In the few interactions I had with Jacob over the years he gave a vibe
of
being an arrogant, self-worshiping narcissist prick with with delusions
of
grandeur and an ego the size of a small planet, but he has spent a
decade
in the Tor Project and despite his tragic character flaws he has
achieved
much good that should be recounted here for the public record.
Jacob was the developer of the Tor Birdy plugin for Thunderbird, giving
us
a more anonymous email client. He worked on torsocks, a core part of
Tor
and was partially responsible for Orbot's conception. A Tor evangelist,
he
setup relays across the world and raised public awareness about mass
surveillance.
He collaborated on publishing some of the biggest technical stories
from
the Snowden archive and used his access to turn this information into
actionable counter-intelligence for the whole software ecosystem.
All in all, its amazing how much he achieved coming from a broken
family
with no formal education. Instead of lying in a gutter somewhere with a
needle coming out from his arm he made something of his life.
Jacob's gift for public speaking sparked his meteoric rise from
obscurity
and made him the face of the project, a big miscalculation. No doubt,
the
powerful feeling of swaying crowds and the resulting cult personality
status he achieved gave him a reckless sense of self-entitlement and
illusion of the community as a conveyor belt for free pussy, consent be
damned. Kudos to the Tor community for handling the situation the way
they
did. The reputation of the project should never be tied to that of a
single individual, but be carefully managed by PR specialists. Your
work
is too important for any dicking around.
Make no mistake, I am not a rape apologist and if the allegations are
true, then he deserves nothing less than an eventful rendezvous with a
big, burly Turkish bubba in the nearest German prison. Sometimes our
own
worse enemies are ourselves... not the NSA.