Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum | Hacker News Reader

Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum

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156 points3ot62 comments

When I read all the complainers stories my initial reaction was I noticed a fairly consistent style of "spinning" each account in a way to smear Applebaum. They each seemed designed to imply he did evil things, without truly saying it.

Today we get this account, from one of Applebaum's supposed "victims" and, surprise surprise, her tale is pretty innocent and de-spun and totally oppositely aligned from the anti-Applebaum portayals we heard initially.

I bet more of the anti-Applebaum tales will start to get debunked. It sounded way too fishy and too much like a coordinated smear. Even the symmetry with how Assange (another big Wikileaks guy) was smeared by his Swedish sex thing seemed like a suspicious coincidence.

There may or may not be some kernal of truth in those anti-Applebaum statements. But there also smells like a lot of poorly disguised bullshit spin wrapped around it.

Keep in mind this space involves the NSA, Wikileaks, state actors, billion dollar budgets, multi-billion dollar empires at stake. False flag ops, bribery and propaganda are a real thing that govs do. Established historical reality.

Also... Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, thats bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. So much of the skepticism we sometimes see about the former, unfortunately, is because of the latter. Truth is sometimes murky and often nuanced, or he-said/she-said.

Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, that's bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. So much of the skepticism we sometimes see about the former, unfortunately, is because of the latter.

This. Thank you for stating it. The attackers should accept blame for making life harder for real victims.

you're welcome!

I'm just glad I wasn't demonized by the PC/SJW folks and downvoted into negative oblivion (because that is a real thing they do, as well, I've observed, when it comes to the topic of "rape".)

Your comment makes me think I may take the risk of trying to write a longer post somewhere on this theme. Anonymously, of course, for my own safety. :-)

I upvoted your parent comment because it was a worthy contribution to the dialog. I don't consider myself PC (in the now pejorative sense), but when you put quotes around the word rape it can be construed to be discounting it.

my intent in saying "rape" was as a wildcard to bundle actual rape, plus false rape, plus all the shades of gray and slippery slope thinking involved between those two poles.

Also, considering my OC explicitly said that I think rape is a real thing, and bad, I think its clear I do not discount it. I'm anti-rape. I'm also pro-truth and anti-smearing. Its the nuance in how we as a society handle these stances together that I observe is sometimes lost on certain people.

Re: NSA, state actors, billion dollar budgets... I think you're giving Appelbaum way too much credit here. While he's been splendid at marketing himself, consider that he might not actually be that important to the causes he's been championing. As others have pointed out: if said state actors wanted to hurt Tor and related projects, he'd be pretty far down the list of targets.

Creating drama in a community is harmful to the community as a whole by discouraging outsiders from joining, and encouraging people to leave. Those are all plausible goals of an attack regardless of the direct importance of Jacob Appelbaum himself.

Regardless of whether the allegations are true, false, or a mixture of both, the Tor community needs to find better ways of handling situations like this in the future to better protect both victims of abuse, and victims of false accusations, to make sure people in that community feel safe and can focus on their work.

Did you forget that Appelbaum was involved in the release of the NSA ANT catalog[1], or his involvement with Laura Poitras and the Snowden documents? Never mind his involvement with Tor (which has been a recent target of various state actors). I'm sure many intelligence community want Appelbaum only slightly less than they want Snowden.

Or do you want to argue that the NSA doesn't care about the person that revealed a catalog of their tools to the public?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog

agreed. I forgot to mention Tor and Snowden explicitly in my OC but agreed that these facts are all relevant to how we need to interpret events in this space. because it gives even more motive for certain actors to smear Applebaum.

No, I didn't forget that he was one of three people involved in writing stories about the NSA ANT catalog, nor that he worked with Poitras (after she, Greenwald and MacAskill had done the most important part). I also did not forget that while he's been good at marketing Tor -- I've seen him at CCC in Berlin/Hamburg a bunch of times 2009-2015, he's become a good speaker -- he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view, from what I understand.

So, yeah, I maintain that there are plenty of juicier targets that Jacob Appelbaum. I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.

He was on the short list for having all of Snowden's documents. If that doesn't make him a primary target for the US government, I don't know what would.

Remember Greenwald's partner was harassed and detained all the way in UK at the request of the US government because he was close to one of the people on this short list of Snowden documents holders.

What short list? I know he's had access to some of them, along with other journalists, but I've never seen anything about him having all of them.

