentence, and then using the weight of the accusations to stifle discussion rather than engage with it. Even to the point of saying it won't go to court, because of what a vindictive person he is, or because the legal system is so bad that you really should believe the victims, and that's that. And of course, it's also his fault that there is no substantiation of the plagiarism claims, they're just a bonus anyway, something you're supposed to take on board with the main course. He's done, that's the "takeaway", and any discussion beyond that was hardly invited, much less responded to in a reasonable manner from what I saw.

It may be "more likely than not" that Appelbaum is guilty of some of or all these things, but it's pretty much before all our eyes what has been done with it, and what shoddy arguments have been used to excuse it. Personally, I wouldn't want anything to do with anyone who doesn't mind such a virtual lynch mob and the sophistry that went along with it, how's that for warning your social circles? Everybody throws a pebble, nobody feels like they stoned someone to death. After all, it was "more likely than not". I find that equally repulsive as what Appelbaum is accused of.

Once you're fine with holding that weapon, and your friends wielding it as well, once you are fine with a mob because you're in it and think it'll win and nobody will ask questions, that weapon will end up deciding for you who gets shot. And it takes your own humanity, too, bit by bit. It's not a new thing, it's not the first time I saw it, and though it didn't quite catch on as much as the people who tried so very hard probably wanted to, I never saw so many smart people go along with something so obviously wrong as this.

And all that in context of accusing him of that, of destroying people by using others? It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Even if he does do that, that doesn't make it okay. Abusing an abuser while saying you're anti-abuse and pro-safe-space is a farce.

This is what is at stake, that is, what this has already broken to shit, and what many now are too proud or too immature to acknowledge, much less make any moves to fix:

> So stop it. You are creating a world where no one will ever dare to move out of their front door and take up a life of activism, because they can not know if Jake is a sociopath, or a person who is being framed.

( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851888 )

edit: and even if he is a sociopath, even if you have to warn your friends and circles and so on, that doesn't excuse whatever this was and is.

> If there are criminal matters, they can be decided in the courts.

I continue to be baffled why people think this is a reasonable community norm for people who care about Tor. It seems like even if you're very pro-Appelbaum, you'd be worried about governments treating him unfairly like they've supposedly treated Assange unfairly, right?

I suspect this is not what you meant, but I can't shake the feeling that the subtext here (you're not the only person who's said something like this) is that sexual assault claims should not be pursued anywhere, neither in court nor in the community. And that seems definitely unproductive.

Let's Occams Razor this:

Which is more likely?

- Applebaum is an abuser, as widely reported by multiple independent witnesses

- Various three-letter-agencies are orchestrating a conspiracy to defame him

It could be a bit of both.

You're attacking a strawman here.

I (as stated in my post) don't know whether he is an abuser or not. I was only commenting on how I don't think the orchestrated campaign mentioned is helpful to anyone (including the alleged victims).

I also didn't say that three letter agencies are orchestrating anything. I raised the possibility that outside actors might try and exacerbate the situation (on both sides). This is not tin-foil thinking but very possible given the existence of Snowden documents describing these kinds of tactics.[1]

[1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

It's good to remember that the best places to stir up trouble are the ones where real trouble already exists. Anyone from strongly-invested bad actors to random trolls have an opportunity to create conflict here, totally aside from the status of the core claims.

> Applebaum is an abuser, as widely reported by multiple independent witnesses

And who are those witnesses?

"Anonymous" witnesses don't count. If Appelbaum has done harm to you, whether you're a woman or man, come out and say it. You can't just say "we heard from anonymous sources that Obama raped someone" and expect to be taken seriously.

Also, you could use your logic to say:

"Who is right here? Thousands of government employees who say they haven't broken the law and haven't done mass surveillance, or this just one high-school dropout guy who fled to Russia?" (obviously talking about Snowden here).

I don't know if that's how Occam's Razor is supposed to work, but if that's how it works, then it's clearly a pretty flawed theory, that at best can be used as a "guideline" not as as hard rule.

The implication of the pro-conspiracy crowd is that Andrea, Meredith, and Nick are all working for the Feds. Is this really the conclusion you're expecting us to reach?

>I don't know if that's how Occam's Razor is supposed to work, but if that's how it works, then it's clearly a pretty flawed theory, that at best can be used as a "guideline" not as as hard rule.

That's all Occam's Razor is, really: A rule of thumb to help decide where to look next.

One thing is plainly evident however, with a probability of 1: what you're proposing is a false dichotomy.

I'll accept it's possible the claims are (mostly) real, but with other 'interested parties' jumping on to stir up shit.

As you said, a false dichotomy.

I would argue that if your goal is to destroy Jacob Applebaum's public persona, then smear campaigns and character assassinations are productive. Even if this were to make it to court, and Applebaum was found innocent on all charges, the damage has been done.

> anonymous testimony

Okay then, how about these:

https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/07/he-said-they-said/

https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...

https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/739937558533021697

And just to make sure this tweet isn't missed... https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/739939420183400449

Quinn Norton:

> I do hope Jake has enough sense that trying to accuse me of being part of a vast gov conspiracy to take him down would catch in his throat.

These are testimonies about him being an ass (bad enough for some consequences). Accusations of sexual mistreatment are still anonymous. I find that distinction important.

This is no longer Anonymous v Appelbaum - there are now, by my last count, at least six people on the record:

Tor developer Andrea Shepard to Wired[0]. Shepard again, Emerson Tan and Meridith Patterson to Gizmodo[1]. Daily Dot spoke to four witnesses, adding Tor developer Alison Macrina to the list of those on the record[2]. Nick Farr[3] and Leigh Honeywell[4]

That is without counting the numerous people who have corroborated various claims informally on Twitter or elsewhere, or statements such as those from cDc who booted him out[5]

[0] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/tor-developer-jacob-appelbaum-...

