[tor-talk] Jacob, A legacy tarnished by hubris

[notfriendly at riseup.net]

On 2016-06-05 11:25, tect at sigaint.org wrote:
> In the few interactions I had with Jacob over the years he gave a vibe 
> of
> being an arrogant, self-worshiping narcissist prick with with delusions 
> of
> grandeur and an ego the size of a small planet, but he has spent a 
> decade
> in the Tor Project and despite his tragic character flaws he has 
> achieved
> much good that should be recounted here for the public record.
> 
> Jacob was the developer of the Tor Birdy plugin for Thunderbird, giving 
> us
> a more anonymous email client. He worked on torsocks, a core part of 
> Tor
> and was partially responsible for Orbot's conception. A Tor evangelist, 
> he
> setup relays across the world and raised public awareness about mass
> surveillance.
> 
> He collaborated on publishing some of the biggest technical stories 
> from
> the Snowden archive and used his access to turn this information into
> actionable counter-intelligence for the  whole software ecosystem.
> 
> All in all, its amazing how much he achieved coming from a broken 
> family
> with no formal education. Instead of lying in a gutter somewhere with a
> needle coming out from his arm he made something of his life.
> 
> Jacob's gift for public speaking sparked his meteoric rise from 
> obscurity
> and made him the face of the project, a big miscalculation. No doubt, 
> the
> powerful feeling of swaying crowds and the resulting cult personality
> status he achieved gave him a reckless sense of self-entitlement and
> illusion of the community as a conveyor belt for free pussy, consent be
> damned. Kudos to the Tor community for handling the situation the way 
> they
> did. The reputation of the project should never be tied to that of a
> single individual, but be carefully managed by PR specialists. Your 
> work
> is too important for any dicking around.
> 
> Make no mistake, I am not a rape apologist and if the allegations are
> true, then he deserves nothing less than an eventful rendezvous with a
> big, burly Turkish bubba in the nearest German prison. Sometimes our 
> own
> worse enemies are ourselves... not the NSA.
I'm seriously wondering if the site / rumors was setup by a government 
agency (from some country, not sure which one to suspect) to attack 
Jacob Applebaum or even harm the reputation of the infosec community as 
a whole because if one member looks really bad it could harm all of us 
despite lack of involvement in an event that may or may not be true.