[liberationtech] Jacob Appelbaum on Ultrasurf

[Shava Nerad]

On Apr 24, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Catherine Fitzpatrick <catfitz at verizon.net> wrote:

> All kinds of products in the world don't work as advertised, including Tor --they don't tell you how slow it is or other problems easily Googled or that the entire project is at risk because its main founder is under grand jury investigation. 

I must have missed something, Catherine. 

Is it Roger Dingledine or Nick Mathewson or me who are being indicted, who founded the nonprofit, or Michael G. Reed (formerly of Extreme Networks), Paul F. Syverson, and David M. Goldschlag from the Naval Research Lab who had the original patent research?

I'm a little out of the loop, having not been execdir for five years.  I certainly haven't been subpoenaed.  How exciting!  But, no trips for me...

Or are you just overstepping the facts with your usual enthusiasm?

Perhaps your referring to a staffer associated with the project, hired a couple years after founding, not a founder, who is being invited to testify as expert witness on the use of the software by a third party overseas?  

We are talking about Jake testifying about Wikileaks using Tor for submissions, right?  

I don't think anyone on this list thinks that "threatens  the project," and if you don't understand why legally or technically or by PR I'll be happy to take that offline.

No doubt via subpoena?  That hardly threatens the project.  It's SOP.  Cool your jets.  

I understand cortisol is really bad for longevity.  You should stop and breathe more often.  

This sort of attack is more appropriate to the smaller societies in Second Life; here, it is better to do your fact checking first, and leave the Stalinist attack rhetoric barrages behind.  We prefer a collegial atmosphere.

Perhaps if you just link to one of your half dozen or so blogs, your fans here if any can follow and read you crowing imagined victory there at whatever length you want to devote time to, over Jacob today and no doubt over me tomorrow now that I have waved the red silk, hey toro!

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2012/04/reply-from-jacob-appelbaum-to-my-criticism-and-my-response-on-ultrasurf-and-circumvention.html

It's what, 2006 now, that we've been doing this tired ping pong?  First over you attacking legal and economic academics in Second Life.  And now in a far more real world context with people who really don't need you adding to their fatigue while they do worldchanging against pretty steep odds.  

I know, having met you on person, that in person rather than in print you can be reasonable, but you consider rhetoric and propaganda an art and tool.  Like a shiv.

You like coming into places as a provocateur to waste the energy of the opposition strategically and tactically.  You work to personally attack and demoralize the most sensitive and effective activists with whom you disagree.  

I have observed this pattern repeatedly, and often put myself purposefully in harm's way to draw fire, because you have problems resisting provocation yourself, in order to preserve gentler hides.  

But you have over the years figured this out, attacking my parenting skills and various extremely personal ad hominems that went well beyond the usual personal/professional rhetorical bounds.

Please understand it is not welcome in every context in the way you use it.  Although it is our principle to support "your right to say it," I am exercising my crone-like right to say, I know you, I have known you for years, I know your scrappy character, and what jazzes you about your audience, and your audience is you "talk radio" blog, your by-product, not this list.

And Catherine, you are a bully.  You are the sort of person many of us are spending our time here crafting measures to make the net safe from, from elementary school to international affairs.

I am asking you civilly to back down.  Even more, I am asking the list to stop feeding the troll.

I am tempted to put it as an exercise to the list - a meta-excercise, perhaps, a gedankenexperiment, if there is a way to come to consensus on bullies or bad actors or trolls at some morphologically reasonable level of response for this list?  If we can't confront this here how do we deal with it on any layer of interaction we work with with others?

Perhaps if you back down just a tad, fact check, distort less, you would feel more welcome more places?  

But I don't think that's your goal.  Your goal is to be the heroic martyr for your own satisfaction and your audience, which ultimately is on typepad, not here.

Shava
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