
Statement by Jill Bähring Regarding Jacob Appelbaum - 3ot
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sop8ps
======
syngrog66
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.

~~~
rhblake
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.

~~~
pdkl95
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog)

~~~
rhblake
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.

~~~
pdkl95
> (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.

~~~
rhblake
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.)

~~~
kbenson
> 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.

~~~
syngrog66
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 :-)

------
TillE
"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.

~~~
rhblake
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/](https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/07/he-said-they-said/)

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

~~~
andy_ppp
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.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
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.

~~~
andy_ppp
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.

------
tremon
_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.

------
biafra
@jillbaeh confirming authorship:
[https://twitter.com/jillbaeh/status/741023991041646592](https://twitter.com/jillbaeh/status/741023991041646592)

~~~
daveloyall
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?

~~~
petertodd
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. :)

~~~
daveloyall
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...

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

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

~~~
syngrog66
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.

~~~
DanBC
> 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.

~~~
PavlovsCat
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](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/](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.

------
CoffeeDregs
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?

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

~~~
jordibc
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.

~~~
scott_s
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.

------
xcasex
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.

------
SNvD7vEJ
Media & mob justice at it's finest, requiring people to prove their innocence
instead of the other way around.

Disgusting.

~~~
golemotron
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.

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

------
tmpanon1234act
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?

------
atzpawn
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](http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelwissen/d-79922555.html)

------
draw_down
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.

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

~~~
PavlovsCat
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.

