Sexual assault accusations used to oust leader at Tor Project

By Adam Mclean

19 August 2016

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security specialist who has until recently been a core member of the Tor Project, was forced to step down from the project following a series of sexual misconduct accusations.

In a June 6 statement, Appelbaum said, “In the past few days, a calculated and targeted attack has been launched to spread vicious and spurious allegations against me. Given the way these accusations have been handled, I had little choice but to resign from my position as an advocate at the Tor Project… I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false.”

Tor is an acronym for “The Onion Router,” and is a network and tool foranonymizing one’s internet traffic. It has routinely been the target of attacks by the FBI and NSA. Slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 reveal frustration on the part of US intelligence agencies, with one partially redacted slide reading, “Tor Stinks… We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.”

Appelbaum, who previously worked with WikiLeaks, has regularly spoken against state surveillance and censorship. After WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs in 2010, Applebaum was detained at the airport in Seattle for several hours and denied access to a lawyer.

Appelbaum has also had contact with Snowden and accepted an award from Transparency International on Snowden’s behalf, giving a speech with notes Snowden gave him personally. He was the spokesperson and public face of