You know what's really sad? I met a programmer the other day who works in a related field, and he categorically states he never wants to meet or correspond with Jake. He couldn't deal with the level of harassment that Jake is getting.
WTF is an Army officer doing intergating an American civilian at the airport? They have no jurisdiction or authority off base. Military activity in a civilian context should sacre the shit out of everyone.
I thought the founding fathers had something to say about standing armies. Standing armies should be disbanded and instead we should seek advice from the 2nd amendment as to how the gov't can best guarantee rights not delegated from the people.
I highly recommend the film "Trumbo", about the Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted for refusing to say whether or not he was, or ever had been, a member of the communist party.
It is extremely relevant to all of this discussion, including the question of whether one should sacrifice the wellbeing and safety of one's family in order to promote a cause that's somewhat secondary to them.
Lots of people lied under oath, or turned other people in in order to protect their families, because they didn't want to "risk it". But Trumbo and several others stood up for their right to free speech and paid dearly for it.
It's simply disgusting, how the government can simply harass people without bringing any cases against them, preventing them from defending themselves.
It's also stupid. If anything it probably made him more determined to do what he's doing, and convinced him even more that what he's doing is right and necessary.
Deterring future whistleblowers (as mentioned below) is why the Bradley Manning has essentially become a political prisoner who is being held in solitary confinement. It is why, as the article mentions, the DOJ issued a subpoena to Twitter for the personal info of 600,000 supporters. Fear. Fear is why Rep. Peter King talks about "labeling" WikiLeaks a "foreign terrorist organization".
This article made me angry, but also sad, as I believe if we allow the government (in many cases we already have) to use tools like the Patriot Act as a kind of umbrella document to provide cover to go after normal American citizens - academia, free-speech advocates, journalists, hackers working on Tor - we allow an extremely dangerous precedent to be set that will likely lead to all kinds of future abuses of civil rights of people who simply want things like transparency in government. (I mean the real kind, not the kind you promise to implement when you are running for office).
I wish I could bet you that media coverage would cause a quick change, but I fear it'd only make most of the current people dig in deeper and faster. It will, hopefully, eventually do something...
I think the only thing that's going to change this is getting the right people in the right room to have the right quiet conversation to understand that they're inhibiting research and academic freedom with this nonsense. Unfortunately those types of conversations haven't happened much in the last three decades. The system is broken.
Everytime I read about you coming home on your twitter I'm sad and angry. The types of things that happen to you aren't supposed to be how our country works, which happens sometimes, but shouldn't be happening here. Whenever I mention you around people who work for the government it is a conversation killer. It is rare to find someone who is given enough responsibility where they feel they can be anything but helpless even if they wanted to. (Which how could they not? I don't understand it. There has to be a hell of a classified file on you that paints a nice smear job so that these normally reasonable people can sleep at night.) The worst part is so few of the individuals in this mess are evil, it is the system that we've created that does the evil and the responsibility for this is widely distributed.
You're getting screwed. I hope that changes. In the meantime... I hope they have a light touch in Texas.
The gov has enough influence in mainstream media, via corporate ownership and operative staff members, that they can mostly control the public narrative: so I'd also guess "no". If they ever lose control of the narrative, and your story maintains steam, they will likely attempt to discredit you via smear tactics.
"Land of the free , home of the brave" but the government prefer to defend freedom of speech in other countries not in USA. It's the same song in almost all the western countries, we talk about democracy and human rights , but we support dictatorships all over the world, and forget about rights when we want.
This sounds like the sort of harassment that would happen to people in dodgy countries with poor human rights records. And the truth is, America isn't a democracy under the rule of law, it's a nasty vicious oligarchy that denies human rights to its citizens while hypocritically lecturing other countries on those rights.
Doesn't have to technically be asylum. Just get a job in Europe and leave.
The exponentially increasing lawless behavior of the US over the past decade, particularly as it relates to its own citizens, is genuinely frightening.
