

The US Government Keeps Harassing a UW Researcher Who Speaks for WikiLeaks - biafra
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/obsessed-with-jacob/Content?oid=7560624

======
neilk
You know what's really sad? I met a programmer the other day who works in a
related field, and he categorically states he never wants to meet or
correspond with Jake. He couldn't deal with the level of harassment that Jake
is getting.

And it is straight up harassment.

~~~
ioerror
I get that often from a whole slew of people I wouldn't expect to be cowardly.

It's really awkward to date when the n-th date involves a discussion of
possible harassing police raids in the middle of the night.

~~~
redthrowaway
I don't think "cowardly" is the right way to put it. The level of harassment
you put up with is obscene, and that you continue to stick to your guns in the
face of it is admirable. That said, it's not something that most people want
in their lives. Many people just want to pursue their interests, develop their
career, and raise a family. Dealing with the level of harassment you face
imperils all of those goals. Unless someone is dedicated to a cause and
willing to sacrifice a lot to serve it, it's unreasonable to ask them to
invite that kind of drama into their lives.

I respect what you do, but I think it's unfair and myopic to label as
"cowards" anyone who doesn't share your commitment.

On an unrelated note, does this mean the FBI will be serving pg with a warrant
for our info?

~~~
sage_joch
It is cowardly, though. By refusing to associate with someone simply because
they've been bullied, you have given your consent to the bullying and even (to
a small degree) participated in it. By the way, no one was labeled a coward
for failing to share his commitment; that part of your comment is a straw man.
People were labeled as cowards for refusing to associate with him.

~~~
redthrowaway
As I said, the refusal to risk the harassment he endures comes not from
cowardice, but from having other, competing goals that are more personally
important. If I, as a 20-something man saw a woman getting raped, I would feel
compelled to intervene, at non-zero risk to myself. Would I take the same risk
if I had a wife at home with our newborn child? Likely not.

The willingness to expose oneself to the kind of harassment Applebaum endures
is derived from one's commitment to the cause. I can certainly applaud those
who risk being ostracized by associating with someone being bullied, without
condemning those who don't. The bullying is morally wrong, but the reaction of
others is neutral.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't have a partner or a child, so what I think I'd do isn't worth much.
I'm not even sure I'd have the courage to intervene as a single person. But I
hope I would.

And I don't think having a partner and child would change that. Because I
don't want my children to grow up in a world where someone would walk by them
getting raped and ignore it. I would rather they grow up in a world where
their father died to help someone.

The same applies to Applebaum. I don't want my children to grow up in a world
where it's considered good and decent for them to be ostracized by people like
you for making choices like Jacob's. I wouldn't want them to grow up with a
father who supported that.

~~~
dhume
_Because I don't want my children to grow up in a world where someone would
walk by them getting raped and ignore it. I would rather they grow up in a
world where their father died to help someone._

Keep in mind when making this decision that it will still be a world where a
rape victim can get ignored.

~~~
WiseWeasel
At least he won't have contributed to that world. If enough others followed
the example, it would cease to exist. These people are what we call natural
leaders, able to inspire those around them to rise to an occasion to prove
their decency and humanity.

------
Bdennyw
WTF is an Army officer doing intergating an American civilian at the airport?
They have no jurisdiction or authority off base. Military activity in a
civilian context should sacre the shit out of everyone.

~~~
fleitz
I thought the founding fathers had something to say about standing armies.
Standing armies should be disbanded and instead we should seek advice from the
2nd amendment as to how the gov't can best guarantee rights not delegated from
the people.

~~~
ascendant
But this "war" on terror is an excuse for the government to continue to grant
themselves "emergency" powers and give their friends in the defense industry
hundreds of billions of dollars.

~~~
colinplamondon
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTioaRXiSps&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTioaRXiSps&feature=related)

The fact that we crushed Al Qaeda in the opening years of the war doesn't
diminish the threat that existed at the time. The Treasury Department
essentially rewrote the rules of international finance in a matter of months,
devastating their financing, and the followup in Afghanistan crippled them.

This hasn't been a "war", it's been a War.

The biggest problem is that we haven't gone far enough yet- security theater
in the airports instead of Israeli-style real security. No screening of cargo
containers. Virtually all American cities lack plans for how to deal with
nuclear terrorism.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Here's a different take on "Israeli-style" security:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1909154>

Nuclear terrorism is not a realistic scenario, if only because it's much
easier and much more terrorific to have a bunch of quadrotors dropping poison-
tipped darts on a city.

------
erikpukinskis
I highly recommend the film "Trumbo", about the Oscar-winning screenwriter
Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted for refusing to say whether or not he was,
or ever had been, a member of the communist party.

It is extremely relevant to all of this discussion, including the question of
whether one should sacrifice the wellbeing and safety of one's family in order
to promote a cause that's somewhat secondary to them.

Lots of people lied under oath, or turned other people in in order to protect
their families, because they didn't want to "risk it". But Trumbo and several
others stood up for their right to free speech and paid dearly for it.

