On my experiences with Jacob Appelbaum

and the ongoing smear campaign against him

Some may have been wondering for the past couple of months why it is that I have challenged so strongly the ongoing smear campaign against Jacob Appelbaum by a faction within the Tor Project and its broader community. I have alluded to the reason, but wish to make it more clear. Forgive me for being long-winded here, but I believe that detail and description help paint a more thorough picture of subtleties like character and context in a story, and I think this could be helpful for people who do not know Jake personally. Keep in mind that I am working mostly from memory, but unknown dates will be referenced flexibly.

As some have probably gathered, I have some personal experience with people at the center of this conflict. Jake and I met online in the summer of 2013. We chatted on occasion, and around Thanksgiving 2014, Jake invited me to visit Germany so that I could attend 31C3 (as he knew I had a lot of interest in the congress) and spend time in Berlin after, covering my airfare and helping with expenses while I was there.

I met Alison Macrina online as well, in mid-2014. We occasionally chatted on Twitter, but as far as I can recall, it was not until I tweeted stating that I’d be attending 31C3 that she direct messaged me. She inquired and I told her that Jake had covered the flight, or else there was no way I could have afforded to go. I asked her if she thought the idea was crazy, to go overseas and meet someone, and she was only encouraging (as would I have been). As another precaution, I also inquired with a mutual friend of Jake’s about whether visiting and staying with him was a good idea, curious as to whether they would be willing to vouch for the fact that I’d be safe there, and they were.

Jake told me he would help me find a good, affordable place to board in Hamburg, and helped me with all the logistics of what to expect with the flight, how to get a passport, and so on. I asked Jake that during the nights we would be in Hamburg, to just ensure that I’d be rooming with someone “trustworthy” (by which I was alluding to assault, and he understood). He mentioned that would be a priority regardless.

Sometime after (best guess: a couple weeks), Alison DM’d me to say that Jake had also covered half her flight, and simultaneously Jake messaged me to let me know he found someone for me to room with — Alison. The arrangement was perfect, since we already knew each other, and thought had clearly gone into not only what would ensure my safety, but additionally my sense of safety and comfort. About a week or so before the trip, Alison wound up having to postpone her visit due to having to dog-sit for her boyfriend. I arrived in Berlin on an interesting evening — December 26th, when the Tor network was being attacked by some group.

After returning to Berlin from 31C3 on December 31st, Jake, several others and I attended a New Years’ Eve party nearby. There, he would introduce me to people and check-in on me occasionally to make sure I was enjoying myself. Late in the evening, I found myself in conversation with Isis and a friend of hers. In introductions and throughout the conversation, it came up that I had come to the party with Jake and his friends, that he had flown me out to Germany, that I had only known him online prior, and that I was staying at his place. We chatted for around a half-hour, with about half of that one-on-one. At some point, Jake came over and appeared to be glad that we were talking; he made sure we’d been properly introduced, joked around for a moment, then went on to other conversations, and Isis and I continued talking one-on-one. At no point did she indicate that I should have any cause for concern in his company.

Around 4:00am, Jake came to me and let me know that our group was planning on heading out, and that he had made some plans for a “party” (along the lines of those discussed elsewhere) at his place. I’m kind of picky about where I sleep, especially with regard to last-minute changes, but I reluctantly agreed to stay at his friend’s house; he said his friend lived only a block away, and that he knew I’d be safe there. We all returned to Jake’s, I gathered what I might need that night, and trekked with some of his friends over to their place. I wasn’t very comfortable there — they hadn’t yet settled in, so it was messy and they had a shortage of bedding (of which I was offered my choice).

In some short-sighted, sleep-deprived, passive-aggressive move, the following morning I decided to make a point by getting a hotel instead of meeting up with Jake and others as we planned.

