If this had occurred in the US (and the mentioned confidential conversation did in fact allege sexual misconduct), DJB would be in trouble:
> Within the University of Illinois System, ALL employees, unless specifically exempted, are “Responsible Employees” with the responsibility and authority to report sexual misconduct to their university's Title IX Coordinator. The only employees who are exempt from this reporting requirement are professional or pastoral counselors who provide work-related mental-health counseling, campus advocates who provide confidential victim assistance, and employees who are otherwise prohibited by law from disclosing information received in the course of providing professional care and treatment. Student and graduate employees are handled differently at each university. Please reference the Responsible Employee Resource Page under the "Portfolio" and Resources tabs. Please remember that all references to Responsible Employees are references to YOU and apply to you in your capacity as a university employee.
To me, this would mean that he is a mandatory reporter, and I am unaware of any scenario where you are freed from that obligation because it was a "confidential conversation".
The weird part comes in when you realize that (a) this is happening outside of the US, but (b) DJB likely has NSF grants, which require adherence to Title IX (this is what the author is referring to when he brings up Title IX training). But how does one enforce Title IX outside of the country in which it was passed?
While its different in each country, I know that teachers and counselors can be required by law to personally report such crimes to the police. If I remember right, this is true for Sweden, which would in this case result in a police report and then no further actions or communications from the university (in order to allow the police to do a proper investigation without interference). If it is a student that is accused, then the university might not even be allowed to suspend the student, through the police can of course put the accused in holding if the police suspect a continuation of crimes or interference of the investigation.
Compared to the US system, I actually prefer this way since it puts the whole process into its proper place as soon as possible, and puts a form of common-sense approach when a university employee hear or witness a crime.
I know that education institutes in Sweden sometimes move students if they consider that the person is continuing disruption the education, through as with all of this, there need to be documentation that they tried multiple methods to correct the situation and still failed. Moving students is seen as a last-attempt.
In the case of Jacob, we don't see any of those actions. No police report or investigation. No claim that he is continuing acting disruptive to the university, nor that they have tried and failed to correct that behavior. Basically no events or documented actions of jacob after the point he left the tor project.
Is this a common thing in the infosec industry? Personally I have known two people who were sexually harassed who work in security. I've also hung out with some and they do seem to have an unrealistic view on the opposite sex.
The more well-known infosec conferences, especially in the US, have a long-held tradition of being a place to show off, do drugs and party. The percentage of people I've known in infosec circles who are also heavy drug abusers easily doubles or possibly triples the general population.
At least that's my 20 years of experience of them.
Crypto absolutely attracts a strange group of people as compared to other disciplines. That includes some people who are very liberal in their definition of consent, almost by definition, which in turn can affect other areas of their life.
[Note: I am not making excuses for their behavior, although I'd hope that would not need saying.]
Are you an academic cryptographer? I'm not, but I'm a practicing crypto engineer, and I go to the occasional conference and workshop. What I've noticed is that crypto is far better about stuff like this than CS and certainly than infosec; I think it's a consequence of crypto being as much a part of mathematics as about computer science.
It's one victim telling the story, enabling other victim to tell theirs. This happens in many communities, not only IT. But the first person to speak up opens the gate for others who experienced it for a long time.
That's one of the reasons it's important to share them. You'd never expect what happened to people you personally know sometimes.
> Is this a common thing in the ~infosec industry~ black community? Personally I have known two people who were sexually harassed who work in ~security~ the black community. I've also hung out with some and they do seem to have an unrealistic view on the opposite sex.
If you think I have a problem with afro-americans, you have a problem with getting the point
Wow this blog post makes djb sound like such a scumbag. The idea that he would ask people to consider the allegations "false" is absurd (there's a difference between presuming innocence vs presuming the the allegations are false).
tl;dr DJB was approached with a complaint, and thought it was a situation where he would give advice and his counterparty expected he would maintain his confidence. After he heard about the frustration the complainant was experiencing, asked the person to file a formal complaint, or at least send a self-contained email (explicitly acknowledged as not confidential) that he could use to move forward, in order to not break that confidence.