~~~
ioerror
I'd also highly endorse reading Johnny Got His Gun.

------
jevinskie
It's simply disgusting, how the government can simply harass people without
bringing any cases against them, preventing them from defending themselves.

~~~
mike-cardwell
It's also stupid. If anything it probably made him more determined to do what
he's doing, and convinced him even more that what he's doing is right and
necessary.

~~~
neilk
The point is to deter others.

(See my comment elsewhere in this thread).

~~~
ioerror
That is not the only point. It is but one of many.

~~~
blhack
What do you think the other points are?

To me, it looks like you're being made an example of.

(Thanks, btw, the world needs more people willing to endure that)

~~~
ioerror
Just off the top of my head?

Some goals: to deter others, to extra-legally punish me personally, to
pressure me into taking some kind of action that is subject to punishment, to
upset others into action that is also subject to punishment, to profile me
under stress, to monitor my associates as I am harassed, to watch the tactics
or long term strategy, to attempt to provide comfort for these stresses
(that's a weird story), and so.

So yeah, they're trying to make an example of me but it's not limited to run
ins with CBP. The ongoing legal issue with a specific microblog is another
example. Visiting me when I give talks is another.

There are others but I'm not comfortable discussing them at this time.

------
defroost
Deterring future whistleblowers (as mentioned below) is why the Bradley
Manning has essentially become a political prisoner who is being held in
solitary confinement. It is why, as the article mentions, the DOJ issued a
subpoena to Twitter for the personal info of 600,000 supporters. Fear. Fear is
why Rep. Peter King talks about "labeling" WikiLeaks a "foreign terrorist
organization".

This article made me angry, but also sad, as I believe if we allow the
government (in many cases we already have) to use tools like the Patriot Act
as a kind of umbrella document to provide cover to go after normal American
citizens - academia, free-speech advocates, journalists, hackers working on
Tor - we allow an extremely dangerous precedent to be set that will likely
lead to all kinds of future abuses of civil rights of people who simply want
things like transparency in government. (I mean the real kind, not the kind
you promise to implement when you are running for office).

Anyway, Glen Greenwald gave an excellent talk on WikiLeaks and Why They Matter
(55:00 minutes mark of video) He speaks eloquently on this very issue.
[http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/09...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/09/wikileaks/index.html)

------
ioerror
I'm flying back through Texas in a few hours from Serbia.

I wonder if this article or any of the others will change the way that Customs
and the rest of the Federal Government treat me?

I'm guessing "no" - care to take any bets?

~~~
jberryman
Good luck and keep us updated on how it goes.

~~~
ioerror
It went poorly.

------
ghostDancer
"Land of the free , home of the brave" but the government prefer to defend
freedom of speech in other countries not in USA. It's the same song in almost
all the western countries, we talk about democracy and human rights , but we
support dictatorships all over the world, and forget about rights when we
want.

~~~
yuhong
Because they tried to make it confidential. I think it is a cultural problem,
and the US gov is not the only culprit.

~~~
ghostDancer
You are rifgt the US gov is not the only one, that's why i say western world,
cause here in Spain, for example ,is exactly the same, the gov has the mouth
full of human rights and democracy but the dictator of Morocco is like the
young brother of our king (yes Spain is a Kingdom in the XXI century) and our
government is silent about the tortures and everything that happens on the
Sahara. US gov is not the only one, the problem is that they are the ones
talking louder about other countries like China not respecting human rights.

------
_delirium
Bay-Area hackers might also know him as a cofounder of Noisebridge, fwiw.

------
cabalamat
This sounds like the sort of harassment that would happen to people in dodgy
countries with poor human rights records. And the truth is, America isn't a
democracy under the rule of law, it's a nasty vicious oligarchy that denies
human rights to its citizens while hypocritically lecturing other countries on
those rights.

------
dhume
I wonder how much of this it would take to get him to seek asylum in another
country?

