Arjen Kamphuis asked me for protection from Debian before disappearance
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
20 August is the sixth anniversary of the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis.
Last weekend I went to Marion, Kansas and briefly discussed the threats to Kamphuis and other people in the world of investigative journalism.
After visiting there, I decided to go through my correspondence with Kamphuis and see if there was anything interesting to publish.
In October 2017, Kamphuis and I discussed the possibility that he could mentor one of the candidates for the now disgraced Outreachy program. Kamphuis looked at the details and asked me for protection against the Debian bureaucracy:
Subject: Re: PKI clean room project - Outreachy application Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 17:46:45 +0200 From: Arjen Kamphuis <arjen@pgknowledge.eu> Reply-To: arjen@pgknowledge.eu Organization: Pretty Good Knowledge To: Silva Arapi <silva.arapi@gmail.com>, Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> CC: Maurice <maurice@pgknowledge.eu>
Hi Daniel, Silva,
Spoke with team about Outreachy mentorships. Maurice Verheesen (FSFE & senior systems engineer) and Bill Binney (Frm NSA Technical Director) were happy to mentor Silva on this project. They both met her last august and got along fine.
We are a bit concerned about the strict and formal language here: https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/mentor-faq/
We'd like to agree Daniel will protect us from any Debian project bureaucracy so all time is spent on actually working the problem.
I'm happy to arrange for a trip after November 17th to Amsterdam when Bill is back in town.
Best regards, Arjen
At the time, the Debian Project Leader was Chris Lamb. Lamb is British, he is a graduate of Warwick University and his father is a corporate lawyer. He is the type of person that the British security services would be tempted to trust or even employ for better or worse. For years now people have speculated that Debian is really owned by the NSA and GCHQ, the American and British intelligence agencies responsible for electronic espionage.
Here is a photo of Kamphuis giving a talk at the OSCAL conference in 2018, Tirana, Albania, shortly before he vanished. He encourages everybody to stay safe.
Enkelena Haxhiu (Haxhija) and I gave a talk on the same stage. I feel that our choice of slides is a better reflection of the toxic culture in Debian today.
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved. █