Seems that's where things broke down. There's another complaint related to Tanja that seems separate (he says that she urged him to not file a complaint immediately), but that's orthogonal to DJB's side of this, I think.
EDIT: It seems, from context, that the complainant wanted the confidence revoked, and everything put on the record (not unreasonable). But DJB doesn't _keep_ records of confidential things -- hence his insistence that they start from the beginning.
EDIT2: I'm trying to summarize "What is DJB's side of this (as communicated in the linked emails)?" not the whole scenario. I don't know anything about this situation directly.
> But DJB doesn't _keep_ records of confidential things -- hence his insistence that they start from the beginning.
I call BS on this, if we're talking about adults at university positions. The reasonable response in that case is: "I do not have any archives. Please resend everything you've got.", not starting from the beginning without communicating that fact clearly. If someone fails to act properly in that position, they shouldn't be overseeing other people.
He should not stop because of a technicality on his side in that situation.
(Edit: reasonable response == absolute minimum here, he could do much more)
I don't disagree -- presumably some of their conversation happened verbally, so the claim 'I don't take notes or have records of confidential things' makes more sense? Seems likely, I frequently discuss things in person first.
I also agree with your characterization of the other side of this -- that it seems like he's using a technicality to excuse not doing something important. I'm not advocating anything, just trying to summarize a pretty long email chain.
You're talking about a crypto researcher here. Their behavior absolutely does include a much higher level of awareness around the handling of confidential information. He may well have a policy that all confidential communication is treated separately, including being automatically wiped after some period of time. This would need to be standard for his work as it relates to investigating 0day and other vulnerabilities that must be confidentially disclosed to third parties.
This does not make him a nice guy, and he would likely have been in violation of Title IX, which means any US govt funding for his lab is potentially at risk as a result of this case.
What do you think crypto researchers are? It's not a cloak and dagger field. It's applied mathematics research. You've never seen a group of people less wrapped up in spycraft than the attendees of an academic crypto workshop. That's one of the things that made Appelbaum's admission to Dan and Tanja's research group so weird.
I don't care who he is, or what his daily email routine is. It doesn't matter. At any level, if someone you're superior to in your organisation comes to you and reports abuse from another person in the org, you either follow up immediately, or you shouldn't be superior to them. Any kind of follow up should produce report of that. If the person taking to you doesn't want you to report it further, then it's your business to have a record of that and never lose it. I know it from normal decency and numerous company trainings and I've never even been a manager.
His research topic, or even whether the report is true don't matter. It's in his interest to follow up on his own and keep records. If not because it's right, at least to protect the university and himself from what's happening right now.
Sometimes your best protection is a policy that all electronic communications are automatically deleted after a retention period. Many companies have such policies, and they have them on advice of their legal council, specifically to avoid discovery issues in the event of a suit. You can argue this doesn't apply here from a moral perspective and I would agree with you, but IT and legal policies often do not follow an ethical code.
Crypto research exacerbates this because the likelihood of such suits is higher than with other kinds of research, sometimes rising to the level of nation states getting grumpy at you with all that could entail. Finally, while I can't make any excuse for the behavior, he would be far from the first graduate advisor to have less than stellar management training or skills.
That's pretty disgusting, and the kind of "sneaky" you'd expect from an overly precocious child. Then again, it actually does match the combination of passive aggression and thwarted control-freak that I've come to expect from academia.
The emails don't show djb as a scumbag, just a little bit cold and rule-oriented. The kind of guy that is generally regarded as writing the most secure unclassified crypto code is going to be rule-oriented. Think of Immanuel Kant, who (roughly) said that the golden rule was the ultimate law, and required him to always tell the truth, even if a murderer showed up at his door, and asked whether his target was upstairs. DJB is simply saying he's willing to be the guy's confidant, but if he wants him to act in a formal, legal way, he wants him to tell him all the things he's willing to have exposed to a legal process. He doesn't want to assume that just because he's filing a complaint, that everything that his friend has told him in confidence is now potentially public record, and so he wants him to repeat what he wants to be on the record. To me, that's the mark of a good friend.
Both of them describe Bernstein as a manager, not a friend.
I think Bernstein may simply have meant that the written complaint had to be specific, but that took a close reading and some charity. His direction to leave out "any reference to the previous conversation" first struck me as wanting to pretend there hadn't been one.
That's not the impression I got. It sounded to me like there had been a long, confidential conversation, perhaps spanning different media, and he just wanted an authoritative email laying out the full issue, which he could then act on, without needing to try to accurately recall all past conversation and determine which parts should be confidential or not.
I'm not saying it was the ideal response, just that if we give the benefit of the doubt it doesn't appear to be a malicious one.
The author of the article published what he claims were emails sent by Bernstein. If the entire story is fabricated, Bernstein's side is "I never sent those emails".
Did you read the post? The accuser did make several "formal statements", most of which went ignored.
> On my return, with an alternate way to stay in the EU secured, I prepared a written complaint and sent it to our department secretary on the 22nd of August...
...
> At the beginning of September, I spoke to two people in HR for nearly two hours, answering their follow-up questions about the complaint I had sent them.
...
> While in North America, an HR rep contacted me to tell me that I needed to personally meet with yet another person at the university, who is in charge of scientific integrity. I sent this person a copy of the same written complaint I had already sent to HR, and arranged a meeting.
So that's four or five people who received a formal, written statement from the accuser, and did nothing in response.
Bernstein told the author not to mention their prior conversation in his complaint. The author found this suspicious and filed a complaint with the department secretary instead.
You know one thing about the author's mental health: he had panic attacks during a very stressful time in his life. Any psychologist can tell you that this has no bearing on someone's truthfulness. Continuing to speculate about his mental health is in very poor taste.
"When I informed the project reviewer and the other fellows that, in fact, I had resigned due to sexual harassment, Dan sent a response which opened with a long, irrelevant, and inaccurate story about how my work was low-quality, my research contribution was minor, etc. "
Myself and a business partner had a web startup that we ran from 2002 to 2008. I was the CTO, he was the CEO -- at first the titles didn't mean anything because the whole company was just the two of us. Later we had some money and we hired some people. He was nominally in charge of sales and raising funds from investors, but as the years went by, he struggled with the stress. He started smoking way too much marijuana. I eventually lost all faith that I could build anything with him. For years he had tried to win me over with excessive praise (especially when we had no money) but when I told him I was leaving, suddenly he complained that my work had always sucked, I wrote terrible code, I aggravated everyone we'd worked with, I scared away all potential investors, etc. It is curious the way that particular mentality works. It's very much similar to what is described in the article. Once they realize they can not win you back, they feel an urgent need to delegitimate anything you might ever say.
When things go bad, the tendency for people to lie is shocking.
I lived with a business partner, and decided to move out. Him and his girlfriend begged me to stay but I wanted privacy (it was a big house with other roommates).
Few months later we get into a dispute involving our third partner, everything falls apart and suddenly they started telling people I was "evicted" from their house and a terrible person.
The "smoking gun" here is, I suppose, that the person in question was fired from _another_ project in quite a public fashion for engaging in the very same sort of harassment the OP reported to his supervisors and was rebuffed for.
There really doesn't look like there's much wiggle room here.
Now, that said, I think this is brilliant because this sort of thing happens _all the time_ -- typically, if you report a Higher Value Person(tm) for harassment (no matter what the field) you may as well just be shouting in the wind. You'll get told "oh, you don't want to ruin their life, do you?" or "I've spoken to him, he won't do it again, please won't you take one for the team?" And if you persist, well, you're just disgruntled and unhappy and maybe you should go somewhere else.
I tried Jake's menthol eye drops once, he was offering them to lots of people at the time. They burned for a few seconds but I felt no lasting effects. They're something like this, possibly even this brand: http://www.rohtoeyedrops.com/product/rohto-ice/ (the bottle was that shape, anyway).
WTF is a "strictly confidential conversation"? Do professors at TU/e have some special status akin to doctors or lawyers? I've never heard of this sort of thing anywhere else.
I formed my own conclusions, including about those who take this lightly.
Who has called out journalists seriously since? That's the last he did before the attack website and the carefully placed articles started, no? For all this talk about how Appelbaum was this sociopath plagiarist just being charistmatic and summarizing the work of otehrs, while others do the super serious work (that doesn't include not partaking in witch hunts, but it's fine to be this socially inept, and spout so much sophistry, because you see, he is the sociopath, that slot is taken so everybody else is in the clear), and all those crickets chirping in response to questions about that, including on HN, complete with downvote brigades, the flagged article by someone offering their first-hand account in response to what third parties claimed about them, and so on -- I haven't seen anyone pick up the mantle yet. Even assuming every single accusation against him is completely true, that absolutely pales in comrparison to the "response" to it, and how transparent it is. HN is completely scorched earth in that regard until downvotes are made public. That would be interesting, until then take care.
Yes, and there is strong evidence of his Wikipedia profile being whitewashed. At some point there is a pattern of behavior that clearly is resulting in accusations. This is well past that point.
The story would be a lot more powerful if it were vastly more concise and meandered far less. This reads like an angsty teens livejournal entry, which doesn't do the serious nature of the matter justice.
On the contrary, I am impressed by the author's ability to maintain a sequence of events, while being tossed from one office to another.
If you found this account to be "meandering", imagine what it would be like, trying to follow procedures in the face of this conflicting, and (in my opinion) intentionally manipulative instructions from your boss, your boss' boss, the HR department...
I have to ask, do you have anything to say regarding the content, or just the style? You seem so passionate about that content, but you never address it, just lament that it was hard done by.
Since this post casts djb in an unfavorable light, I feel it's important to post some of his emails here, so that his words can stand alone, uncolored.
As most of you know, we hired Jake for a 5-year PhD program, starting
with a 50-50 split between Tor and TU/e, and increasing TU/e percentage
assuming that the first year goes well.
The Tor Project put up a blog post yesterday afternoon saying that Jake
had resigned from Tor. The blog post doesn't say "to concentrate on his
PhD studies" or any other explanation. If you look on Twitter you'll
find a shocking statement "Jake finally raped enough people that Tor as
an organisation couldn't ignore it anymore" from Meredith Patterson, and
a rapidly growing pile of comments.
If it's true that Jake raped someone then of course he should go to jail
for this heinous crime. If it's not true then the source of the false
accusation should be appropriately punished for slander. Clearly
_someone_ has broken the law.
But it's not my job to issue punishment, or to figure out who deserves
punishment. I'm going to presume _everyone_ innocent until proven
guilty. Everyone has a right to due process: being told exactly what the
accusations are, having adequate chance to respond, having hearings in
front of a neutral judge, etc.
Often people are falsely accused of crimes. I see it as part of my duty,
as a member of a civilized society, to avoid prejudging and punishing
people who are accused and who have not had their day in court. On the
opposite side, often people are correctly accused of crimes, and I also
see it as part of my duty to avoid prejudging and punishing accusers who
have not had their day in court.
As long as nobody goes to court claiming rape or slander, I would ask
that you join me in presuming that the accusations of rape are false,
_and_ in presuming that the accusations of slander are false. Assuming
that someone _does_ go to court, I would ask that you join me in waiting
for judges and juries to do their jobs---no matter how tempting it is to
instead join a poorly informed mob on one side or the other. I'm not
saying that judges and juries never make mistakes; I'm saying that the
alternatives are much worse.
