Arjen Kamphuis: last years before disappearance, 6th anniversary on 20 August, press freedom
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
The disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis occurred at almost the same time as the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi (Saudi dissident/journalist) and the character attacks/smearing campaign against my own family.
Kamphuis was particularly interested in the topic of press freedom and he co-authored the book Information Security for Investigative Journalists. It was formerly distributed by The Center for Investigative Journalism.
The techniques described by Khashoggi are just as relevant for entrepreneurs, investors and leadership in any type of non-profit or civil society organization. The majority of the information we receive today may have some political or economic value to a competitor or adversary. Therefore, securing the tools we use for handling information is not only vital for success, it is vital for survival.
When attending the recent anniversary event for the raid on the Marion County Record, I raised the topic of Kamphuis' disappearance and the relevance of his work to other small newspapers like the Record no matter where they are in Kansas or the rest of the world. You simply never know in advance when a raid or political interference is going to come. Whether you are running a small business or a team of investigative reporters, the IT system has to be fully secured before the opportunities start walking in your door.
2007: gendo.nl web site first appears
The web site is currently offline
gendo.nl - backup copy. The site currently redirects to gendo.ch, which was registered later
2011: Kamphuis and colleagues register the domain name gendo.ch
The registration date can be found using the Swiss WHOIS service.
Despite the Swiss domain name, it still has a Dutch business address on the bottom of the web pages.
2013: book: Information Security for Investigative Journalists
Published by The Center for Investigative Journalism (TCIJ), this was the book that made Kamphuis famous with those concerned about press freedom.
Kamphuis published a copy of the book for people to download.
Another backup copy of the book (2015 revision).
2 December 2013 - interview on RT (Russia Today) program The Kaiser Report with Max Kaiser
The interview is described on Kamphuis' blog - archive copy.
He is the second guest in the program, fast forward to 12:40 to see Kamphuis.
The interview is shared on Youtube but it doesn't work in many regions.
There is a backup copy of the interview here in the Wayback Machine.
2014 - 2016 - MEK moves to Albania
According to Wikipedia, MEK, an Iranian dissident group, was moved from Iraq to Albania with US help.
It is simply coincidence that so many people took an interest in Albania at the same time.
OSCAL 2016
Archived copy of the list of speakers from OSCAL 2016.
Kamphuis' name does not appear in the list.
OSCAL 2017 in Tirana, Albania
Kamphuis and I first met at OSCAL, an event organized each year in Albania. The event attracted visitors from all over the Balkan countries and the rest of Europe.
May 2017: Mediawiki Commons photo gallery from OSCAL 2017 conference in Tirana, Albania. This was the first time I met Kamphuis. We were both invited to the conference as speakers. I saw some of Kamphuis' talk. On Saturday night, we both independently became lost looking for the speakers' dinner. We came across each other walking in opposite directions along the road that follows the river bank. Shortly after that we found the restaurant. By an odd coincidence, the restaurant was run by the parents of a whistleblower, Anisa Kuci, one of the women who helped reveal there is abuse and modern slavery in the open source supply chain.
Direct link to group photo in the gallery. Kamphuis is just below the tree in the middle, wearing dark sunglasses. I'm standing slightly to the right and further back.
Direct link to gallery photos where Kamphuis is speaking. He is pictured standing in front of a slide about Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.
July/August 2017, FOSSCamp
The Albanians organize a trip to Greece. They sent duplicate funding requests to various non-profit open source groups. It was a workshop on the beach.
Many of the volunteers who attended the OSCAL event were not invited to the FOSSCamp. Only the girlfriends of the organizers were given help submitting the funding requests.
Lior Kaplan, another Debian Developer, travels from Israel to join the group and try to figure out what is really going on there.
Kaplan publishes some reports on his blog:
- FOSScamp Syros 2017 – day 1 - Kaplan notes that I informed him about the event, this is true.
- FOSScamp Syros 2017 – day 2
- FOSScamp Syros 2017 – day 3
Cryptoparty 2017 in Tirana, Albania
September 2017: Mediawiki Commons photo gallery from Cryptoparty 2017 in Tirana, Albania. Kamphuis gave an opening presentation. Kamphuis and I led different workshops about different topics in information security.
Direct link to group photo, Kamphuis is in the center. The woman standing closest to Kamphuis is another whistleblower, Kristi Progri, one of the women who helped reveal there is abuse and modern slavery in the open source supply chain. I've cropped the photo below:
Here is Kamphuis giving a presentation at the beginning of the Cryptoparty:
Direct link to one of the photos where I am leading a workshop in the same Cryptoparty.
The Cryptoparty was held in a government building directly behind the Albanian parliament.
Late 2017, Kamphuis and colleagues set up company Pretty Good Knowledge BV
Third party company information web site asserts the company was established on 28 November 2017 but they seem to be using the domain name earlier than that for emails in October 2017.