Appelbaum already tried that. Appelbaum was engaged to and tried to marry a Canadian photographer so that he could move to Canada. Back in the day he bragged to the media about becoming an expat, but soon she figured him out and refused to get married. Appelbaum also openly bragged to Rolling Stone magazine about having dozens of GFs around the world, yet he has never considered moving in with any of them. Rightly so, IMO no woman should have to put up with his drama-queen defeatism.
Is it possible that Jacob is calling others "cowardly" because he wants to prove how brave he is?
Taking a leadership role in a movement of moral prescience is at once commendable, laudable but also dangerous, onerous. I really appreciate what Jacob is doing by putting his face to the Wikileaks organization. It is something that I personally would not want to do.
Wikileaks' stated goal is to "...be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations." In this, Jacob is succeeding. He is assuredly revealing this behavior through personal sacrifice. Part one is complete. Rejoice. Step two will be about knowledge. Now it is up to supporters of this cause to spread that information as far and as wide as possible. We've already seen the power of knowledge in this first quarter of 2011. A reality that wikileaks, twitter, the internet and the freedom of information has wrought.
Instead of spreading this message, Jacob seems to sprinkle a bit of guilt and self aggrandizing. Maybe I am speaking out of turn because the only interaction with Jacob I have is seen in here in this thread. However, let's take a step back from our Jacob- and self-imposed guilt and execute the next stage.
Edit: By all means we should empathize with Jacob and try to understand his sacrifice. We do not, however, all have to be martyrs in order to be Good(tm).
What? How does this.. what? You seem to contradict yourself: you admit he is spreading knowledge of the governments' misbehavior (and that this is a laudable thing) and then.. question mark?
Upon 5th reread: are you actually accusing him of falsely accusing others of cowardice for self-aggrandizement because these 'others' (aka: us) are not spreading the word of governmental misbehavior fast enough?
I seriously can't see any other statement in your comment, and it seems like even the anti-Jacob sentiment I quote above died after the third sentence - I'm just trying to string a single thought through the whole comment. Please clarify.
I think people who stand on the side lines and do not take part in movements that have an open and objectively good cause could be called part of the problem by not doing anything.
Let me give an example: In my country, when a motorist witnesses an accident with injured people, he is required by law to provide first aid to the injured and call additional help to the scene. Needless to say, first aid education is required when applying for a drivers license here.
Some people will help if they see injured people on the side of the road and some people will not. I call the latter cowards and they are doing harm by not providing timely help or even call for professional help. People die because other people look away and ignore them.
Now, I think what ioerror is doing is brave, and everybody not doing the same or more is a coward (including me, I'd like to do more, yet all I can do is trying to make information available to as many people as possible). He does not look away.
Bradley Manning did not look away. He is the one who is the bravest man in this equation. He knew what he did would have consequences, yet looking away while innocent people get mown down video-game stile needs a special kind of ignorance and evil to be able to ignore or even call it OK.
The US government is able to do that at the moment including large parts of the population. Cowards, all of them.
"Instead of spreading this message, Jacob seems to sprinkle a bit of guilt and self aggrandizing"
Hammerdr, I couldn't agree with you more. Willfull masochism is not bravery, or some activist good guy bagde of achievement. It's sad that our society mistakes the one with the other.
Appelbaum, I will be even more blunt than the previous commenter and say that I think you are wallowing in your Jesus complex. If you were serious about all this you would have already sued the DHS the first time you were harassed. You've been held up and hassled, how many times already? I've already lost count. You would have called up Jesse Ventura's lawyer and asked him to represent you as well. You would have contacted Alex Jones from Infowars, who specializes in reporting on DHS harassment, and gotten on his show. Instead, you keep coming back for more abuse like a masochist. You're 100% Jesus to me, and I don't mean that in a flattering way. Stop taking it, stop being a politically correct victim, get a lawyer and fight back. And stop calling people who question your ineffectual and pointless public masochism "trolls", "cowards" and "stalkers".
