
Tor/Appelbaum Separation Agreement [pdf] - aburan28
https://cryptome.org/2016/06/tor-appelbaum-separation.pdf
======
agd
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.

~~~
Bartweiss
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.

~~~
woah
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.

~~~
Bartweiss
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.

------
drcreed
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](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.

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

~~~
dsr_
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.

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

~~~
dsr_
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.

~~~
sseveran
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.

------
datenwolf
~~~~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.

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

Spelling is important.

~~~
datenwolf
Ohh, I didn't notice that. Sneaky.

