[tor-talk] Decoding Jake Appelbaum

[ja.talk <ja.talk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

https://medium.com/@frabyn/decoding-jake-appelbaum-9fa75d060310

Franklin Bynum

I am a volunteer in the Tor community and watched with great interest as allegations of sexual assault against Jacob Appelbaum surfaced last week.

His statement is carefully worded, and so I did my best to decipher it here.

    "In the past few days, a calculated and targeted attack has been launched to spread vicious and spurious allegations against me."

I canât directly say the allegations are false.

    "Given the way these accusations have been handled, I had little choice but to resign from my position as an advocate at the Tor Project and devote my full attention to completing my doctoral work on cryptography at the Technical University of Eindhoven."

They were going to fire me if I didnât quit.

    "Vague rumors and smear campaigns against me are nothing new. As a longtime public advocate for free speech and a secure internet, there have been plenty of attempts to undermine my work over the years."

I need you to believe the government is behind this.

    "Now, however, these unsubstantiated and unfounded attacks have become so aggressive that I feel itâs necessary to set the record straight. Not only have I been the target of a fake website in my name that has falsely accused me of serious crimes, but I have also received death threats (including a Twitter handle entitled âTimeToDieJakeâ)."

This one troll account mentioned my death in its handle, so now I am the victim. If that account didnât exist, I would have had to invent it.

    "I think itâs extremely damaging to the community that these character-assassination tactics are being deployed, especially given their ugly history of being used against fellow members of the LGBT community. It pains me to watch the community to which Iâve dedicated so much of my life engage in such self-destructive behavior. Nonetheless, I am prepared to use legal channels, if necessary, to defend my reputation from these libelous accusations."

I canât sue.

    "I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false."

Iâll never be convicted of a crime.

    "Inevitably, there may have been moments in my professional or private life when I may have inadvertently hurt or offended othersâ feelings. Whenever I was aware of these instances, I have, and will continue to, apologize to the friends and colleagues in question and to continually learn how to be a better person. Though the damage to my reputation caused by these allegations alone is impossible to undo, I nonetheless take the concerns of the Tor community seriously."

Iâm not sorry.

    "To dispel any further rumors, to the best of my knowledge, the Tor network is not âcompromised.â"

The Tor network is fine, I guess. I havenât had a patch accepted in several years.

    "Iâve dedicated my life as a journalist, activist, and longtime member of the Tor Project to advocating for the transparency of public processes and to speaking out about the necessity of privacy, security, and anonymity. These are ideals that I will continue to uphold, despite the vicious campaign that is currently being waged against me."

Read this whole thing again; I never directly said that any of the allegations are not true.
-- 
tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change other settings go to
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk