Jacob Appelbaum: “But he does good work.”
So the plagiarism stuff is now not even getting mentioned anymore? &quot;But he&#x27;s a rapist&quot;, or what?<p>edit:<p>&gt; Daily Dot has since raised significant questions for the people involved in this website.<p>Is it normal for &quot;journalists&quot; to publically announce on Twitter a set of questions they are sending to other people? Is that regular practice, in what other cases has this been done? As for the questions themselves<p>&gt; #1 Out of the 12 women who initially signed the solidarity letter, have any expressed a desire to retract their names, given that these new witnesses have come forward?<p>Why would they? What on that site is incompatible with there being real victims? Take this for example<p>&gt; <i>we are observing – beyond the allegations, that are not for us to comment on specifically – an egregious character assassination is being played out with numerous defamations online and offline.</i><p>Are there witnesses for &quot;rapist, sociopath, plagiarist&quot;? Is there even anyone willing to seriously discuss the latter two? No? Then it&#x27;s still a campaign of character assassination, day N and counting.<p>&gt; #2 Your letter claims the “mainstream media” -- I presume that is a reference to the Daily Dot and Gizmodo -- is reporting on uncorroborated rumors. Could you specify how many witnesses to an incident your group believes is necessary to corroborate its occurrence?<p>Does he believe that time machines exist, does this &quot;journalist&quot; think that even a million witnesses coming forward will change the initial days of the blitz as they happened?<p>&gt; #3 With regards to “Phoenix,” her allegations of sexual harassment have been corroborated by two witnesses -- Lee and Budington. Do you consider these witnesses, as your letter describes, as part of a “one-sided attack on [Appelbaum’s] character and work”?<p>Are you denying it&#x27;s one sided? If not, has that journalist asked any hard questions about the plagiarism claims? Has anyone on HN, or elsewhere? As for the coordination, if it&#x27;s true that TimeToDieJake tweet hours before the site went live, as it&#x27;s claimed on cryptome, of course it&#x27;s coordinated. And when a coordinated attack happens, and then some more stuff gets added that wasn&#x27;t part of that, that doesn&#x27;t mean a coordinated attack didn&#x27;t happen.<p>&gt; #4 If not, does your group plan to update its website (ourresponse.org) to include a statement regarding this substantiated claim of sexual harassment?<p>Again, why would they? The wording does absolutely account for that possibility.<p>&gt; <i>We do not claim to know what happened in precise situations that we were not present for, and we do not want to trivialise and minimise any pain that may have been caused.</i><p>But that&#x27;s not enough, is it. Maybe someone can make a Chrome plugin that just appends (rapist, sociopath, plagarist) behind any mention of Appelbaum&#x27;s name, on any website.<p>&gt; #5 Sources say some of the people who signed the document were aware of allegations months ago and refuted them at that time as well. Is that accurate?<p>Finally, an actually significant question.<p>&gt; #6 Can you say whose idea it was to draft a statement in support of Appelbaum?<p>Which brings me back to the question whether this kind of modus operandi is normal for journalists.