~~~
mtex
Appelbaum already tried that. Appelbaum was engaged to and tried to marry a
Canadian photographer so that he could move to Canada. Back in the day he
bragged to the media about becoming an expat, but soon she figured him out and
refused to get married. Appelbaum also openly bragged to Rolling Stone
magazine about having dozens of GFs around the world, yet he has never
considered moving in with any of them. Rightly so, IMO no woman should have to
put up with his drama-queen defeatism.

~~~
ioerror
Sorry, you're incorrect about why I am unmarried to a Canadian woman.

------
hammerdr
This is likely to be unpopular. Here goes.

Is it possible that Jacob is calling others "cowardly" because he wants to
prove how brave he is?

Taking a leadership role in a movement of moral prescience is at once
commendable, laudable but also dangerous, onerous. I really appreciate what
Jacob is doing by putting his face to the Wikileaks organization. It is
something that I personally would not want to do.

Wikileaks' stated goal is to "...be of assistance to people of all regions who
wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations." In
this, Jacob is succeeding. He is assuredly revealing this behavior through
personal sacrifice. Part one is complete. Rejoice. Step two will be about
knowledge. Now it is up to supporters of this cause to spread that information
as far and as wide as possible. We've already seen the power of knowledge in
this first quarter of 2011. A reality that wikileaks, twitter, the internet
and the freedom of information has wrought.

Instead of spreading this message, Jacob seems to sprinkle a bit of guilt and
self aggrandizing. Maybe I am speaking out of turn because the only
interaction with Jacob I have is seen in here in this thread. However, let's
take a step back from our Jacob- and self-imposed guilt and execute the next
stage.

Edit: By all means we should empathize with Jacob and try to understand his
sacrifice. We do not, however, all have to be martyrs in order to be Good(tm).

~~~
mtex
"Instead of spreading this message, Jacob seems to sprinkle a bit of guilt and
self aggrandizing"

Hammerdr, I couldn't agree with you more. Willfull masochism is not bravery,
or some activist good guy bagde of achievement. It's sad that our society
mistakes the one with the other.

Appelbaum, I will be even more blunt than the previous commenter and say that
I think you are wallowing in your Jesus complex. If you were serious about all
this you would have already sued the DHS the first time you were harassed.
You've been held up and hassled, how many times already? I've already lost
count. You would have called up Jesse Ventura's lawyer and asked him to
represent you as well. You would have contacted Alex Jones from Infowars, who
specializes in reporting on DHS harassment, and gotten on his show. Instead,
you keep coming back for more abuse like a masochist. You're 100% Jesus to me,
and I don't mean that in a flattering way. Stop taking it, stop being a
politically correct victim, get a lawyer and fight back. And stop calling
people who question your ineffectual and pointless public masochism "trolls",
"cowards" and "stalkers".

~~~
ioerror
You have no idea what actions I am taking or not taking. However, you have
shown that you are not interested in supporting me when I discuss the
harassment that I receive.

For example, if I filed formal complaints or suit against CBP, would you
support my actions? If so, why do you not support the actions that you have
seen so far? If not, why are you here? Just to tell me that there is a single
way to respond and that I'm wrong?

Do you really believe that I should simply be silent about the specific
harassment that I receive?

There is more than one way to respond and I'm taking all of my options
seriously. Your presumption of knowledge about my actions is of course
incorrect and your arrogance is showing.

------
BasDirks
Quick, let's change the subject to China's human right abuse!

------
thangalin
<https://sites.google.com/site/pfcmanning/>

An open letter to President Obama on retaliation against whistleblowers.

------
danenania
These people are going to get theirs. The Arab revolts are eventually coming
to America. Anonymous is just the beginning.

------
ebaysucks
And this is why I just won't visit the USA anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I love the principles your country was founded upon, but
somehow you turned into testicle grabbing sociopaths.

------
shareme
Interesting side note:

Did you know the law or precedent being cited that allows customs to seize
computers, cell phones, etc can be circumvented by just fed-ex'ing the device
across the border?

Now tell me, if I know this than why cannot a suspect of illegal activities
such as a Mobster, credit card phisher, etc do it? They already do it folks..