Did you know the law or precedent being cited that allows customs to seize computers, cell phones, etc can be circumvented by just fed-ex'ing the device across the border?
Now tell me, if I know this than why cannot a suspect of illegal activities such as a Mobster, credit card phisher, etc do it? They already do it folks..
I hate to pull a [CITATION NEEDED] but FedEx packages go through customs too. On what basis are they still allowed to seize drugs, money, counterfeit goods, weapons, but not an (alleged) terrorist's computer and cellphones?
EDIT: I used to work with a guy who had $300 worth of Made-to-measure shirts from the UK seized by customs. If they can do that, I'm sure they can find a regulation that lets them seize a laptop.
The secure way would be to upload an encrypted copy of the harddrive, bring across wiped hardware, and re-download the contents after clearing the boarder. FedEx packages go through customs, encrypted internet data does not.
That is to say -- if the intent is to sneak some data into the country, it seems obvious that it should not be available in plaintext on a physical device. With that in mind, is there ever a legitimate reason to seize all electronics, up to and including gaming consoles[1], from a security researcher (warrant had to do with MySpace, not anything console related)?
What does the US Government gain by doing this? It's not obvious to me that the deterring of similar opinions being voiced really outweight the current and future negative publicity.
It would be interesting to hear inside stories about what kind of conversations are going on on how to best handle Wikileaks. Perhaps via Wikileaks itself?
Also, I'm very grateful that people like ioerror exists. Stay strong and best of luck.
They gain the effect it is having on other people. For every one of us that gets enraged at this sort of bullshit, there's 9 more that are terrified to speak out after seeing this. The problem with America is that unless we personally are being injured we see terrible things happening and just shrug and go on with our latte-sipping, BMW-driving lives. Our freedoms are slowly being eroded and no one really cares as long as they can keep watching TV and driving their fat asses to McDonalds every day. It's like the toad in the pot with the water getting hotter ever-so-slowly...
Julian Assange urges people to take a "scientific" approach to media reports, and to ask to see the primary documents. Well, allow me to be "scientific" with regards to all these reports about Jacob Appelbaum's customs&border issues right now: has Appelbaum ever published his correspondence with the DHS? His FOIA requests? Denial letters he has received from government agencies, the DHS, the TSA, CBP, ICE? The answer is no, no and no. There is no way to verify "scientifically" any of his statements. All we have are Appelbaum's claims on Twitter that "I was told by the G-man that Obama himself has a problem with me"... seriously, how can someone who claims to be a hacker believe such a statement, straight from the mouth of a government goon, cos hey, we all know the G-men never ever lie or exaggerate in order to intimidate, right? Still, no documentation whatsoever, no correspondence between Appelbaum and the DHS. Again, think what you will about Obama allegedly having a personal problem with Appelbaum, this is just not adding up for me.
How many reading this article, and are disgusted by these clearly unconstitutional actions, are still living in the USA? How many of you are paying taxes to the very government that is using this money to fund this harassment, among other illegal activities?
You're providing material support to a terrorist organization! (presuming some number of harassed people are terrorized by the harassment.)
What are you doing to compensate for this material support? Are you going to stop it, withdraw your support? Or are you going to expend energy to compensate for the aiding these oppressors?
This is a rhetorical question. I've my own answer, and I hope you have yours.
It's not as easy to move out of the country as you seem to think, for a lot of us. Yes, it really is disturbing that I now live in a country that tortures people, and holds them for years without any trial at all. It's disturbing that it seems that humans are getting to be less and less important to our government than corporations all the time.
Still, what can I do? I'm disabled, and dependent on the government for survival. The only way I'm going to be able to get out of this country is by dying.
[+] [-] neilk|15 years ago|reply
And it is straight up harassment.
[+] [-] ioerror|15 years ago|reply
It's really awkward to date when the n-th date involves a discussion of possible harassing police raids in the middle of the night.