Alison had been checking in on me when I was in Germany; I presumed to experience it vicariously since she hadn’t been able to make it. At some point that day, she contacted me and I griped to her about having to stay at his friends’ apartment last-minute the night before, and mentioned why. While I tend to let go of things quickly, I also have a tendency to take things personally in the moment, and in response to my concern, she would surmise that Jake had “abandoned” me, and suggested he would only be interested in having me around were I sleeping with him. To this day I am not entirely certain why. Regardless, it played on some of my biggest insecurities, and I fell right into it. Later, Jake would hit me up wondering where I’d gone and why I hadn’t met up with him as planned — I briefly explained.

Over the next couple days Alison would start telling me things that she said Jake had told her and which, had I told her, I would not want passed along to others. Whenever this happens, it gives me pause. After all, if it’s occurring in either direction, it’s probably occurring in both, in which case you are likely being played off of someone else. This led me to re-evaluate the situation, and I started pushing back on her characterization (perhaps more for my own sake than hers), and as she continued for days to persist, I simply avoided chatting with her. I finally began to realize that Alison was manipulating or misleading me, for whatever reason. Regretfully, the seed had been firmly planted.

To sow distrust among the privacy community is toxic. What was a passing annoyance became a nagging uncertainty. Around this time, Jake let me know that some other visitors of his who had been staying in the nearby apartment of a friend (who was out of town and allowed him to have people stay at her place) would be leaving soon, and that as soon as they brought back the key, I could have that place to myself if that made me most comfortable, or I could stay at his place, and moreover reminded me I would regardless be more than welcome to come and go as I pleased. I took him up on the first offer, yet the last I would not exercise as much as I would have liked, due to my newfound confusion and distrust about him and his motives.

Eventually, I explained my original complaint to Jake more thoroughly. To be honest, given my frame of mind, I expected him to be dismissive. Rather, he was very understanding and reassuring, though I of course sensed that I had offended him; I then told him I tend to take things personally. I don’t know why I felt I would be informing him of this, but I do distinctly remember his reply: “I noticed.” It made me laugh at myself for being such a pain in the ass—which felt much better than overwhelmingly doubting myself and others as I had for days. It was the correct response to me being melodramatic. I just wished that I had spoken to him earlier rather than Alison. I still wish I had.

Even still, I couldn’t fully shake the uncertainty. To make matters worse, I felt guilty for it. I still feel guilty for it — not even for talking to Alison, but for allowing the baseless narrative of Jake as untrustworthy to permeate my perspective. Now, when I think back on that trip, the first thing that comes to mind was Jake’s quiet disappointment in me when I left. Everything was supposed to go so much differently. At the time I simply had no idea what to make of anything, and did not want to make myself vulnerable. That lingered for awhile even after my visit, and after I had blocked Alison, shortly after I returned home.

Ironically, it was about the time that the effort to remove Jake began in earnest (early this year) that I felt confident in my perspective of the situation, and knew that I could reject that distrust.

Given the volume of false characterizations of Jake floating around amidst the smears, I hope he will not mind me saying… These characterizations of him as a “rockstar,” as “aggressive,” as “selfish” — I don’t see how one could know Jake much at all while choosing these as their go-to descriptions of him, barring bad faith. Perhaps that we come from similar backgrounds has offered me some insight, but whenever I read these stories going around describing his personality, I’ve been unable to recognize him in them. While those traits, when they do come out, might seem abrasive, when taken in context, the picture is very different. What I do recognize in them, however, is the characterization of him I long ago disputed with Alison, and again had to push back against recently, when she DM’d me again to tell me she could not believe I was defending Jake after he had “abandoned” me.

There have certainly been occasions during which he and I have butted heads, but one thing that struck me about our interaction versus that of others with him, is that if I felt he was over-assertive in some regard, I would push back. Perhaps this is because I was not trying to win his favor, but rather that I appreciate him and his personality, and respect his ideas, experiences, and values. Part of being a friend is arguing and contradicting someone when you believe they are wrong, and likewise part of being a friend is letting someone know they’re being difficult even while going out of your way to maximize their comfort.

When instead one sees their “rockstar friend” as offensively aggressive or selfish and does not push back on that, point it out, or complain to them about it, quickly it begins to look like it is not simply their company or even their ideas in which one is interested, but something else. That is to say, those who, instead of being constructive for his benefit, did not voice their own complaints to Jake are in my view much more selfish and untrustworthy than he could possibly be construed based on his actual behavior and personality.