~~~
oniTony
The secure way would be to upload an encrypted copy of the harddrive, bring
across wiped hardware, and re-download the contents after clearing the
boarder. FedEx packages go through customs, encrypted internet data does not.

That is to say -- if the intent is to sneak some data into the country, it
seems obvious that it should not be available in plaintext on a physical
device. With that in mind, is there ever a legitimate reason to seize all
electronics, up to and including gaming consoles[1], from a security
researcher (warrant had to do with MySpace, not anything console related)?

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmO7wQKCMw#t=40s>

~~~
jrockway
_With that in mind, is there ever a legitimate reason to seize all
electronics, up to and including gaming consoles[1], from a security
researcher (warrant had to do with MySpace, not anything console related)?_

Sure! A court would never convict the guy of anything, but Someone still
thinks the guy should be punished. "Hi, we stole all your possessions again!"
can be a good way to persuade people to interest themselves in a different
field.

(I have to think this is intentional. If the government didn't want seizures
to be punitive, then there would be a law that every device has to be paid for
or returned within 10 days. But this is like the bill of rights for the
government; a convenient way of circumventing "oppressive" laws when
necessary.

Oh. I made myself sad...)

~~~
Cushman
Better idea: Any time anything is seized without an according arrest, they
have to hand you a check right then and there for the retail value of the
goods. If a conviction comes out of it, they can tack that check onto the
amount of your restitution.

Hey, I can dream.

~~~
ioerror
This could turn into a fantastic recycling program!

~~~
Cushman
Totally.

Downside, you were detained for sixteen hours without counsel... But hey, free
upgrade to the latest Macbook refresh!

------
zyfo
What does the US Government gain by doing this? It's not obvious to me that
the deterring of similar opinions being voiced really outweight the current
and future negative publicity.

It would be interesting to hear inside stories about what kind of
conversations are going on on how to best handle Wikileaks. Perhaps via
Wikileaks itself?

Also, I'm very grateful that people like ioerror exists. Stay strong and best
of luck.

~~~
ascendant
They gain the effect it is having on other people. For every one of us that
gets enraged at this sort of bullshit, there's 9 more that are terrified to
speak out after seeing this. The problem with America is that unless we
personally are being injured we see terrible things happening and just shrug
and go on with our latte-sipping, BMW-driving lives. Our freedoms are slowly
being eroded and no one really cares as long as they can keep watching TV and
driving their fat asses to McDonalds every day. It's like the toad in the pot
with the water getting hotter ever-so-slowly...

------
mtex
Julian Assange urges people to take a "scientific" approach to media reports,
and to ask to see the primary documents. Well, allow me to be "scientific"
with regards to all these reports about Jacob Appelbaum's customs&border
issues right now: has Appelbaum ever published his correspondence with the
DHS? His FOIA requests? Denial letters he has received from government
agencies, the DHS, the TSA, CBP, ICE? The answer is no, no and no. There is no
way to verify "scientifically" any of his statements. All we have are
Appelbaum's claims on Twitter that "I was told by the G-man that Obama himself
has a problem with me"... seriously, how can someone who claims to be a hacker
believe such a statement, straight from the mouth of a government goon, cos
hey, we all know the G-men never ever lie or exaggerate in order to
intimidate, right? Still, no documentation whatsoever, no correspondence
between Appelbaum and the DHS. Again, think what you will about Obama
allegedly having a personal problem with Appelbaum, this is just not adding up
for me.

------
nika
How many reading this article, and are disgusted by these clearly
unconstitutional actions, are still living in the USA? How many of you are
paying taxes to the very government that is using this money to fund this
harassment, among other illegal activities?

You're providing material support to a terrorist organization! (presuming some
number of harassed people are terrorized by the harassment.)

What are you doing to compensate for this material support? Are you going to
stop it, withdraw your support? Or are you going to expend energy to
compensate for the aiding these oppressors?

This is a rhetorical question. I've my own answer, and I hope you have yours.

~~~
spicycat
It's not as easy to move out of the country as you seem to think, for a lot of
us. Yes, it really is disturbing that I now live in a country that tortures
people, and holds them for years without any trial at all. It's disturbing
that it seems that humans are getting to be less and less important to our
government than corporations all the time.