> (after she, Greenwald and MacAskill had done the most important part)

They are also targets. I made no claim about the relative importance of Appelbaum's involvement, which is completely off-topic. He gave the talk at 30c3, which makes him a figurehead and thus a target.

> he's never been important from a tech/operations point of view

So what? That doesn't make him any less of a target from agencies that are pissed off about their documents being leaked to the public. The TLAs would love to make an example out of any of the people involved.

> I'm also sure that he'd like you to think otherwise.

That's your interpretation. To be clear, I haven't stated my interpretation, as my only point was that Appelbaum is absolutely on the short list of people we know are the target of state agencies so dismissing the possibility of their involvement is foolish.

So a number of high-profile, veteran, respected, typically anti-authoritarian members of the hacking community - including multiple Tor project members - have spoken out against Applebaum in the past week. That it's all being orchestrated by some three-letter agency is theoretically possible, sure, but I think that's extremely unlikely. Applying some Occam I just end up with a tragic case of an abusive asshole.

(I don't personally know Appelbaum, nor his accusers, although I've spoken to several of them and seen them at conferences throughout the years. I thought Appelbaum was great at promoting Tor. I also remember my second conversation with him, at 26C3 in 2009: he bragged about how he'd stayed at a squat during his visit in Stockholm the month before and fucked some anarchist girl. Which, at the time, I thought was a bit odd bringing up in casual conversation with someone he didn't know.)

Veterans who have spoken out about brashness, him being socially clumsy, him being an asshole.

There are as of yet unsubstantiated, uncorroborated & unverified stories.

They have essentially described him as a sociopath. That's very different from merely being brash and clumsy...

perhaps. but the set of things which are not illegal include: being brash, clumsy, an asshole or even a sociopath.

Rape and sexual assault are illegal. Let's let the courts decide that, based on evidence. Not rumor, innuendo or mob retweets.

Unless you have some training that makes you qualified to assess that (in which case qualifying yourself as such would help), perhaps you should refrain from throwing around terms like that.

It also also says something people throwing that word around like that, especially in light of "TimeToDieJake" thing, denying the impersonation attempts (even though "ioerrror" can't be explained away that easily), finding this [0] terribly funny, while still being unable to back up the plagiarism claims (e.g. Nick Farr answered all sorts of softball questions, but not that). That's very different from anything resembling a good faith effort.

And when it comes to mental health, considering their behaviour and words, I would need to see a clinical diagnosis of ALL involved people to take that seriously in the least. So far I see people who are being abusive saying someone else is abusive; so far I see people demonstrating no empathy, intellectual honesty or capability to reflect, calling someone else a sociopath. So far I see a "community" with very little courage or integrity talking about standing up to bullies, while flagging the story which is clearing up a false claim that has already been spread. A safe space for lynch mobs.

Appelbaum might be guilty of some or a lot of things, but I'm not taking anyone's word for it when they can't even answer the most simple and obvious questions, questions they should have had answers for before even speaking. And the "trust" or "respect" of people who don't notice that is at best of zero value for my own evaluation, at worst it has negative value. And as it stands, I can't interpret the "diagnosis" as sociopath (and plagiarist) as anything than another red flag for those making it, considering all the proof in all this pudding so far, and considering how they don't "criticize their own".

I guess that's also Appelbaum's sinister influence, or something, that so many people don't dare to or are unable to do what a somewhat moral, somewhat intelligent child would already have done (maybe you can even strike "moral" and "intelligent" and replace that with "without an agenda or outside pressure, freely and honestly responding"). Don't put any obligations on victims, after all - including having to prove their victim status that gives them amnesty for any and all transgressions and regressions.

Though maybe they're not transgressions, since a sociopath is not a human being (and just with the victim status, since a sociopath has no rights you don't have to prove the claim after you made it), like someone spookily alluded to but then somehow didn't follow up on [1]. But remember, Appelbaum's allegedly the sick person, so nobody else can be sick. He is allegedly manipulative and dishonest, so nobody else can be.

[0] https://twitter.com/J9Roem/status/741358060191514625

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845678

> Which, at the time, I thought was a bit odd bringing up in casual conversation with someone he didn't know.

I'm not sure that being crass is necessarily an indicator that he's more likely to be a rapist. That's the problem with all this, there's a lot of substantiated stories about him being an asshole, an actual refutation by the party involved of one of the stories that was originally conveyed by a third party, and a bunch of unsubstantiated stories about him being as asshole and a rapist. I don't think the correct thing to do in this case is to assume his guilt. The right may not include assuming his innocence either, until more information is presented.

