Could JA be in reference to
Jacob Applebaum and not Assange?
JACOB APPLEBAUM?
Appelbaum was among several people to gain access to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's top secret documents released in 2013.[24] He has contributed extensively as a journalist to the publication of those documents.
On 23 October 2013, Appelbaum and other writers and editors at Der Spiegel reported that their investigations had led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to confront the U.S. government over evidence that it was monitoring her personal cell phone.[25] US President Barack Obama issued an ambiguously worded denial and apology.[26] The Der Spiegel team reported on the resulting controversy and detailed a further claim that the Embassy of the United States, Berlin, was being used as a base of operations for electronic surveillance of its German ally
Appelbaum represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a keynote address at the 2010 HOPE conference. FBI agents were planning to detain him after his talk, but organizers slipped him out through an alternative exit in disguise.[2]
In August 2013, Appelbaum delivered Edward Snowden's acceptance speech after he was awarded the biannual Whistleblower Prize by a group of NGOs at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.[74][75]
Surveillance, airport detention, and Wikileaks investigation
Appelbaum believes he has been under government surveillance since 2009, to the detriment of himself, his friends, and his close relations.[76] In interviews he has stated that living in Germany has given him a sense of relief from U.S. surveillance.[77] Appelbaum has described various aggressive surveillance events, and implies they are related to his work with Wikileaks, to his privacy activism, and to relationships with other privacy activists, notably reporters linked to Edward Snowden.[76] In December 2013, Appelbaum said he suspected the U.S. government of breaking into his Berlin apartment.[24]
While traveling, Appelbaum has been detained at airports and had his electronic equipment seized several times.[78][79][80][81]
In 2010, the US Department of Justice obtained a court order compelling Twitter to provide data associated with the user accounts of Appelbaum, as well as several other individuals associated with Wikileaks. While the order was originally sealed, Twitter successfully petitioned the court to unseal it, permitting the company to inform its users that their account information had been requested.[43][82]
In September 2013, he testified before the European Parliament, mentioning that his partner had been spied on by men in night-vision goggles as she slept.[83]
In December 2013, Appelbaum told Berliner Zeitung that he believes he was under surveillance and that somebody broke into his Berlin apartment and used his computer.[84]
At the 2006 23rd Chaos Communication Congress, he gave a talk with Ralf-Philipp Weinmann titled Unlocking FileVault: An Analysis of Apple's Encrypted Disk Storage System.[49][50] The duo subsequently released the VileFault free software program which broke Apple's FileVault security.
Appelbaum has collaborated on several other high-profile research projects.
The cold boot attack, with J. Alex Halderman, Seth Schoen, Nadia Heninger, William Clarkson, William Paul, Joseph A. Calandrino, Ariel J. Feldman, and Edward W. Felten.[51][52] Winner of USENIX Security Best Student Paper award and the Pwnie Award for Most Innovative Research.[53]
The MD5 collision attack, with Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Arjen Lenstra, David Molnar, Dag Arne Osvik, and Benne de Weger.[54] The proof of concept was to use a cluster of 200 Sony PlayStation 3 systems to create two valid SSL certificates containing an MD5 collision.[55] The bogus "MD5 Collisions Inc." certificate authority still appears (blacklisted) in the Mozilla Firefox certificate store.[56]
Smart parking meter vulnerabilities, with Joe Grand and Chris Tarnovsky, presented as "'Smart' Parking Meter Implementations, Globalism, and You" at Black Hat 2008.[57][58][59]
The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI),[60][61] founded in collaboration with Arturo Filastro to collect "data which will show an accurate topology of network surveillance, interference and outright censorship."[62]
Appelbaum regards Tor as a "part of an ecosystem of software that helps people regain and reclaim their autonomy. It helps to enable people to have agency of all kinds; it helps others to help each other and it helps you to help yourself. It runs, it is open and it is supported by a large community spread across all walks of life."[63]
Appelbaum was a Debian developer from 16 September 2013 to 18 June 2016.[64]
Applebaum was also a keynote speaker at Consilience 2013, organised by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru on Data Protection and Cyber-Security in India.[65]
Sorry if I'm not being clear. I think Q might be referring to Applebaum when he refers to JA. He is a close Snowden ally.