With hindsight, I picked the wrong day to 3D print a Cap’n Crunch whistle downloaded from Thingiverse. I was covering the hackspace textile evening, so I set the Ultimaker going and headed off to spend my evening making a laptop pouch. My whistle, a reasonable reproduction of the famous cereal packet novelty whose 2600 Hz tone allowed special access to American telephone networks, was ready for me to take away as I headed home.
The next day, there it was. The legendary phreaker [John Draper], also known as [Captain Crunch] after his use of that free whistle, was exposed as having a history of inappropriate conduct towards teenage boys and young men who he encountered in his tours of the hacker community as a celebrity speaker.
My whistle will no longer go on a lanyard as a piece of cool ephemera, it’s sitting forlornly on my bench. The constant procession of harassment allegations that have been in the news of late have arrived at our doorstep.
There is little point in writing a lecture about the harm a culture of harassment causes, we know that you are aware that it is a bad thing. Even the people who do the harassment know that what they are doing is wrong, so to pen such a lecture would be about as useful as the ineffectual South Park counselor character saying “Don’t do naughty stuff, m’kay”.
It’s easy to tell yourself this is something done by a tiny minority of so-called bad apples who most people will never encounter, that ours is a safe community in which this can happen only to other people, and that when it happens someone will always deal with the perpetrator. But this just hasn’t been true, and too many people’s lives have been affected as a result.
Harassment and abuse, when they come, are facilitated by an imbalance in the power dynamic: the abuser is in a position to wield their greater power. This imbalance can exist in many forms, but obvious examples might be across social, age, gender, disability, or racial lines. A celebrity like [Crunch] could wield immense power compared to his victims, to the extent that he could continue with impunity and any who might have spoken out would not have been believed. Put yourself in the place of an impressionable young hacker to whom someone like [Crunch] is a God-like figure, and you might see how easily it could happen.
Why did it take so long for these reports to surface? The power dynamic can have the effect of placing belief in the one with the power. When you hear of abuse it’s important to identify any power imbalance involved and begin your thinking on the side of the person at the bottom of it rather than the one at the top. This helps lead to action when reports are received. The organized events mentioned in the story have codes of conduct that are now being followed for action and have resulted in [Captain Crunch] being banned from the conferences..
Our community must be both welcoming and supportive, and propagate a culture in which it is safe to report bad behavior in the expectation that it will result in action. Nobody in our community should have to feel unsafe, therefore it behooves upon all of us to ensure that we make our environment as accepting and inclusive a space as possible. We should look upon ourselves as outsiders would, and ask whether our deeds match how we would like ourselves to be seen.
Hackaday has a code of conduct for the events we run, and we expect it to be taken seriously. We are of one mind that there is to be zero tolerance no matter whether a bad actor is a celebrity speaker, or just some random hacker. That’s not to say that we’re resting on our laurels though, a code of conduct should always be under review rather than a done deal. We’ve licensed our code of conduct under the CC BY 3.0 license. We encourage you to adopt a code of conduct for you own events and organizations, and help us by evolving it where necessary.
When the [Crunch] story broke, we had one of our behind-the-scenes discussions among the Hackaday crew in which there was agreement that our position should be unequivocal on the matter. It is with sadness that we see an icon become tarnished, but we think you will agree with us that safety and inclusion in our community are far more important.
That damn’ 3D printed whistle didn’t work properly anyway.
Y’all have bolstered my faith in this community. Great minds abound, not just the usual wishy-washy dullards with knuckles dragging on the ground.
Can’t say though that I take kindly to those equating or associating the autistic with pedophilia, especially seeing as my Son is mildly autistic. Single dad made it harder. There is no connection. I do wish to say something much more powerful… but letting it drop as I do like letting folks identify themselves for what they are so I know whom not to associate with.
Not surprised at all, Moshe Kasher talked about the Draper going to raves trying to pick up boys on the Joe Rogan podcast. https://youtu.be/nNJ5p6sAn6I?t=1h6m20s
What bothers me is now a supposed incident concerning James Levine, (not a relation!) has surfaced. We really need to take a stronger look at this insanity. Jenny yes I do know who the fellow in question was, and I keep bumping into his minions at a number of events, including the coming VCF East event….
I had to find out who James Levine is….. what I fiend intriguing is that a lot of these (most) of these case are things that go back 20,30,40 years. Yet things are only surfacing now.
About 10 years ago I was accosted by an older male when I stopped at a highway rest stop on my way to a convention. I was so disturbed by the encounter I didn’t hang around but but drove straight to the nearest police station and reported the incident. The female police office who took the report struggled to compose herself but I made my report without thinking twice about it. And as word of the incident made it way to others attending the convention I became the butt of many jokes. My life didn’t take a turn for the worse I didn’t let the incident take control of my life. It’s MY life and I am responsible for what it turns out like.
Every time I go past a highway rest stop I to this day I think twice about stopping. But I still stop at rest stops and sleep in van on the side of the road and my life continues. Maybe one day if I hear the guy is a famous …..
Didn’t about 40 totally bullshit!t comments from one individual (along with replies) disappear overnight?
Who deleted them and why? And how?
I wondered the same…
A comment tree I posted in got removed. I didn’t find think the OP was being disrespectful, as a matter of fact he only tried to offer an alternative view. I admit I was being a bit of an ass though I still don’t think it should have been removed. Censorship is not cool hackaday..
Sorry about that. Because WordPress runs the way it does, comments are stored as a graph. Delete the parent node, and the children no longer get displayed. They’re still in our DB, but they’re “gone” for all practical purposes. Again, sorry.
If someone writes something that gets reported enough, and it’s truly crappy, we delete it. If a comment is significantly negative and unconstructive, we delete it even if it’s not reported.
Put these two together, and what do you get? Don’t bother replying to a post that’s obviously crappy. It’ll just get deleted anyway, and your reply with it. Instead, save yourself the time and effort, and just click the “report” button and it’ll go away sooner.
Who? Mike, Brian, Jenny, or myself … the editors.
Why? I don’t know which comments, but if you describe them as “totally BS”, I’m pretty sure that was the reason. When readers report a comment enough — little grey link off to the right — it goes back into the moderation queue. If we read through it and decide that it’s indeed “totally BS”, we just trash it.
How? Admin privs and a mouseclick. :)
By reporting nonconstructive or offensive comments, you can help us.
Conservative women are harrased and purged – by other women.
http://bit.ly/2AJBaip
IDK. I read that post and came away with “one woman offends some other people, and they don’t invite her to their events any more.” The gender/politics narratives here are kinda secondary. If you publically poop on an event, you can’t really expect the organizers to invite you to the next one, right?
Meh.
When bad people invent cool things are those things any less cool?
Before you answer that, what about the good people who invent things that get used for bad?
teach us the phreaking sometime plz
I was sexually seduced (I refuse to use the words raped, abused or molested) by a 30+ year-old male when I was 11 years old. I didn’t feel that he had done anything wrong. Yet I did not turn out homosexual. I still wouldn’t see him scandalised or put in prison since by now Robbie would be around 80 years old. Many of my classmates had been seduced by older women, some surely teachers. We had a different idea off rape then, and I’m still not convinced that the new definitions are correct.
You can add my name to that growing list of people who had a run-in with Draper.
That he would use Asperger’s as a excuse…