© Jacob Appelbaum/Creative Commons
Computer science researcher and WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, in 2005; the US government used secret orders to compel Google and ISP Sonic to give up his personal email records.
Computer science researcher and WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, in 2005; the US government used secret orders to compel Google and ISP Sonic to give up his personal email records.
Somewhere, a US government official is reading through a list of those who sent or received an email from Jacob Appelbaum, a 28-year-old computer science researcher at the University of Washington who volunteered for WikiLeaks. Among those listed will be my name, a journalist who interviewed Appelbaum for a book about the digital revolution.
Appelbaum is a spokesman for Tor, a free internet anonymising software that helps people defend themselves against internet surveillance. He's spent five years teaching activists around the world how to install and use the service to avoid being monitored by repressive governments. It's exactly the sort of technology Secretary of State Hilary Clinton praised in her famous "Internet Freedom" speech in January 2010, when she promised US government support for the designers of technology that circumvented blocks or firewalls. Now, Appelbaum finds himself a target of his own government as a result of his friendship with Julian Assange and the fact WikiLeaks used the Tor software.