[+] [-] Bdennyw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|15 years ago|reply
It is extremely relevant to all of this discussion, including the question of whether one should sacrifice the wellbeing and safety of one's family in order to promote a cause that's somewhat secondary to them.
Lots of people lied under oath, or turned other people in in order to protect their families, because they didn't want to "risk it". But Trumbo and several others stood up for their right to free speech and paid dearly for it.
[+] [-] ioerror|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitrogen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GvS|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jevinskie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mthsf|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] defroost|15 years ago|reply
This article made me angry, but also sad, as I believe if we allow the government (in many cases we already have) to use tools like the Patriot Act as a kind of umbrella document to provide cover to go after normal American citizens - academia, free-speech advocates, journalists, hackers working on Tor - we allow an extremely dangerous precedent to be set that will likely lead to all kinds of future abuses of civil rights of people who simply want things like transparency in government. (I mean the real kind, not the kind you promise to implement when you are running for office).
Anyway, Glen Greenwald gave an excellent talk on WikiLeaks and Why They Matter (55:00 minutes mark of video) He speaks eloquently on this very issue. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/09...
[+] [-] ioerror|15 years ago|reply
I wonder if this article or any of the others will change the way that Customs and the rest of the Federal Government treat me?
I'm guessing "no" - care to take any bets?
[+] [-] djcapelis|15 years ago|reply
I think the only thing that's going to change this is getting the right people in the right room to have the right quiet conversation to understand that they're inhibiting research and academic freedom with this nonsense. Unfortunately those types of conversations haven't happened much in the last three decades. The system is broken.
Everytime I read about you coming home on your twitter I'm sad and angry. The types of things that happen to you aren't supposed to be how our country works, which happens sometimes, but shouldn't be happening here. Whenever I mention you around people who work for the government it is a conversation killer. It is rare to find someone who is given enough responsibility where they feel they can be anything but helpless even if they wanted to. (Which how could they not? I don't understand it. There has to be a hell of a classified file on you that paints a nice smear job so that these normally reasonable people can sleep at night.) The worst part is so few of the individuals in this mess are evil, it is the system that we've created that does the evil and the responsibility for this is widely distributed.
You're getting screwed. I hope that changes. In the meantime... I hope they have a light touch in Texas.
[+] [-] mcantelon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jberryman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghostDancer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _delirium|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cabalamat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhume|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|15 years ago|reply
The exponentially increasing lawless behavior of the US over the past decade, particularly as it relates to its own citizens, is genuinely frightening.
[+] [-] mtex|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hammerdr|15 years ago|reply
Is it possible that Jacob is calling others "cowardly" because he wants to prove how brave he is?
Taking a leadership role in a movement of moral prescience is at once commendable, laudable but also dangerous, onerous. I really appreciate what Jacob is doing by putting his face to the Wikileaks organization. It is something that I personally would not want to do.
Wikileaks' stated goal is to "...be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations." In this, Jacob is succeeding. He is assuredly revealing this behavior through personal sacrifice. Part one is complete. Rejoice. Step two will be about knowledge. Now it is up to supporters of this cause to spread that information as far and as wide as possible. We've already seen the power of knowledge in this first quarter of 2011. A reality that wikileaks, twitter, the internet and the freedom of information has wrought.
Instead of spreading this message, Jacob seems to sprinkle a bit of guilt and self aggrandizing. Maybe I am speaking out of turn because the only interaction with Jacob I have is seen in here in this thread. However, let's take a step back from our Jacob- and self-imposed guilt and execute the next stage.
Edit: By all means we should empathize with Jacob and try to understand his sacrifice. We do not, however, all have to be martyrs in order to be Good(tm).
[+] [-] Pahalial|15 years ago|reply
Upon 5th reread: are you actually accusing him of falsely accusing others of cowardice for self-aggrandizement because these 'others' (aka: us) are not spreading the word of governmental misbehavior fast enough?