Still, what can I do? I'm disabled, and dependent on the government for
survival. The only way I'm going to be able to get out of this country is by
dying.

------
phlux
If you haven't seen this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9xrO2Ch4Co>

Its a great docu about wikileaks.

------
benlopez
I would be more concerned if the government were not harassing him

------
colinplamondon
I haven't heard a decent argument on how Wikileaks _isn't_ a terrorist
organization, and why the principal members aren't enemy combatants.

The scattershot releases show that the goal is to hurt the US, not to affect
change. There was real legitimate news in the releases so far- hidden in
mounds of classified information that had no news value beyond exposing
sources, risking lives, and slinging mud at the State Department.

There's HUGE value in an organization like Wikileaks, as shown in Tunisia.

Wikileaks itself, though, has shown that it is blatantly anti-American,
risking the lives of our allies and sources. I really, really hope that one of
the splinter groups takes off, with a bit more respect for the human cost of
these kind of releases.

~~~
pnathan
> Wikileaks isn't a terrorist organization, and why the principal members
> aren't enemy combatants.

Well, they aren't operating with the intent to cause terror in enemy
civilians. Further, an enemy combatant is usually considered to be someone
armed on the field of combat. I believe there is a very technical legal
definition of an enemy combatant.

They - Wikileaks - are pursuing anti-US goals, however. That is not illegal.
It should be expected, however, that the US will retaliate in various
fashions, because the interests of the US dictate that anti-US interests be
diminished.

I am not certain in the least of the facts of Jacob Appelbaum's case.
Certainly, if he was definitively operating against the US government in a
terrorist fashion, he would deny it. But if he was an honest man, he would
also deny that he was operating against the US government.

After spending an amount of my time in the last few months reading about the
USSR's beginnings and the fall of the Tsar, I can assure him that he is living
in a very nice country where dissidents don't simply get shot out without a
trial. Being stuck in a holding cell is quite gentle comparatively. Which does
not make it perfectly upright either, nontheless.

There is a higher problem here. The conventions of warfare since 1812 or so
describe nation-states at war with each other, including how to deal with
prisoners and manage trials. However, today we do not have significant nation-
state actors in active war with each other, we have un-uniformed[1] militias
operating against nation-states. I do not know of any serious attempt in
international circles to define the non-nation-state actors in legal
categories. This has led to the Guantanemo Bay problem. A terrorist is neither
a civilian nor a military officer, but current law - to the best of my
knowledge - does not handle that.

Nor does current law - to the best of my knowledge - handle the 'info-war'
legal categories well. What are the legal details on publishing sensitive or
classified material in time of peace, if you are not constrained to silence by
your duties? I don't know that _that's_ ever been seriously treated in the US.

So how _should_ the laws of a country handle someone who appears to be acting
as the ambassador for an anti-country interest? That's the real question.

[1] At least in the narrow eyes of the law, uniforms matter, according to a
former US Army officer I know.

~~~
po
_What are the legal details on publishing sensitive or classified material in
time of peace, if you are not constrained to silence by your duties? I don't
know that that's ever been seriously treated in the US._

Treason? Applies to citizens acting against their own sovereign nation. I
don't know what you call it from a non-citizen. Perhaps sedition?

~~~
pnathan
Well, Merriam Webster defines sedition as "incitement of resistance to or
insurrection against lawful authority"[1].

Treason also has a fairly narrow meaning, "the offense of attempting by overt
acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes
allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's
family"[2].

I don't believe Wikileaks' actions falls under sedition or treason. Certainly
I've never heard them of them advocating insurrections or US government
overthrow.

What they _did_ do is publish large amounts of data classified by the US.

Legally, that should be a crime, I believe. I'm not sure it is. From my brief
(and IANAL) reading on the question, it's never been adequately addressed, and
it brings up _massive_ First Amendment issues.

There is also the question of Assange, who is _not_ a US citizen, and
therefore not per se subject to US law, and then Applebaum, who _is_ a US
citizen, and therefore unquestionably subject to US law. Even under harsher
strictures is Manning (and other soldiers), who are under military US law,
which is _not_ like civilian law.

The laws _have_ to deal with the "electronic frontier". They must, or we will
continually mire ourselves in grey areas of general suspiciousness.

[1] [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/sedition?show=0...](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/sedition?show=0&t=1302532235)

[2] <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treason>