There's a lot of "you should believe the victim" stuff going around, but at this point are we sure there even is a victim (in the rape accusation)? Is it all third party accusations about anonymous victims, or do we actually have a victim that has come forward? I think that's an important distinction. I put a lot less trust in anonymous sources.

it almost makes me wish we had some kind of... I dunno... "system" by which we as a society can be very specific about what is allowed and not. and a system for determining whether the disallowed things happened or not. and a system also for then punishing people who have been found guilty of those disallowed things.

I'm just brainstorming. Perhaps in a hundred years we'll create a way to do that. Until then, let's all just whisper and rumor and accuse and retweet and go with how we "feel" at any particular moment. /s :-)

> "When I flew away for an appointment, I installed four alarm systems in my apartment," Appelbaum told the paper after discussing other situations which he said made him feel uneasy. "When I returned, three of them had been turned off. The fourth, however, had registered that somebody was in my flat - although I'm the only one with a key. And some of my effects, whose positions I carefully note, were indeed askew. My computers had been turned on and off."

http://www.dw.com/en/snowden-ally-appelbaum-claims-his-berli...

And other similar and very recent account of the US gov harassing Tor developers:

https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html

> And other similar and very recent account of the US gov harassing Tor developers:

> https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html

It could be noted that the core Tor developer (@isislovecruft) who wrote that post has also spoken out against Appelbaum.

can you link to something specific that @isislovecruft said? A specific statement, by him/her, first-person, as an independent direct witness, against Applebaum?

because I did a quick search and saw nothing in their blog or Twitter stream. Instead... I saw a lot of what I expected to see: smoke, emo-drama, innuendo, rumor and SJW brigading.

I'd love to have my views corrected by facts and something concrete. It would help everybody involved in the discussion.

There's a more compelling argument: if any of the large state actors were involved, they'd probably have done a more competent job of it. This all sounds pretty amateurish to me.

Kind of how I felt about it from the beginning. All of the stories seemed to be mostly about him being kind of a jerk to women or maybe in general (which may be quite true), but were painted in a way to sound like he almost raped someone.

And that's indeed a very good parallel with what happened to Assange. The issue was never about rape, but that's basically how the story was being told in the media and what most people got out of it.

> Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, thats bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen.

That's what upset me the most. We saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to justify abusive behaviour. And we saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to slip in claims about plagiarism without even attempting to back those up. Regardless of the plausibility of the accusations against Appelbaum, since two wrongs don't make a right, that (and the unwillingness or inability to address it) made the assumption of good faith impossible. And that's not even mentioning the "totally unrelated" Twitter account.

The whole "conspiracy" stuff is a red herring to me. That is, people can speculate about that until the cows come home -- but not to dismiss the obvious, the whole campaign as well as the shaming people who spoke out against the process, and the attempt to excuse bypassing the legal system with how bad it is, then being so much worse. The list of WTFs is long.

https://twitter.com/Shidash/status/741259721756319744

Does that say it all, yet? How far does it have to go?

It was really fun getting ignored and downvoted or mocked by a throwaway just for actually asking hard questions and not just patting some "respected whoevers" on the back, by the way.

The difference between peer pressure and peer review is that with peer review, the more peers you have, the more eyes on the problem you have. With peer pressure, you still only have one set of eyes, but more peers make it squint harder, until it's completely shut. And this was a great demonstration of that, of the total absence of that free thinking hacker spirit that's so easy to print on the label of a tin, but so hard to keep alive in one.

No hard feelings, but know this: seeing someone with a torch and pitchfork, or seeing someone close their curtains as if they haven't seen anything when a lynch mob is out and about, is not really better than seeing someone be abusive to a person, sexually or otherwise. Until you see that person repent and make fantastic changes, it changes something irrevocably. You cannot unsee it. Same goes for "communities".

"Wonder about the witnesses in all these stories, who coincidentally always seem to consist of the same set of people."

Yeah... From what I've seen, the confirmed first-person stories suggest that Appelbaum is probably a huge asshole, but the worst stuff is contained in anonymous accounts filtered through a handful of people, at least one of whom has a weird axe to grind about "plagiarism".

Something feels very off about the whole coordinated effort. This is not a normal way to accuse someone of terrible criminal behavior, by mixing those stories in with mere jerkitude.