Link to official Dutch company records (payment required) for company number (KVK) 70168245
Backup copy of the web site from late 2017
The web site has the slogan "Massive Data Analytics: Highly Secure. Respecting Privacy."
There is a list of all pages on the web site
The backup copy of the RSS feed is interesting. There are four blog posts that track the evolution of the company from 2016 to 2018. The last blog is in November 2018, four months after Kamphuis disappeared.
October 2017, discussion about mentoring a woman in Outreachy
Kamphuis and I had discussions about whether he would want to act as a mentor for one of the women in the controversial Outreachy program.
This particular email is brilliant because Kamphuis correctly identifies the risks of bureaucracy and dirty politics around the Outreachy program. I have also set up the web site Outreachy.Dating to help understand the reality of how the program is failing women and simply creating new opportunities for favoritism.
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 same time, we discussed the problems of harassment and abuse of women in the Albanian hackerspace.
The email below is discussed in more detail in the blog posts:
- When I discovered people trafficking in open source software
- Harassment / Abuse evidence: Giannis Konstantinidis & Debian's falsified legal documents
Subject: Re: Outreachy, Open Labs follow-up Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 23:28:21 +0200 From: Arjen Kamphuis <arjen@pgknowledge.eu> Organization: Pretty Good Knowledge To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
Hi Daniel,
Signed up two mentors for Silva. Did not receive detailed info from others to persue mentor-selection.
Been traveling like crazy (conference season) so did not have time to look into other issues. Also don't want to get caught up in internal politics but have noticed some strange events around the Dutch visit I've organised and co-funded for next month. Will have discusson about that with Openlabs and especially Rendon who seems to put himself in positions of control in cases he should not.
Best, Arjen
November 2017, Albanians travel to Netherlands to visit Kamphuis at Hack42 hackerspace
The Hack42 wiki has a report on their wiki page.
There was a lot of fighting in the Albanian group about which volunteers would win the tickets to visit the Netherlands.
In this photo ( source) we can see that Kamphuis is towards the right and he appears to have his arms around two of the women, Kristi Progri, who is one of the whistleblowers and on the right side Sidorela Uku.
Sidorela is one of the Albanian volunteers who was identified asking for Wikimedia Foundation to give grants to her employer, while presenting herself as a volunteer in the hackerspace rather than an employee of the ultimate beneficiary.
March 2018, Iranian journalists arrested by mistake in Albania
A detailed news report explores a series of unsubstantiated accusations against Iran and the proximity between Mossad and the MEK in Albania.
In this case, the journalists may have been set up or wrongly accused. It seems to be part of a pattern.
May 2018, OSCAL 2018 in Tirana, Albania
The next time our paths crossed was at the 2018 edition of the OSCAL conference in Tirana, Albania.
MediaWiki Commons photo gallery from OSCAL 2018.
Photo of Enkelena Haxhiu (Haxhija) and Amire Gerguri with my twenty meter loop antenna.
Kamphuis in a panel discussion.
People taking a photo of Kamphuis during his talk.
Kamphuis is giving his talk, suitcase
Kamphuis talking to somebody on the left, has back to the camera
One of my workshops for the Albanians
Enkelena Haxhiu and I giving a talk in the Tirana Pyramid
Enkelena Haxhiu and I giving a talk in the Tirana Pyramid
Kamphuis watching the same talk
Kamphuis watching the same tal k
Kamphuis' slide tells us to "Stay safe", not long before he disappears. He has chosen a picture of himself in a bullet-proof vest.
Kamphuis and the "Stay safe" message from a different angle.
Possibly the last time I saw Arjen Kamphuis. That's me in the white polo shirt, black backpack and baseball cap with my back to the camera. Kamphuis was sitting right behind me. The photo appears to be taken at the very end of the event just as everybody got up to leave.
21 July - 5 August 2018, DebConf18 in Taiwan
Some of the women from Albania and Kosovo are offered full bursaries for flights and accommodation at DebConf18 in Taiwan.
A photo gallery is posted by Jiin-Mei Lin (Macy Lin) on Google.
One of the most widely discussed photographs shows Lior Kaplan from Israel with his arm around one of the Albanian women. The woman is the same woman who appeared in other photographs with Arjen Kamphuis and the mayor of Tirana. It is one of the female Albanian whistleblowers who revealed the real cases of harassment, abuse and exploitation occurred in the Albanian Open Labs Hackerspace.
Direct link to the photo in the gallery from Macy Lin.
The woman in the back row on the left is Enkelena Haxhiu. This is the same woman I gave a talk with at OSCAL 2018, that was three months before DebConf. Enkelena was one of our most successful students in Google Summer of Code. Enkelena worked on the project creating a Firefox Extension for Free Software Habits.
The woman in a red dress is Diellza Shabani. After being selected for Google Summer of Code, she was offered a job with another company, they gave her a free laptop and a place to work in her city. With benefits like these, she decided to resign from Google Summer of Code and focus on the other job instead.