[1] http://gizmodo.com/eyewitnesses-recount-tor-developer-jacob-...

[2] http://www.dailydot.com/politics/jacob-appelbaum-tor-project...

[3] https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...

[4] https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/07/he-said-they-said/

[5] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2853643-Jacob-Appelb...

[6] http://gizmodo.com/jacob-appelbaum-has-allegedly-engaged-in-...

In summary: Applebaum has left. TOR can move on. If there are criminal matters, they can be decided in the courts.

That's not all there is to it. There's also the valid issue (entirely outside the purview of criminal law) as to whether a serial harasser should be welcomed (and allowed to keynote, no less) at major technical conferences, as if nothing happened -- despite increasingly convincing (and largely no longer anonymous) testimony to the effect that his presence would be highly destructive.

Witch hunts and character assassinations are not productive.

You see witch hunts and character assassination. Others (like Quinn Norton) see what increasingly appears to be an epicly sad story of people not just "offended", but deeply hurt, shamed, and silenced -- who (thankfully) have now found the courage to come out and speak what they know to be the truth about what they experienced.

I thought this was an insightful blog post about how communities (don't) deal with abusers:

http://pervocracy.blogspot.nl/2012/06/missing-stair.html

It may be relevant here, maybe not, but an interesting read nonetheless.

For the easily offended: it's regarding a BDSM community though it's not at all central to the post.

Appears to be a fairly standard, boiler-plate separation agreement.

With the very standard "we will pay you a month's extra salary if you agree not to sue us or disparage us" stanza that happens when someone is not leaving entirely voluntarily.

IMO, if Tor thought that he had a reasonable case against them, they would increase that to substantially more.

Maybe someone didn't want him to sign. $8333 pre tax seems a little low if they actually wanted the document to be executed.

No, it means that they don't feel he has a case against them.

Without some compensation, there's no reason for him to sign anything at all. If they don't want it executed, they can just not offer any money: pay him what he's owed, and remind him of any outstanding agreements in either direction.

If they offered him more than 6 months salary, I would expect that to be (a) an indication that they really want to avoid a court case and (b) in a document that laid out much more specific terms.

One month of salary says "we don't think you have a case at all, but just in case you were thinking about it, take this and go". If it were a break-even for-profit business, that might go as far as two months of salary -- Appelbaum's been there for about 8 years.

It's really not suspicious to me.

I don't think its suspicious. I would say it indicates that they don't expect to be sued, not that it doesn't think it will win on merits. Simply calling up outside counsel to prepare for a lawsuit would cost way more than $8300. So it would seem that either they don't expect to be sued or don't care if he signs the document.

The scope of the mutual non-disparagement clause seems excessively broad. Why would a computer security researcher sign away his right to criticize the products, services, vendors and affiliates of the leading anonymous communication tool?

~~~~One thing that I think is extremely noteworthy is, that the slander site (and let's be frank, the site that went up on May 27th is slander in its purest form) links to site resources hosted at the GitHub pages of the user profile "ioerror". That would be the profile of Jacob Appelbaum himself, but it's unlikely that Jacob would volunteer his GitHub account for this. Which leaves the conclusion that Jake Appelbaum's GitHub account has been taken over and he no longer has control over it.~~~~

EDIT: I was wrong on that, it's actually on a profile ioerrror spelled with 3 'r'-s – sneaky.

It's hosted from the GitHub page of "ioerrror", not "ioerror".

Spelling is important.

Ohh, I didn't notice that. Sneaky.

> let's be frank, the site that went up on May 27th is slander in its purest form

I don't see why this is so immediately obviously slander. Why is it obvious to you?

Why obvious, hmm, let's see:

- Public accusations of felony and/or misconduct

- Person who's accused is named

- Accusations are in part done anonymous (notable exception: Nick Farr)

On a personal level I know Jacob Appelbaum about as good as I know Nick Farr. EDIT: means I've exchanged words with them on congresses and on occasion discussed technical topics; that's it. If the allegations agains Jake prove to be true then I hope he'll have to face the appropriate lawful consequences.

There's a reason there is a legal court system and there's a reason for the principle "innocent until proven guilty". And even if one thinks that the court system was ineffective (and oh boy it often is) and a person could get away with crimes this in no way gives carte blance to put a person on a pillory.

Everybody who does this immediately looses all credibility in my opinion. The mere fact that this site exists is a great disservice to the victims, assuming the allegations are true. Would this site not exist the termination of employment of Jake Appelbaum in the Tor Project would carry much more weight. But with this site in existence the whole issue gets a very, very bad taste. And in fact to everyone who has a fine tuned legal conscience this creates a lot of bias against the victims.

And what's more important: Jakob Appelbaum is currently living in Germany, so and legal process would be in terms of German law. And in Germany there are several legal protections on personal rights in place. Among them there is "Strafgesetzbuch (StGB) § 186 Üble Nachrede"

English Translation (by me):

> Who makes or spreads allegations against another person, which the intent of depreciation or which has the potential to vilify the public opinion without these allegations being provably true, is to be convited with one year of imprisonment or monetary penality, if the act was public or by publishing of written word (§ 11 Abs. 3), with two years of imprisonment or monetary penality.

The key point here is "provably true". At the moment none of the allegations have ben proven true. It's all hearsay. And it clearly has the potential to vilify Jakobs Appelbaum's public image. The site is not hosted in Germany. But its mere existence has relevance for any legal actions that may happen in the future.

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