I think the first-person stories of @hypatiadotca [0] and @violetblue [1] suggest more than that.

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

[1] https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446500891860992 / https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/740446782505779200 / etc. (argh twitter)

I think these people would be wise to go to the police rather than writing blog posts/twitter comments that imply vague wrong doing without any clear crimes involved.

If no clear crime was committed, why on earth would going to the police have done any good?

I feel for the victims not going to the police, but then my question is what is the alternative?

If the "victims" don't go to the police, then the alternative is we all slowly devolve into a world of smearing, guilt-upon-accusation, witch hunts, vigilantes, blackmail, shared-make-believe and anarchy.

Honeywell stated a couple things that clearly violate consent, and could reasonably be described as rising to the level of legally actionable. I was very critical of some of the weak discounting of the possibility of JTRIG-style character attacks, but when notable, reputable people in the community come forward with specific relevant first-person claims, I believe it's important to take it more seriously.

It's impossible to draw any conclusions without a fair trial. Apart from saying we should assume innocent until proven guilty. It's a really good idea that seems to have been marginalised in the age of the web.

>Something feels very off about the whole coordinated effort. This is not a normal way to accuse someone of terrible criminal behavior, by mixing those stories in with mere jerkitude.

The "murder, rape, and jaywalking" language used by the original complainants really raised red flags for me, as well. The fact that all of the accusers mention plagiarism, of all things, suggests they have an axe to grind and see this as a legitimate move in that fight.

Wonder about their motive to speak on my behalf without my consent.

Thank you, Jill, for your statement and I'd like to offer you my sincerest apologies on behalf of all of civilized society.

@jillbaeh confirming authorship: https://twitter.com/jillbaeh/status/741023991041646592

Thank you!

But, since these are Tor people, shouldn't statements be digitally signed?

Does a confirmation tweet from anything less than a celebrity mean anything?

Not everyone involved in Tor and the surrounding community is a cryptographer who uses PGP regularly, or even at all; AFAIK Jill Baeh is not.

In any case, basically you'd be saying that Twitter and/or her Twitter acount is compromised, as a few others are interacting with that account, and have been following her since well before the tweet (I personally know many of the people in the conversation around Jill's tweet). In the unlikely event this is true, I think we'll find out soon enough. edit: I personally am a Bitcoin dev who uses PGP regularly, and in a similar situation even I can see myself being lazy and not signing my statement.

tl;dr: I'd be happy to bet a beer that the Tweet is authentic. :)

OK. I won't take that bet, because you're probably right. :)

I'd still like a more general solution to determining the authenticity of statements on the internet.

In practice, people use Twitter for that. Seems weak. But, I don't use twitter, so I'm disregarding the community trust aspect that you described. Maybe it deserves more respect that I'm giving it, but we do have PKI available...

"How covert agents infiltrate the internet to manipulate, deceive, and destroy reputations"

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

"Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable."

Maybe the other recent negative stories about Appelbaum are true. Or maybe they are created by GCHQ. Prior to the above being made publicly known, I would have just assumed the former. But now, how can we be sure?

Sure, it was wrong of the people involved to jump to conclusions about Applebaum... but for us, let's go hog wild and assume this was a campaign coordinated by national security agencies!

I think the "god you must be mad spy agencies wouldn't do that" argument went out the window a long time ago.

also suspicious that none of the complainers went to law enforcement. you know, the way we as a society determime whether a true crime happened or not. innocent til proven guilty, trial, judge, etc. instead they took it to the public and smeared a man's name, directly. that itself is suspicous, as well as unethical.

> also suspicious that none of the complainers went to law enforcement.

People who have been raped don't go to police because the world is full of stupid cunts who do stupid shit like putting the word "rape" in quotes to try to deny that rape happens as often as it does; and then spread lies and fud about what rape victims should have done while being raped ("Why didn't you fight back?"); or what rape victims should have done after they had been raped ("Why didn't they go to the police?"). Those people will also say that any rape accusation that doesn't result in a conviction is a false allegation, and that the rape didn't happen, and that the victim lied about it.

