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Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

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Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#21

Post by yorwba »

ilovefood wrote: post #14
saimiam wrote: post #12

I want to understand this a bit better from an operational perspective.. Say my DigitalOcean VPS hosted in Germany provides a service X which can be subverted for illegal purposes. Will the police have to me to ask for data or can they go to DO and demand access to the data without my knowledge?

They can go and ask/seize since it's on German territory. Encrypt the shit out of it. My servers are in Amsterdam/Paris.

> Encrypt the shit out of it. My servers are in Amsterdam/Paris.

Is this meant to imply that the legal situation is very different in the Netherlands/France, or that you encrypt everything because it's the same as in Germany?

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#22

Post by pantaril »

yAnonymous wrote: post #17
ravingraven wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you tell me you'd risk that for a stranger who you can tell probably committed a crime, I don't believe you. That's a very very slippery slope. It is the job of the police to not look into data not related with the case, not yours. Surrendering the info would be giving the police more power if anything since, they now can come and get data from anyone without a warrant (how do you even know that this account is d…

>how do you even know that this account is dealing drugs other that Take a look at the transaction history. If there are transactions with known drug site wallets, give them the data they are asking for. Otherwise, request they get a warrant. If you are going to cooperate, I think that's the most reasonable way to go about it. Bitcoin exchanges are seen as dodgy anyway and they don't have a lobby to fight for them, s…

You usually don't know if the address is known drug site wallet, dark markets usually generate unique address for each transaction. Even if you do know it, you can't know if the user bought something illegal, there is also legal stuff sold on dark markets. Keeping everyone legal interests in mind means that you don't give personal data to police or anyone else without proper warrant.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#23

Post by saimiam »

teamhappy wrote: post #18
saimiam wrote: post #12

I want to understand this a bit better from an operational perspective.. Say my DigitalOcean VPS hosted in Germany provides a service X which can be subverted for illegal purposes. Will the police have to me to ask for data or can they go to DO and demand access to the data without my knowledge?

Im not a lawyer, but I assume the laws behind this look pretty much the same in every western country. I assume that if you want to search/seize somebodies property then you have get a warrant made out the the legal owner of the property. (Obviously you don't have to get a warrant if the owner voluntarily hands out the data...) In your example DO is the legal owner of the server your VPS runs on. I can't see why DO w…

By this logic, a renter has no right against unlawful searches on their own place of residence. The police just needs to ask the landlord for permission to search a rented property.

I'm just asking, not challenging what you're saying.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#24

Post by teamhappy »

saimiam wrote: post #23
teamhappy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not a lawyer, but I assume the laws behind this look pretty much the same in every western country. I assume that if you want to search/seize somebodies property then you have get a warrant made out the the legal owner of the property. (Obviously you don't have to get a warrant if the owner voluntarily hands out the data...) In your example DO is the legal owner of the server your VPS runs on. I can't see why DO w…

By this logic, a renter has no right against unlawful searches on their own place of residence. The police just needs to ask the landlord for permission to search a rented property. I'm just asking, not challenging what you're saying.

Yeah I know. I guess the other extreme would be a rental car or something. I can't imagine the guy currently renting the car being involved in the legal process.

I don't know what happens when a landlord hides weapons or something under the floorboards and then rents the place to somebody. Say the people renting the place are on vacation and the police has a warrant (made out to the landlord in this example). Maybe they can go in with the landlord (and, at least in Germany, they also need an independent witness) but are only allowed to search the actual property and not the stuff in it (because the landlord doesn't own the stuff). I don't know. But this kind of renting is well covered by laws (including lots of laws protecting the renters).

"Renting" a VPS (webspace would be a better example) probably isn't defined by any laws. It feels more like user data connected to a (paid) software service. Renting a dedicated server is a different story.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#25

Post by xya »

Ironically, bitcoinblog.de, (which is the blog of bitcoin.de) published an article in November 2016, citing the lack of anonymity in bitcoin transactions, that would drive around 1/5 of bitcoin users to not using bitcoin anymore. the article I am referring to: https://bitcoinblog.de/2016/11/09/ein-fuenftel-der-bitcoin-n...