The woman between Diellza and Lior is Elena Gjevuka. Elena was already engaged when she went to DebConf18. She got married in August 2018, in the middle of her Google Summer of Code project. Some of the other Debian people were really angry that they spent so much money on long distance travel for a woman who is already taken so they started spreading horrible rumors that she is my girlfriend.
There is an expectation in Debian that female interns are single and young and without children. In developing countries like Kosovo, the mean age for women to marry is a little bit lower than it is in wealthy western countries. This was a real shock for people in the Debian world.
Two or three months after this photo was taken, the woman with Lior's arm around her was given the job at the GNOME Foundation.
20 August 2018 - disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis
Various web sites and news reports appear about the disappearance.
- Wikipedia - Arjen Kamphuis
- ArjenKamphuis.EU - page presumably created by colleagues or business partners. The whois records tell us it is associated with Gendo and the web site Gendo.NL.
- Heavy: Arjen Kamphuis, WikiLeaks Consultant Missing: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
- Vera Wilde published a lengthy blog
- A Security Expert Tied to WikiLeaks Vanishes, and the Internet Is Abuzz
- Dutch police - missing person report
September 2018 in Tirana, Albania
LibreOffice Conference 2018 takes place in Tirana, Albania.
The Albanian photographer has published a photo gallery so we can try to work out who was there from each country and company.
November 2018, multiple news reports appear about MEK in Albania
On 5 November, the report about Mossad false flag operations appeared. That report is the source for some of the other events in the timeline above.
On 9 November, the Guardian published a report.
August 2019, Albanians discuss some form of commemoration for Kamphuis
The following email appeared in the Open Labs forum.
Subject: Into nothingness - the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 12:11:20 +0000 From: Redon Skikuli via Open Labs Hackerspace Forum <info@openlabs.cc> Reply-To: Open Labs Hackerspace Forum
About a year ago, one of our close friends and a member of Hack42 hackersace went on a hikingtrip in Norway… (relevant post from @pocock Arjen Kamphuis <https://forum.openlabs.cc/t/arjen-kamphuis/1417>)
His friends started a campaign to find his whereabouts using several search-/media-/facebook-/sticker-/drives channels, but the number of possible fruitful actions to take is getting low at this point.
Besides running projects in his spirit (like the pile of laptops he prepared for our hackerspace and jump starting the first CryptoParty https://hack42.nl/wiki/Crypto_Party_Tirana), his friends from Netherlands, came up with the idea of an art show (link https://hack42.nl/wiki/Into_nothingness_-_the_disappearance_of_Arjen_Kamphuis). They will be hosting an exposition in our hacker-chapel for a couple of weeks around his birthday in January 2020 and I wanted propose to join this initiative by doing something similar in Tirana. What do you think?
R.S
July 2022, cyberattacks against Albanian parliament
There are rumors that Iran is responsible.
Iran does not like the MEK in Albania.
October 2022, more reports about MEK / Israel collaboration
News report about the ambassador of Israel meeting the MEK boss.
The Albanian PM subsequently visits Israel to find out about help with cybersecurity.
April 2024, Debian censorship battle reveals identities of Albanian whistleblowers
Debian censored the old Debian.Day web site (backup copy) with a verdict signed on World Press Freedom Day. Uncanny.
The victim of the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide, Frans Pop, was Dutch like Arjen Kamphuis. Another coincidence.
Kamphuis' birthday, according to Wikipedia, is 26 January, which is Australia Day, Australia's national holiday. Wikileaks and Julian Assange are from Australia. Go figure.
During the European Elections, I published a private email from Arjen Kamphuis showing how both of us independently discovered the problems with harassment and abuse originated with two men in Albania:
Subject: Re: Outreachy, Open Labs follow-up Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 23:28:21 +0200 From: Arjen Kamphuis <arjen@pgknowledge.eu> Organization: Pretty Good Knowledge To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
Hi Daniel,
Signed up two mentors for Silva. Did not receive detailed info from others to persue mentor-selection.
Been traveling like crazy (conference season) so did not have time to look into other issues. Also don't want to get caught up in internal politics but have noticed some strange events around the Dutch visit I've organised and co-funded for next month. Will have discusson about that with Openlabs and especially Rendon who seems to put himself in positions of control in cases he should not.
Best, Arjen
June 2024, the Open Labs Hackerspace in Albania vanishes like Arjen Kamphuis
All the web sites suddenly went dark. One of the whistleblowers, now working at GNOME Foundation, removed all reference to the Open Labs group from her profile on the GNOME web site.
See also:
- Larissa Brown Shapiro & Mozilla concerned other organizations taking advantage of kids in open source
- Emma Irwin, from Mozilla to Microsoft & Debian harassment rumors: the hidden report into Open Labs Hackerspace, Albania
Kamphuis and I had been the first people to notice the abusive behavior towards women and children in the Open Labs Hackerspace.
Was the dramatic closure of that group a direct consequence of my decision to publish Kamphuis' email about the abuse? █