While we're having the super broad brushes out: People who DON'T ask for evidence and due process are part of a stoning for which they think have plausible deniability.

https://twitter.com/Shidash/status/741259721756319744

This your world now. This is what you wanted, whether you admit it to yourself or not, this is what it means. Not having the courage to hear what oneself is saying does not mean one is not saying it, also see http://warprayer.org/

So enjoy it, because you're stuck with. "Respected people" pulling all sorts of obvious, low shit, unable to answer the most simple questions without straw men about all those women haters and rape apologists, and a whole lot of other "respected people" keeping their feet still. Who respects these people? People who don't mind lynch mobs, and don't even lose respect for people in them. Let me add that up and weigh it real quick -- oh look, it adds up to nothing.

They came for someone, they did something to them, and you are complaining about the precious few people who were and are not complicit. The nerve! I wouldn't normally say but just think this, but considering your comment, I'll say it's only fair.

I'm confused. This was on the front page a moment ago. Now it is not.

This article was

119 points @ 3 hours

Current front page contains (sampled):

38 points @ 2 hours

87 points @ 4 hours

59 points @ 3 hours

26 points @ 2 hours

110 points @ 6 hours

35 points @ 7 hours

Or am I just not seeing it?

Stories that get flagged by users will drop in their rankings; this story was probably flagged by users.

Any idea of why it has been flagged?

Were the ones that spread suspicion about Appelbaum flagged too? It looks to me as this would be quite relevant news.

There was some talk about them not being appropriate for HN, because it was all hearsay within a fairly tightly-knit group. However, none of them were flagged, as far as I know. I don't know what flagging means on HN - this post is marked as flagged and I had to search for it to find it(I was planning on posting the same thing).

I have not flagged it, so I am speculating. But users flagging stories is the most common reason stories with a lot of points leave the front page.

These types of stories tend to get user flags for two reasons: they are more voyeaurism than news, and the actual discussions often become flame wars. Also note that I am not a mod, I've just been here for a while.

the infosec scene is in a place the OSS scene was in ˜13-14 years ago, before the formal introduction of the gnome foundation, kde reorg. guess what both of those projects have? outreach programmes and ombudsmän.

now, guess what the tor project lacks.

as you're probably thinking right now "but how in the f..." simple, OSS has had to deal with toxic enviroments and individuals. one of the cornerstones is, listen, corroborate, recommend, act.

the infosec community as a whole lack formal mature organisations to deal with these kinds of situations.

what we're still lacking in the witness accounts are timeframes, we have something of a picture from very vague details from leaked emails, these can be regarding pretty much anything, aside from one which is about _unspecified_ misconduct at a conference.

the sad thing here is that people can change, victims with trauma live with the trauma, so listen, validate, no-shame or pre-judgement.

but the infosec scene isnt a special snowflake exempt from the social contract of society, we all co-sign it by living in a nationstate, so we need to uphold it because the alternative is chaos.

if there is a legitimate grievance, report it, go through the system. hell, even brokep says as much, and he trusts the system on this, even though the process he has been forced to endure.

Media & mob justice at it's finest, requiring people to prove their innocence instead of the other way around.

Disgusting.

He was already hanged by the mob. What good does it do now to try and restore his reputation?

Also, for sale: one slightly used pitchfork.

What most people don't see yet is that when enough of these counter-examples to allegations of abuse surface, people won't believe the allegations any more.

Reputation and reputation destruction is a dynamic system that will find equilibrium in a place different from where we are right now.

Wow. just wow. I feel ashamed for making up my mind too quickly.

What's especially shameful about all of this is that a ton of smart people rushed to condemn Applebaum before we had a complete accounting. If this many intelligent people can prematurely convict someone in the court of public opinion, what hope is there for the rest of society?

Who is "Jill Bähring"?

1) The statement is pushed via the same odd channel as Appelbaum's message.

2) The person exists for one year as a retweet twitter account. From a privacy perspective this person does not seem to "exist" on the internet for long.

3) The name sounds like a combination of a German name and an American(?) surname, the legend is also that she resides in the Netherlands. Is this person for real? It was used as a token persona by an apparently base- and meaningless Der Spiegel article, an interview of few youngsters including Jill (20) who - apparently without training as a DaF teacher - carried out German language courses in Costa Rica, returned and lived with her parents. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelwissen/d-79922555.html

Well, that's certainly not what I was expecting.

If this person really is who they say they are, I'd have to agree that it's more than a little chauvinistic to speak on her behalf as the Gizmodo story did.

It's so nice to see that Appelbaum's defenders have finally found a woman they believe.

Defenders? More like, "it's lame to see the attackers still haven't found a way to explain themselves in a credible manner, and are still excusing it with the same smear."

You are projecting. The evil you're looking for, it's in you.

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