261–270 of 587 posts
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Interesting implications for the case of Cuba. If so, their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA. So much for arguments of respecting national autonomy.
Refusing to trade with a country is not a violation of their national autonomy.
He is the creator of WikiScanner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiScanner https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia-idUSN1...
He also created Tor2web with Aaron Swartz and used to work for the tor team.
Seems like an interesting guy. It's a shame that this happened.
The situation is kinda similar to the one with Bobby Fischer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer
"In 1992, he reemerged to win an unofficial rematch against Spassky. It was held in Yugoslavia, which was under a United Nations embargo at the time. His participation led to a conflict with the US government, which warned Fischer that his participation in the match would violate an executive order imposing US sanctions on Yugoslavia. The US government ultimately issued a warrant for his arrest. After that, Fischer lived as an émigré. In 2004, he was arrested in Japan and held for several months for using a passport that the US government had revoked. Eventually, he was granted an Icelandic passport and citizenship by a special act of the Icelandic Althing, allowing him to live there until his death in 2008."
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You're assuming the goal is some sort of democratic revolution rather than keeping the economies of those countries constrained so they have less money to spend on weapons.
Interesting implications for the case of Cuba. If so, their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA. So much for arguments of respecting national autonomy.
As far as I've seen, no one else cares about Cuba or sanctions.
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> but his work was exploring how digital systems can help bring peace to the world Surely nobody is that naive? Wars and sanctions aren't a technical problem that can be "solved" with a "digital system".
Yes they are. Wars are funded via inflation. Bitcoin solves inflation by using computers to allow trading bottled energy online, thereby pulling the funding out from under oligarchs.
This is such a weird claim. Did we not have empires and colonies and wars when the world mostly used metal for money?
If anything, the world has been most peaceful since the fall of Bretton Woods. (I attribute none of that to our monetary system versus nukes.)
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How far down the "flew 8,000 miles to get there, climbed over the barbed wire fence, licked both his thumbs, and pressed them against the shiny parts labeled 'DANGER! 25,000 VOLTS!'..." rabbit-hole-of-stupid should one have to go, before it's 100% okay for me to stop caring whether or not his sentence was just?
Five years seems pretty mild when you consider the chief purpose of sanctions is to provide an alternative to war as a means of settling disputes. And this man is willfully undermining the ability of his country to levy sanctions. Surely actively undermining the security of ones country is a serious offense.
As a means of forcing someone to unwillingly settle a dispute in your favor that is.
I have no sympathy for North Korea, but sanctions are not an alternative to war. Sanctions are an alternative to bullets.
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> Interesting implications for the case of Cuba. If so, their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA. So much for arguments of respecting national autonomy. I believe their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA, that is unfriendly to US interests, and at least once offered the USSR, a then enemy of the US, to host nuclear ICBMs on their territory so they could more eas…
> I believe their primary crime is being a country in close proximity to the USA, that is unfriendly to US interests, and at least once offered the USSR, a then enemy of the US, to host nuclear ICBMs on their territory so they could more easily target Americans. You do understand that if this is the bar under which nations can take drastic actions (up to and including fiascos like Bay of Pigs and assassination attemp…
A lot. And the threaten countries all abso-fucking-lutely want to do something about it.
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Yes they are. Wars are funded via inflation. Bitcoin solves inflation by using computers to allow trading bottled energy online, thereby pulling the funding out from under oligarchs.
Trading bottled energy? What? That is a totally dishonest characterization, the energy is not "bottled" it it's burned and never again recoverable.
What if he did the exact same presentation in youtube, and in NK they saw that presentation? What if someone in NK downloaded the open source implementation of that blockchain, participated on it, or even mined quite a few coins? Could be argued the same about any open source program (and their developers) dealing with encrypted information in any way? What was the problem? Going in person? Answering questions in the…
> What if he did the exact same presentation in youtube, and in NK they saw that presentation? If it was general information about how Blockchain can be used to evade sanctions, it would probably be fine as long as he was reporting how it could be done and not encouraging it. > What if someone in NK downloaded the open source implementation of that blockchain, participated on it, or even mined quite a few coins? Almo…
This is almost always the sticking point when people from tech misunderstand law.
The fact that computers do not understand intent is fundamental to learning code. I think that leads to a lot of tech folks not groking that one of the primary functions of the legal system is to systematically determine intent.
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Five years seems pretty mild when you consider the chief purpose of sanctions is to provide an alternative to war as a means of settling disputes. And this man is willfully undermining the ability of his country to levy sanctions. Surely actively undermining the security of ones country is a serious offense.
> as a means of settling disputes As a means of forcing someone to unwillingly settle a dispute in your favor that is. I have no sympathy for North Korea, but sanctions are not an alternative to war. Sanctions are an alternative to bullets.
I'm going to have to disagree there. Sanctions once enacted are definitely an alternative to war, after all, bullets all by themselves don't constitute an act but sanctions are an act.
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Imagine knowing literally anything about north Korea and wanting to help that government. He should be put away for life for aiding crimes against humanity.
Lol what if by spreading crypto knowledge in totalitarian states, you give people in those states a viable way to preserve their income and assets in a way that no other asset class can? Imagine someone trying to protest or escape a regime imposing capital controls on citizens such as North Korea or Canada. What if, those citizens could simply memorize or encode a 12-24 word phrase that could preserve their net worth…