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Comment by daxorid | Hacker News Reader

The notes left on his hotel bed daily are the strangest part. Implying Jake is a Fed, or his supporters were actively compromising his physical security?

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I mean, you don't exactly have to be a government agent to sneak into a hotel room.

"Hey, I think I lost my keycard, can you run me another one? The name's Farr...room 221."

And it's all on video camera (pretty much all hotel lobbies have them), whoever made a copy of a key remember it, etc. Many hotel corridors have cameras too. It's not as easy as you think to get copy of the key and enter the room without leaving evidences.

Who says they did it without leaving evidence? I'm sure there's security camera footage somewhere (presumably deleted by now, but maybe not). It's not like they're going to put out an INTERPOL warrant based on some grainy security camera footage of just-another-dude-with-a-beard walking into a hotel room.

Which is why most reputable hotels will ask for a photo ID when running a new key. At least that's the procedure I had to go through when I last forgot my keys in my hotel room and locked myself out.

That never happened to me, even in hotels with guards wearing pumpguns and elevators that needed key-cards to be inserted if you wanted to go up (e.g. the Marriott in Paramaribo).

The simplest method to get into a room is to wait for it to be cleaned, and once the door is open, simply walk in and take whatever you want. The maids will not ask you for ID. If you want to make it seem extra plausible, wave a similar hotel key at them as if you would have used it to open the door.

As for getting a replacement key, yeah, that usually does require some work. In lieu of asking for a replacement you can call the front desk on your cellphone and tell them you're standing outside your room and can't get to your key, and can someone come unlock the door for you.

Wouldn't it look odd to be loitering in a hotel hallway?

This makes me glad I use a fake name at the hotel for DEFCON.

Be lucky you Americans can do that. In Germany, impossible.

Edit: The requirement is explained under https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meldeschein for those who speak German. Basically, hotels and similar operations are required to record the data, mainly to properly apply hotel taxes. Side effect: together with the new registration requirement (you MUST notify that you have moved into a new apartment), and landlords actually being liable if renters don't abide, it makes it extremely hard for wanted persons to live in Germany.

Any at all reputable hotel in the US seems to ask for photo id and a credit card for one "responsible" person. Getting checked in without photo id requires some sweet talking (and appearing clearly over 21 in the case of DEFCON).

Yeah I'm not sure whether to believe that part. If I found notes on my pillow, I'd nope the fuck out of there and either go back to the conference or the police station. In any case, that story would not have ended where it does now.

Why do you think the police would do anything?

We know from the victims of stalkers that the police don't see it as important; they don't care; or if they do care there's not much they can do.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-sta...

Seven years!

I totally understand your skepticism there. Yes, I was totally an idiot for not keeping the notes, not going to the police, etc. etc.

If I can offer anything, by the time it got to that point, I had already been told to "stop making drama" about the whole thing and somehow just pacify Jake by many people I trusted.

So I bring them a note! I bring them to my hotel room! Let's walk through the scenario in my head: What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper. Who's to say I didn't make the thing up myself to try to get back at Jake? Why would someone believe me just because there's a shred of something.

My whole approach up until I couldn't take it anymore was to just ignore, to let it slide, to not think about it and move on. THIS IS WHAT HARASSMENT VICTIMS DO and yes, I should have recognized it at the time.

Even if you didn't ignore it, it sounds like the well was already poisoned for you. I think you've made the right decision to leave this group, sad though the situation is.

> What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper.

I don't know anything about policework, but entering in a place illegally (I assume Jake or one of his friends doesn't have legal free reign in random German hotels) to intimidate someone into doing something is quite a thing. I could imagine the police caring enough to try to get fingerprints off of the piece of paper and perhaps come to the hotel room to check video footage and other fingerprints.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, but someone mentioned something that caught my eye as well, so I commented on it.

Up until now I hadn't doubted Jake's legitimacy. I also didn't agree with everything he said (having heard him speak and answer questions in multiple places, and briefly talking to him personally), but I figured it's just normal not to agree with everything someone says. Your article made me realize I should listen better and judge whether the good intentions are really there, and it made me much more hesitant when it comes to Jake and the Tor project in general (another comment linked an article with similar things about the Tor project as a whole). So thanks for sharing this.

Maybe to offer another insight that is not obvious: When you reach a certain point in an organization, what you do and how it impacts the thing you work so hard for becomes very obvious. Yeah, you sacrifice your personal safety for it as much as that sounds awful in retrospect.

What would I have to gain getting the police or others involved in a creepy note left in my room? The fact is, they proved they could gain entry whenever they wanted and no amount of police protection would do anything about that.

And then what...start rumors about creepy notes? Have people tell me I made the whole thing up? Get told by the Police there would be nothing they could do, or worse, invite them in to a world where they're actively detested?

What would all that do to the conference? It would be another circus taking away attention away from people who rightly deserved it for the great work that they're doing. Just like this whole thing is a circus.

The best thing that could have happened did, some friends of mine were scheduled to crash with me--one of whom was sick the entire time. After that, the notes stopped.

Well, consider the probably weak as fuck physical security of hotels and their cheesy mag-stripe keys.

In your own home, it's one thing. On the road it might not strike everyone as quite so shocking.

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