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#26

Post by jarman »

yorwba wrote: post #19
jarman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but can verify the transactions to the drug site themselves Once you start selectively give out user data, you are basically giving out warrants yourself and acting as a judge.

And if you are allowed to do that and want to do it, why not? The purpose of a warrant is to verify that a judge has done due diligence and found the search to be justified, but if you check for yourself and come to the same conclusion, the warrant isn't really necessary.

Because search warrant is removal of privacy rights, which is something only court should be allowed do.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#27

Post by kpil »

saimiam wrote: post #23
teamhappy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not a lawyer, but I assume the laws behind this look pretty much the same in every western country. I assume that if you want to search/seize somebodies property then you have get a warrant made out the the legal owner of the property. (Obviously you don't have to get a warrant if the owner voluntarily hands out the data...) In your example DO is the legal owner of the server your VPS runs on. I can't see why DO w…

By this logic, a renter has no right against unlawful searches on their own place of residence. The police just needs to ask the landlord for permission to search a rented property. I'm just asking, not challenging what you're saying.

Actually in most countries there is a lot of laws for landlords and tenants that regulates who is in the possession. A landlord can not just hand out keys to anyone.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#28

Post by benedictp »

They released on Facebook a statement to this article: https://www.facebook.com/bitcoin.de/posts/1621138617927372

> The protection of our unscrupulous customers and their bitcoins is more important to us than the protection of the data of offenders.

Another interesseting thing:

> We only issue data from customers to investigating authorities if they can inquire in writing in specific cases and can demonstrate a legitimate interest in specific criminal offenses. This has always been the case from our point of view.

Big question here: So they've done it several times?

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#29

Post by pavel_lishin »

Joe-Z wrote: post #10
yAnonymous wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my edit. I'm assuming they can verify the allegations, due to the nature of BTC transactions. A warrant possibly means that they go out of business, because the servers are physically seized. If you tell me you'd risk that for a stranger who you can tell probably committed a crime, I don't believe you.

>A warrant possibly means that they go out of business, because the servers are physically seized Why would the police be interested in destroying a legitimate business just because they want data for 8 users? They can just as well get the warrant and then get the data the same way they did now.

They may not be explicitly interested in destroying a business, but they may be very interested in seizing equipment and not particularly caring that you don't have a backup strategy.

Re: Germany's biggest Bitcoin exchange surrenders user data to the police

#30

Post by FRex »

sdoering wrote: post #13
yAnonymous wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my edit. I'm assuming they can verify the allegations, due to the nature of BTC transactions. A warrant possibly means that they go out of business, because the servers are physically seized. If you tell me you'd risk that for a stranger who you can tell probably committed a crime, I don't believe you.

> because the servers are physically seized. Not necessarily. A acquaintance of mine at an ISP always did that when police came knocking for "illegale pirating" allegations. His standard response was: Get a warrant or else I would commit a criminal offence (what he would have done). Nearly never police came back with a warrant. And in the spare cases they did come back he did provide the data (if it was still availab…

That was in Germany, USA or where? Just don't tell me Iceland or Sweden (with their famous Pirate Parties)..

Your friend is also a saint with cojones the size of cannon balls for doing that too.

In Poland the "take it all" strategy seems to be the default one, at least for private devices. There was once a case related to one Polish movie being shared on torrents that ended in 40 thousand confiscated PCs. The law firm hired by the movie studio gave the prosecution a list of 40 thousand IPs they said were pirating their client's movie. The prosecution gave a blanket warrant and the police got the people data from the ISPs, confiscated the computers and gave the law firm copy of the personal data so they could offer the 'pirates' a few hundred zloty settlements to not press charges.

C.f. frivolous DMCA on YouTube reviews and this case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14904149

So much for warrants when it comes to allegations of piracy.

Polish link for the 40k PCs case for anyone interested: https://www.dobreprogramy.pl/Juz-40-tys.-polskich-internauto...

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