---Dan"
Furthermore, from the article:
"Isis told Tanja their story of being raped by Jacob, without identifing it as theirs. Tanja’s response was to ask “Why were they in the same bed with Jake?”, and when I asked Tanja whether, if someone she knew personally came to her with this story, she would believe them. Tanja said no, not without hearing Jake’s explanation. At this point myself and Isis left in tears, ending the conversation."
From the emails file:
"
Dear Harry,
A few weeks ago you initiated a strictly confidential, and ongoing,
conversation with me. During this conversation I have been listening
carefully to what you've been saying, frequently summarizing to confirm
my understanding, asking questions regarding various details, and
providing my advice as to the best procedures for you to follow.
I'm deeply concerned about this conversation, for two basic reasons.
First, I've now heard multiple rumors making me believe that you have
been summarizing the contents of this conversation to other people in a
highly inaccurate way. Perhaps you weren't paying close attention to
what I said, or perhaps you weren't careful in how you summarized it.
There are other possible explanations---perhaps the rumors I've heard do
not reflect what you actually said; perhaps I seriously miscommunicated
something---but the bottom line is that I'm not confident in the
reliability of the communication channel.
Second, some of the things you've said sound more severe than simply
wanting advice. It seems to me that you're facing problems that you
don't feel able to resolve on your own: your goal is for other people,
in particular me, to take action. However, a strictly confidential
conversation makes action impossible. My role in such a conversation is
purely as an advisor; complaints and other requests for action require
different procedures.
Given these concerns, I've decided that this message will be the end of
our strictly confidential conversation. I recommend that you send me a
separate message explaining in detail what problems you're facing---
without any reference to the previous conversation; again, it's
procedurally impossible for me to take action that relies even slightly
on any portion of a strictly confidential conversation---and explaining
what actions you would like me to take.
I'm sorry if this sounds excessively formal, but following proper
procedures avoids errors and provides protection for everyone involved.
---Dan"
From a followup email sent by Dan:
"
> In fact, I told both Dan and Tanja in June that I felt I had no option
> but to resign, due to sexual harassment, blackmail, and physical abuse
> by another of their students.
Mr. de Valence fails to mention that what he told me was part of a
strictly confidential conversation. I was not even at liberty to
disclose to you the existence of this conversation.
After careful consideration, given what I now see Mr. de Valence
writing, I have concluded that the following limited disclosure is
proper: with all due respect, Mr. de Valence is wildly exaggerating the
contents of his conversation with me. It is with the utmost care that I
am choosing the words "wildly exaggerating".
[...]
> That student, Jacob Appelbaum, was fired this summer from his other
> job, at The Tor Project,
The article cited by Mr. de Valence says that Mr. Appelbaum resigned
from the Tor Project. "Was fired" is not an accurate summary.
I am Mr. Appelbaum's first supervisor. I am aware that Mr. Appelbaum has
been accused online of rape. I am also aware of the following articles
to the contrary by investigative journalists:
I don't know which side is correct, and I'm certainly not in a position
to judge. Obviously it is important for criminals to be punished, and it
is also important for innocent people to be protected against false
accusations; this is why we have courts.
[...]
Six days before the deadline, Mr. de Valence said on the chat system
that he wouldn't get much done that day or the next day because he felt
"quite burnt out from last week and travel and some life crises", and
that he would check back in the next day. He then fell silent, with the
status of his work far from clear.
Three days later, after the lead student finally managed to track him
down by smartphone, Mr. de Valence sent one message saying
Hi, sorry if I was unclear, I merged the WIP code I had into master
so that other people could work on it, because I am burnt out and
can't do both implementation work and the Tor meeting at the same
time.
He then fell silent again. It turned out that the software was quite far
from a satisfactory state. The rest of the team had to stay up late
nights writing code and text to get the submission done on time.