This is true of those whose interactions with Jake I have observed and who have publicly and collectively thrown Jake under the bus in an effort to ruin his life due to personal, perceived slights that they never brought up to him in good faith because they were too busy sucking up to him. It is back-stabbing, band-wagoning sycophancy to use someone when personally beneficial and then dispose of them when personally beneficial. This kind of behavior will only sow further distrust among the Surveillance Valley-symbiotic branch of the privacy community, which has over the past few years increasingly alienated those averse to careerist affectation.

Additional notes

Here are additional reasons that I have challenged this campaign. I will add more as I am able to confirm more.

Isis conveniently left out of her story (heading: Forest) that on the morning mentioned, Jake explained to her that he had sexsomnia. Jake has also recently been avoiding sharing beds with people he is not dating. Moreover, the exact same situation happened with a friend of mine years ago, including the typical parasomniac reaction to being rolled over, an having no memory of it physically, though having memory of a dream. I have also discussed this issue with another friend, who explained they had experienced both sides of this.*~→ [1] ←~*

“Phoenix” conveniently left out of her story that she fully participated in the sexually explicit conversation in which she claims Jake “victimized” her; that is, that the sexual nature of the conversation emanated at least as much from her. I asked whether the “witnesses” who claimed to “corroborate” her story had any comment on this…

• Runa Sandvik & Micah Lee declined to comment.
• Garrett Robinson hedged, claiming he does “clearly recall the events described in Phoenix’s account,” but that he will “refrain from saying ‘it didn’t happen’ only because it was a large group and [he] wasn’t paying attention to everyone at once.”
• Bill Budington responded simply, “false.” He even ignored my follow-up questions, “do you think he sexually harassed Phoenix, then?” and, after having ignored that question for eight hours, “I ask because when you knew I was in Jake’s care several months later, and we were alone, you offered no warning. Why is that?” The context of this is that months after the dinner he attended with Jake and “Phoenix,” Budington (as mentioned above) stayed in and then walked me to the apartment of Jake’s out-of-town friend, after bringing me the key. Never did he mention or even hint that I should have any cause for concern around Jake, nor did he even mention Jake to gauge my reaction. Instead, we discussed EFF.

[1] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. 400–01.
(Citation for those obstinate people who have apparently been too inept to either Google this condition themselves, or to scroll down to the References section of a Wikipedia page.)

Addendum

I just wonder now why Anna Loll was “unfortunately … not be able to include details of [my] experience as quotes” in her published “research.” She asked me for chat logs and for my tweet archive. She told everyone I spoke to that she disbelieved the accusers and their smears. Apparently this was to build trust with those of us who have been virtually ignored by the press in their reporting on this story, just to turn around and violate it.

Email from Anna, 2016–08–03, 07:12:

I downloaded everything now. I had a quick look through it, will do more so in the next days and might ask you some questions about it, if it is okay with you. Also I will start to write a new draft in the next days, where I would like to include your account. I would definitely check the passage before with you, before sending it out to the editor — however before I even start, can you tell me, if it would be ok for me to use your story in my report about not having been warned by Isis? And if so, do you prefer to stay anonymously?

I could also say a good friend from the US or maybe name your town, if this is not too specific. Best would for credibility would be to use your name, but then you need to tell me, if you feel okay with it. Please be aware that if I report your story, which I think, would be important to give background on the allegations against Jake, even if I don’t use your name, Isis and Alison still might figure out, who I am talking about, because I will need to give some details (as said, which I would check with you before though). I hope, of course, that this wouldn’t have repercussions for you, but cannot be sure about this, as I know, several people I talked to, are [afraid] of that.

I also now wonder if the conditions she claimed to interview me under were in fact the case.

She may “not be able” to quote me or many others supporting Jake that she interviewed in depth, but I for one believe people need to know the truth.

It seems to go without saying that Nafeez Ahmed was the last journalist employed by the Guardian.