
Matt Blaze Recounts Teenaged Harassment By John Draper - tptacek
https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/931675797479444480
======
tptacek
John Draper is "Captain Crunch".

Context: Kevin Collier's Buzzfeed piece about conferences banning Draper due
to his habit of persuading young (teenaged) attendees to participate in
private "exercises" that are clearly tantamount to sexual molestation:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-
to...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-to-have-used-
cyber-conferences-to?utm_term=.akj7LAGaw#.iprXq5mk7)

~~~
tptacek
PS:

A lot of people from my "generation" of hacker-scene hackers are commenting on
Facebook about how they warned people back then what Draper was about. Which,
they did. But mostly, Draper's proclivities were a joke to us.

I don't blame us too much. We were 18-19 years old and it was the mid-late
1990s.

But I'd sort of want to remind, um, us? that there are a bunch of other people
with comparable reputations. I don't think they're my stories to tell (or, in
my case, I guess my rumors to spread). But there are a lot of missing stairs
in this field, not just that one.

~~~
X86BSD
The stories I’m sure some of us could tell. Between Draper, the raves, all of
the Cons (pumpcon, summercon, defcon in the early 90s). I’m sure some folks
could go to jail and not for wire fraud or computer crime either. But as you
noted, they aren’t my stories to tell either. I’m sure at some point they will
get told in a book. Everything else from that time sure seems to have been
spilled.

------
kabdib
Yeah, Draper tried to have me go to his place and give him a backrub once,
some time in the mid 80s. I was maybe 22 at the time. I declined, and avoided
being in close proximity to him after that. No idea what would have happened,
it just felt really creepy.

[edit: just read the full twitter thread. Backrubs, right ...]

------
Stratoscope
Anyone who ever spent much time with John could probably tell a similar story.

I used to hang out with him a bit in the mid-'70s. I'd read about him in the
famous Esquire article, and it was pretty cool when I finally got to meet him.
He wanted to learn how to program, and we had both recently discovered FORTH.
Most importantly, he had some really good pot (for those days).

So I would drop by and we would stay up late at night hacking and smoking.
Then he asked me if I wanted to work out.

I thought that sounded like a good idea. Goodness knows, everyone can use more
exercise!

Then I found out what he meant, and it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. So
we went back to hacking and kept it at that level. It was really no problem,
just a simple misunderstanding, and we continued to have fun hacking together.

I didn't see John for many years, and then ran into him at the 2013 Homebrew
reunion. I introduced myself and he didn't quite remember me at first. Then
his eyes lit up and he asked me, "Did we work out?"

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/in/dateposte...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/in/dateposted-
public/lightbox/)

Next time I saw John was at the 2015 CES, and he was in a wheelchair
recovering from back surgery.

You know, whatever feelings any of us may have about the guy, at this point
he's not in the best of health. My personal feeling is that perhaps we could
wish him well and let bygones be bygones?

~~~
xwvvvvwx
> _we could wish him well and let bygones be bygones?_

Well it can sometimes be hard to reconcile the person you know and like with
the bad things they have done, it would appear that he systematically
assaulted a very large number of young men over a period of decades.

Criminal charges might be a more appropriate response.

------
chrissnell
I'm in disbelief and disgusted that conference organizers would assign
volunteers to police Draper's behavior but still allow him to attend the
conferences. This went on for decades and was well known but nobody outed him
until now? Unreal.

~~~
sp332
Snubs was straight up groped by a stranger at a con. She told the organizers
immediately and they still invited him back the next year.
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=oxLENeCf3OA](https://youtube.com/watch?v=oxLENeCf3OA)
Recently Hak5 has decided not to sponsor events that don't have a Code of
Conduct anymore, which is potentially losing them a bunch of money but it
could also save people a lot of trouble.
[https://mobile.twitter.com/snubs/status/916477812646612993](https://mobile.twitter.com/snubs/status/916477812646612993)

------
ComputerGuru
BuzzFeed has a compilation of first-hand accounts involving Draper:
[https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-
to...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-to-have-used-
cyber-conferences-to?utm_term=.gq17zJWDnm#.djDoLvX1Nq)

~~~
averagewall
No-one seems to be accusing him of an actual crime. It sounds like his
victims/partners willingly carried him on their backs or did workouts together
or took their shirts off. It sounds very similar to what many pairs opposite
sex people do when one invites the other back to their hotel room. If it was a
woman and she wasn't sexually interested in him, she would be unlikely to go
along so far - certainly not taking off clothes in a hotel room! Does it just
seem worse because it's gay? Maybe it's worse because young men in those days
didn't think that other men might be gay so they misread his advances?

~~~
xwvvvvwx
You might find it quite instructive to read up on the legal definitions of
sexual assault and sexual harassment.

It's also important to consider what consent actually is. Just because someone
doesn't say no doesn't necessarily mean that they want something to happen.

Don't lose sight of the power imbalance, as well as the youth and inexperience
of the victims.

~~~
geggam
I have read several stories of people being approached and many have said they
felt uncomfortable and didnt do it.

Does that not imply there was no power imbalance as the weak or inexperienced
were not coerced ?

Do you have a story of someone coerced ?

OR do you just prefer to make shit up ?

~~~
xwvvvvwx
Quoting directly from the buzzfeed aerticle:

> _In a series of interviews, six men with direct knowledge of Draper, now 74,
> described him as habitually meeting young, often teenage men at conferences
> between 1999 and 2007, touting “energy” exercises or stretches. These
> included him massaging men in public and urging them to come to his or their
> hotel room for private sessions. In multiple cases in which the men agreed,
> Draper would leap on their backs in ways the men described as unwanted
> sexual contact._

------
rasz
“Jobs was asked by Draper, in the ’70’s, to help Draper exercise by sitting on
Draper's back,” Wozniak told BuzzFeed News. “Jobs took this as being out of
the ordinary and not up his alley and he avoided it. I cannot presume what it
was about, although you are always free to guess.”

That explains a lot! I read about Wozniak hiring Draper, in secret behind Jobs
back, to work on modem for Apple 2(or 2gs?). I was wondering why such
conspiracy, now we know.

------
daxorid
This is not news. Anybody who goes to con, particularly telephreak and
friends, has known about Crunch for a long time, now.

------
kapauldo
Who is John draper?