Two weeks later, to my astonishment, Mr. de Valence gave a public talk
at the University of Waterloo on the results of the paper. He had never
asked the team for permission; he had never even notified anyone else on
the team that he was planning to give a public talk. (I first heard
about the talk from a Waterloo tweet two days before the talk.) The only
part publicly announced before that, a tweet in September, had clear
consensus of the team; the question of what to announce when had been an
explicit discussion topic for much longer. As for content, Mr. de
Valence's previous slides for a private ECRYPT-NET audience needed quite
a few fixes, were missing cryptographic context, and predated tons of
work on the paper by the rest of the team. Even today I don't know what
his Waterloo slides said; he never replied to my email asking for
slides.
"
I have to split up this comment in order to post it due to HN's length limit. See my reply below.
"Dan has written at some length about the importance of “due process”, both internally to the research group and externally to the world. But it’s telling to notice that in every such discussion, Dan carefully avoided any mention of concrete processes: he did not define the “different procedures” suddenly required for him to take action, nor what “proper procedures” should be followed."
This is patently false. Dan sent a series of emails that clearly outlined both the procedure to take to file a formal complaint, as well as Dan's reasoning for insisting on these procedures.
I recommend reading https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt in its entirety. It isn't something that can be summarized. I've done my best, but I have cherry-picked quotes here which both support and defend Dan. Why? I feel it's important for someone to point out that insisting that someone file a formal complaint is not the same thing as failing to take action.
Again, the length of https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt and the emotions that are invested in this situation will prevent most readers from actually reading the full emails in their entirety before making a judgement. But I strongly recommend taking the time to do this.
Note that in no way am I condoning or defending anything about Jacob's behavior. There is enough anecdotal evidence to be extraordinarily suspicious of him. But I am uncomfortable with the idea that Dan is getting thrown under the bus solely because he insisted that Henry file a formal complaint, and because Dan refused to take action based on off-the-record conversations.
D. Responsible Employees and Reporting22
D-1. Which school employees are obligated to report incidents of possible sexual violence to
school officials?
Answer: Under Title IX, whether an individual is obligated to report incidents of alleged
sexual violence generally depends on whether the individual is a responsible employee of
the school. A responsible employee must report incidents of sexual violence to the Title IX
coordinator or other appropriate school designee, subject to the exemption for school
counseling employees discussed in question E-3. This is because, as discussed in question
A-4, a school is obligated to address sexual violence about which a responsible employee
knew or should have known. As explained in question C-3, the Title IX coordinator must be
informed of all reports and complaints raising Title IX issues, even if the report or
22 This document addresses only Title IX’s reporting requirements. It does not address requirements under the
Clery Act or other federal, state, or local laws, or an individual school’s code of conduct.
Page 15 – Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence
complaint was initially filed with another individual or office, subject to the exemption for
school counseling employees discussed in question E-3.
D-2. Who is a “responsible employee”?
Answer: According to OCR’s 2001 Guidance, a responsible employee includes any
employee: who has the authority to take action to redress sexual violence; who has been
given the duty of reporting incidents of sexual violence or any other misconduct by
students to the Title IX coordinator or other appropriate school designee; or whom a
student could reasonably believe has this authority or duty.
23
A school must make clear to all of its employees and students which staff members are
responsible employees so that students can make informed decisions about whether to
disclose information to those employees. A school must also inform all employees of their
own reporting responsibilities and the importance of informing complainants of: the
reporting obligations of responsible employees; complainants’ option to request
confidentiality and available confidential advocacy, counseling, or other support services;
and complainants’ right to file a Title IX complaint with the school and to report a crime to
campus or local law enforcement.