I seriously can't see any other statement in your comment, and it seems like even the anti-Jacob sentiment I quote above died after the third sentence - I'm just trying to string a single thought through the whole comment. Please clarify.
[+] [-] ioerror|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitarr|15 years ago|reply
Let me give an example: In my country, when a motorist witnesses an accident with injured people, he is required by law to provide first aid to the injured and call additional help to the scene. Needless to say, first aid education is required when applying for a drivers license here.
Some people will help if they see injured people on the side of the road and some people will not. I call the latter cowards and they are doing harm by not providing timely help or even call for professional help. People die because other people look away and ignore them.
Now, I think what ioerror is doing is brave, and everybody not doing the same or more is a coward (including me, I'd like to do more, yet all I can do is trying to make information available to as many people as possible). He does not look away.
Bradley Manning did not look away. He is the one who is the bravest man in this equation. He knew what he did would have consequences, yet looking away while innocent people get mown down video-game stile needs a special kind of ignorance and evil to be able to ignore or even call it OK.
The US government is able to do that at the moment including large parts of the population. Cowards, all of them.
[+] [-] mtex|15 years ago|reply
Hammerdr, I couldn't agree with you more. Willfull masochism is not bravery, or some activist good guy bagde of achievement. It's sad that our society mistakes the one with the other.
Appelbaum, I will be even more blunt than the previous commenter and say that I think you are wallowing in your Jesus complex. If you were serious about all this you would have already sued the DHS the first time you were harassed. You've been held up and hassled, how many times already? I've already lost count. You would have called up Jesse Ventura's lawyer and asked him to represent you as well. You would have contacted Alex Jones from Infowars, who specializes in reporting on DHS harassment, and gotten on his show. Instead, you keep coming back for more abuse like a masochist. You're 100% Jesus to me, and I don't mean that in a flattering way. Stop taking it, stop being a politically correct victim, get a lawyer and fight back. And stop calling people who question your ineffectual and pointless public masochism "trolls", "cowards" and "stalkers".
[+] [-] BasDirks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thangalin|15 years ago|reply
An open letter to President Obama on retaliation against whistleblowers.
[+] [-] danenania|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebaysucks|15 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, I love the principles your country was founded upon, but somehow you turned into testicle grabbing sociopaths.
[+] [-] shareme|15 years ago|reply
Did you know the law or precedent being cited that allows customs to seize computers, cell phones, etc can be circumvented by just fed-ex'ing the device across the border?
Now tell me, if I know this than why cannot a suspect of illegal activities such as a Mobster, credit card phisher, etc do it? They already do it folks..
[+] [-] kgo|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: I used to work with a guy who had $300 worth of Made-to-measure shirts from the UK seized by customs. If they can do that, I'm sure they can find a regulation that lets them seize a laptop.
[+] [-] oniTony|15 years ago|reply
That is to say -- if the intent is to sneak some data into the country, it seems obvious that it should not be available in plaintext on a physical device. With that in mind, is there ever a legitimate reason to seize all electronics, up to and including gaming consoles[1], from a security researcher (warrant had to do with MySpace, not anything console related)?
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmO7wQKCMw#t=40s
[+] [-] Zaak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zyfo|15 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to hear inside stories about what kind of conversations are going on on how to best handle Wikileaks. Perhaps via Wikileaks itself?
Also, I'm very grateful that people like ioerror exists. Stay strong and best of luck.
[+] [-] ascendant|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtex|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nika|15 years ago|reply
You're providing material support to a terrorist organization! (presuming some number of harassed people are terrorized by the harassment.)
What are you doing to compensate for this material support? Are you going to stop it, withdraw your support? Or are you going to expend energy to compensate for the aiding these oppressors?
This is a rhetorical question. I've my own answer, and I hope you have yours.
[+] [-] spicycat|15 years ago|reply
Still, what can I do? I'm disabled, and dependent on the government for survival. The only way I'm going to be able to get out of this country is by dying.
[+] [-] phlux|15 years ago|reply
Its a great docu about wikileaks.