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US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

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Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#461

Post by ipaddr »

w7 wrote: post #449
ipaddr wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you prevent the next door neighbour from bringing in food because you have a fued with them you can't turn around and say look at those kids not eating. It's because you live like kings. They spend money on military not to supress the local population, they do it to protect themselves against you. You are morally responsible for your choices including preventing kids from eating.

I don't understand your argument. It seems based on some premise that North Korea is only bad because other nations are "mean" to it. Many authoritarian regimes have historically used food availability as a weapon against their own populations. North Korea clearly is one such regime. There is no private enterprise in North Korea-- I don't know what you think lifting of non-food covering sanctions would do other than…

That doesn't stop trade with Saudi Arabia so it can't be used here.

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#462

Post by s1artibartfast »

tptacek wrote: post #387
s1artibartfast wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which is not subject to rules about fairness. I think this is the point everyone agrees on. You are right that "deserve's got nothing to with it" IT is just obnoxious when most of rhetoric and discussion is about fairness, equality, and high minded ideals when directed outside the US. Might makes right. Given that, coherent discussion on how and when to use that power is best served by dropping the rhetoric. Once yo…

We should not continue the Cuba embargo. It serves no public policy purpose. We should continue and enhance sanctions on North Korea, which actively works to destabilize the rest of the world, unlike Cuba. Iran is a trickier case, but on balance the world would be better off with more normalized relations with Iran, and its trajectory forward after normalization would very likely be better than it is with sanctions.…

>You can disagree with any or all of this,

I really appreciate you staking concrete positions on the countries. I mostly agree, but am on the fence about north Korea.

>You can disagree with any or all of this, but the underlying point is: we are within our rights to coordinate sanctions on any country for a diversity of reasons.

I think this is where we differ. Modern sanctions means we take everything that the opposition cant militarily stop us from taking. We seize bank accounts, ships, planes, loaned assets, all without respect for ownership.

In the might makes right context, yeah, we are within our rights. But this is in the realpolitik sphere where I have the right to murder every person that cant stop me.

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#463

Post by novok »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #443
sneak wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was imprisoned for teaching. You have to construct quite a mental abstraction for that to be a legitimate criminal offense.

I partially agree but there was clear intent in theory but in practice the action was deeply unethical. Wouldn’t you go to jail if you taught someone how to plan a murder, with the knowledge they clearly planned on using that information?

He was teaching them how to manipulate distributed database entries that they have the explicit permission to use via their own private keys. If that is anywhere near equivalent to murder then I have a bridge to sell you.

Next up teaching north korea how to farm better and how to dodge sanctions importing fertilizer is bad, because then their people wont starve as much and therefore can do more evil in the world via more energetic soldiers.

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#464

Post by arcticbull »

ipaddr wrote: post #445
arcticbull wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International trade is a privilege not a right. If you want to thumb your nose at the international community on whom you rely to provide basic sustenance to your people you should prepare to have a bad time. Or figure out how to sustain your population without trade. But either way its the responsibility of NK, not the world, to find a way to feed the people of NK. That can be by participating in the world order and…

It is neither a right or privilege given by a power higher than yourself. It is a decision by a group of powerful countries who influenced, bribed and threatened others to get everyone to partipate. It jails citizens who provide information on cryto trading. It is no one's responsibility to feed anyone. People don't have a right to exist. People do whatever they can to survive around the world. The countries that hav…

> It jails citizens who provide information on cryto trading.

I wish (kidding), but no, it jails citizens who travel to foreign countries to explain how to evade sanctions to people who would benefit from that information.

> It is no one's responsibility to feed anyone. People don't have a right to exist. People do whatever they can to survive around the world.

That's not what I said. I said that this obligation extends domestically. It may be good, nice, and moral - heck I support it - to save anyone you can on earth. It may even be a moral imperative but your obligation first and foremost is to your own at home.

> The countries that have decided to force these kids to die to further their geopolitcal goals are responsible for those decisions.

All I'm saying is if you rely on the relationships with others to survive probably don't poke them in the eye?

If you're dangling from a bridge, suspended by a rope, and some burly guy catches you. You realize you don't like his face. So you throw sand at him. He lets go of the rope, and you fall. Who's at fault? You could say it was the guy who let go of the rope. But for the love of all that is good and holy, why are you throwing sand at the only person keeping you alive?

Nobody owes you trade. Whether that's right, wrong, good, bad or anything else, it's fact. States would be well served to keep that in mind. It doesn't usually come up until the "and find out" part of "screw around and find out" happens.

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#465

Post by cortesoft »

dmitrygr wrote: post #358
babypuncher wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabotaging your own military's weapons still sounds an awful lot like treason

Sanctions have never ever in human history worked, so more like sabotaging one's placebos...

> In regards to the effectiveness of the sanctions, supporters concede that multilateral sanctions have been found to work 33% of the time.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20034049

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#466

Post by Consultant32452 »

mywittyname wrote: post #259
bell-cot wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sanctions aren't an alternative to war. We like to imagine dropping bombs on someone is less polite than starving them to death, but it's just an illusion.

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#467

Post by paxys »

ttybird2 wrote: post #458
paxys wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He always had the option to work on cool tech. What he instead chose to do was go to North Korea and educate them on how to use Ethereum.

I think you missed my point. I meant that he will now not have that option.

Sure, but is there a reason to believe he would have done anything different had he been allowed to go on?

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#468

Post by cortesoft »

FrenchDevRemote wrote: post #366
ambrozk wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dumb statement every time it's asserted. Sanctions are not an act of war in any sense. Not in theory nor in a pragmatic sense. The distinction between war and other modes of interstate hostility is an important one which we should not abandon. "Sanctions are war" is the same sort of statement as "speech is violence": it's sophistic, and it collapses nuance instead of encouraging it.

"Go beat/kill this guy" is violence, yet it's just words. Putin haven't killed people with his bare hands(at least for a few years...)But who wouldn't call him violent? If your sanctions cause people to die, of hunger, sickness or anything else, it's violence. I'm not against sanctions depending on the circumstances, but you're just wrong

Sanctions are saying “we will not trade with you”. Refusing to trade is violence?

Is it violence if you walk past a homeless guy who is hungry and you don’t give him food?

Re: US sentences crypto expert to 5 years after North Korea blockchain presentation

#469

Post by JustLurking2022 »

zopa wrote: post #239
istjohn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I support imprisoning anyone who helps subvert sanctions against a despotic state pursuing nuclear weapons.

No issue with your main point, but "pursuing nuclear weapons" is such a strange and revealing phrase. North Korea has nuclear weapons. They've had nuclear weapons for at least 16 years (probably over 20). The last best chance to roll back their nuclear program was in the mid-aughts, and it didn't work. Lots of good and useful steps we could pursue to reduce tensions and make an accidental nuclear war on the Korean pe…

That's not accurate, a nuclear capability is not as binary as you make it out to be. In no particular order, there's:

- Having a bomb

- having one that works consistently (NK has conducted tests that likely failed to produce the expected yield)

- having a device miniaturized to go on a missile

- having a missile capable of hitting targets at significant range (reliably)

- solid fuel rocketry (fueling can be a giveaway of an imminent strike on liquid fueled, allowing preemptive action)

- Evading missile defense systems

- MIRV

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