======
I don't know the people involved in this story, and have no stake/stance on the claim itself (I'm not involved in infosec). However, given similar stories when Title IX issues arise in athletics where coaches/athletic directors/etc. try to avoid taking responsibility for reporting sexual harassment/assault allegations that have been vocalized and/or do not inform complainants of their full options, it sounds very likely that the professors did not take proper action if Title IX applies because the onus is on an employee to take action when the employee gets wind of an allegation. Probably the biggest case in the sports world that exemplifies this is the Sandusky rapes and Penn State, where allegations were not reported up the chain.
I'm not sure what the jurisdiction is here, and whether it was something under US jurisdiction (I saw some talk about UIC, short for Univ. of Illinois-Chicago, but also a Dutch university as well). I just thought to add some context around this type of issue that many here may not be aware of - Title IX is considered extremely serious with regards to the US education system.
> It is completely standard for a complaint to go first to the alleged
culprit, then (if that doesn't resolve the problem) to the supervisor,
and so on up the chain. This certainly isn't something I invented, and
I'm puzzled as to why Mr. de Valence seems to be skipping steps.
> Of course there are some circumstances where HR can be, should be, or
must be involved. Mr. de Valence is wrong in suggesting that I said
anything to the contrary. There wasn't any reason for me to mention HR
when I was recommending that he file a written complaint with me.
This doesn't pass the sniff test to me. If a complaint is verbal, sure culprit first and then supervisor... which is what happened. If a complaint is written, I've never heard of it being standard procedure to give a written complaint to the accused first. As for involving HR, someone seriously complaining of sexual harassment (both parties indicate a significant confidential initial talk) is a giant red flag to get HR on-board. 'We've talked, write to me first and then we'll talk about it more' doesn't smell right.
My reading of the situation? Both sides appear to be arses. The complainant keeps talking to new parties without submitting the written complaint that was requested multiple times. The supervisor engages in questionable advice. It doesn't seem any party comes out particularly clean on this one, to me (sitting on the sidelines, getting an imperfect view...).
From the article, Dan and Tanja are superiors in a workplace, not unrelated folks in a volunteer project. It's their responsibility to ensure a safe place to work - telling people to take it to the courts is an unreasonable way to start dealing with an internal HR problem.
They do not reflect a reasonable grasp of how functional workplaces happen, how the legal system works, or what the university policies they he is bound to follow require.
Even something as simple as his insistence that either the crime of rape or the crime of slander has been committed is naive and wrong, and it closely reflects one of the more damning sections from the linked blog post. (The issues are, briefly, that 1) it's not a binary and both or neither could easily be true 2) even if it was a binary result set, the legal system doesn't render innocent verdicts; all it can do is decide if something has been shown beyond reasonable doubt 3) all of that is irrelevant to his role as a supervisor and his responsibility to provide a safe workplace; he has obligations to take actions both before the legal system renders a verdict and regardless of what that verdict actually is.)
I question your impartiality in the manner considering your 3 (so far) posts on the matter dismissing it entirely.
> is so obviously mentally ill and in need of help
> I'm not an expert on mental health
> I was brought up to believe that such stories are evidence of extreme paranoia.
I too will reserve judgement until corroborating accounts are made. You may indeed be correct - but I will wait patiently. I don't think you're doing any of the accused any favors.
Some people claim similar things about rape and try to use that as evidence showing that the accusation is false ("she could just have kept her legs together"). It's a bit disgusting.
And there are good reasons for that, it's to protect innocent people from false accusations. It looks like he'd be well within his rights to sue over this allegation.
I am one of the people who upvoted this article. How else do you want people to bring problems out in to the open?
The author of the article used their real name, made several references to other people and told their side of the story. Now its up to the accused to tell their side of the story. Even take legal action if the story is untrue.
For an industry trying to get more females to take part in it, sentiments like this against possible victims is not what we should hold. Lets listen to both sides of the story and help make this industry something every one can work in.
The university involved has employed people specifically to deal with the issues raised, precisely so that people don't go to the police.
However, it seems their job is actually to limit damage to the university's reputation.
Institutional responses to sexual accusations are traditionally terrible (we're having a Royal Commission into exactly this in Australia at the moment). Horrific sexual abuses have only come to light precisely because people refused to follow the procedures and keep quiet.
Sometimes the only way to get something recognised is to go public. It's a brave step, because a lot of people will react badly to accusations of sexual misconduct (for some reason).
Yes, the university and others seem to have handled it poorly. It's not her speaking out I disagree with though, it's the naming of individuals and the inevitable witch hunt that follows. At the very least leave that as an absolute last resort, it sounds like a lot of people would have guessed the offender anyway.
I honestly don't know why we allow institutions to handle matters like this internally.
> I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations [...] are career ending.
You seem to assume sexual misconduct only happens when women are in the workplace, which is plain wrong. You do know that sexual misconduct can happen between two people who aren't women, right? The misogyny in your comment is pretty overwhelming.
> This sort of stuff, character assassination based on hearsay
It's interesting you say it's "hearsay" when Jacob Appelbaum voluntarily resigned his job at Tor after allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations which Tor then hired an independent investigator to follow-up who found them to be largely true.
I didn't know getting fired from your job was proof and conviction of a crime. Or that you only get fired because allegations are true (subtext: you don't).
I think it's likely Jacob's as much of a creep as some people say. Especially when people like Nick Farr say so, but I'm going to wait for charges and a conviction before I go spreading hearsay everywhere. I've been the victim of false accusations (not rape) before and incidents and truths absolutely get manufactured along social allegiances. It's the least pleasant thing that's ever happened to me beating out the time I almost died.
But this article is more about character assassinating djb than anything. Don't know the guy, but it doesn't sit right with me.
I'd disagree discussing your sexual exploits is harassment either, up to a point. It's harassment when it's clearly unwelcome and directed at a specific individual.
So if we sit next to each other and I keep farting even though you don't like it, it's not harassment because it's not directed at you, but if I kept walking over to your area just to fart, that's harassment.
I would have thought the distinction would be obvious considering the overlap between HN readers and the socially awkward.
Right, but I'd argue that doing that is also something that could be construed as harassing your coworkers. Perhaps not in the common usage sense, but certainly in the "spitting on someone is assault and grabbing a coworkers ass is sexual harassment" sense.
I wouldn't consider letting out a fart anymore inappropriate than excusing oneself to go to the bathroom, but doing either in a way that you know will disrupt and cause coworkers discomfort is inappropriate and harassing, not because of the act itself, but because of how you handle it.
The implication of the article is that Dan has had more than 12 weeks to make his side of the story known, and has chosen not to.
What's Dan's side of the story going to be that would change your mind about raising pitchforks? That actually Jacob wasn't fired for sexual harassment from a previous job?
> Is this the same Dan as the author of qmail? I feel I cannot use that software anymore in good conscience
Me too. I'm immediately switching back to sendmail and rot13 encryption, two technologies unstained by any connection, no matter how minor, to scandalous allegations.
> Within the University of Illinois System, ALL employees, unless specifically exempted, are “Responsible Employees” with the responsibility and authority to report sexual misconduct to their university's Title IX Coordinator. The only employees who are exempt from this reporting requirement are professional or pastoral counselors who provide work-related mental-health counseling, campus advocates who provide confidential victim assistance, and employees who are otherwise prohibited by law from disclosing information received in the course of providing professional care and treatment. Student and graduate employees are handled differently at each university. Please reference the Responsible Employee Resource Page under the "Portfolio" and Resources tabs. Please remember that all references to Responsible Employees are references to YOU and apply to you in your capacity as a university employee.
To me, this would mean that he is a mandatory reporter, and I am unaware of any scenario where you are freed from that obligation because it was a "confidential conversation".
The weird part comes in when you realize that (a) this is happening outside of the US, but (b) DJB likely has NSF grants, which require adherence to Title IX (this is what the author is referring to when he brings up Title IX training). But how does one enforce Title IX outside of the country in which it was passed?