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Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

bloomberg.com

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Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#211

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bo1024 wrote: post #195
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lawyers can pretend that information is property, but some things obey physical laws and other things don't Free information is difficult to control. We have to add things to it, like DRM, to make it compatible with the legal concepts of possession and ownership. Crypto, however, is different. One can control it. Had the FBI been able to move the coins to their own wallet, they would have controlled them. Crypto is…

I don’t follow. If you record my https traffic to my banking website, do you now “own” my bank account? Did you “seize” it? Do you “possess” it? No, no, no. you have a copy of a pile of bits that are meaningless to you without my encryption keys. You don’t have anything new and you didn’t deprive me of anything either.

> you record my https traffic to my banking website, do you now “own” my bank account? Did you “seize” it? Do you “possess” it? No, no, no.

Recording and seizing are different. If a court rules the you own a bank account, that doesn't technically prohibit the bank from charging it. Possession involves ownership or control [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/possession

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#212

Post by hef19898 »

johnnymorgan wrote: post #193
inglor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that makes Iran not a democracy is that all those bodies (parliament, president, parties) answer to the supreme leader and religious authority. It’s not a democracy if the elected bodies all answer to unelected ones.

Quoted post unavailable.

Feeding the troll, but why not. Governments of EU countries are not subservent to the EU commision, they are the ones nominating commissars and confirmed by the elected EU parliament (as a full commission), in a process not unlike the Senate approval of, e.g. SCOTUS judges. And those individual governments are democratically elected as well.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#213

Post by mjthrowaway1 »

Thorrez wrote: post #85
mjthrowaway1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like parallel construction.

I'm not sure it's very good parallel construction. They say they only got the picture after subpoenaing data from his cloud account. So the police talking about this picture doesn't eliminate any public discussion of how the police got enough suspicion and evidence in order to get a subpoena in the first place.

The purpose of parallel construction is to not disclose the actual methods used by law enforcement because they may be illegal and/or disclose sources of information that they would like to keep confidential. It only needs to be minimally believable as a “stroke of luck” to the court. Law enforcement doesn’t particularly care if the public believes it or not as long as the methods aren’t disclosed.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#214

Post by biomcgary »

iudqnolq wrote: post #177
tomohawk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, feds routinely seize defendants assets to prevent them from being able to pay for robust legal defense. Those assets aren't going to harm anyone, so the case for seizing them is much weaker than holding someone accused of violence in jail. In this specific case, the assets are alleged ill-gotten gains, but often that is not the case at all. It doesn't seem to be a stretch that the feds "securely ho…

I believe you're completely correct. The current system is amoral; we should change it. But unfortunately you don't have a right under the constitution to the legal counsel of your choice, and interfering with your ability to pay the legal council you want isn't a federal crimes government agents could go to prison for. (One of the many reasons why is that the Supreme Court decided a few decades ago that prosecutors…

Do you remember the decision that gave prosecutors immunity? I've been toying with ideas for laws concerning malicious prosecution and I'm curious about the basis of the Supreme Court's decision.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#215

Post by kube-system »

richbell wrote: post #189
kube-system wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant. If they have a warrant they can physically knock down your door and search your underwear drawer.

Surely it's relevant to point out their long history of illegal surveillance and parallel construction? I'm not claiming that this was the case here, I just don't think the government deserves the benefit of the doubt.

We don’t need to guess, the article says:

> Working with Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company, the agents studied thousands of Helix transactions, subpoenaed emails, and ultimately found one involving a website that allows users to buy gift cards with Bitcoin. An email associated with Larry was used to open the account.

If you’ve got an email address associated with a Google account, it’s a plain old warrant.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#216

Post by iudqnolq »

biomcgary wrote: post #214
iudqnolq wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you're completely correct. The current system is amoral; we should change it. But unfortunately you don't have a right under the constitution to the legal counsel of your choice, and interfering with your ability to pay the legal council you want isn't a federal crimes government agents could go to prison for. (One of the many reasons why is that the Supreme Court decided a few decades ago that prosecutors…

Do you remember the decision that gave prosecutors immunity? I've been toying with ideas for laws concerning malicious prosecution and I'm curious about the basis of the Supreme Court's decision.

This might help https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_immunity

Edit: If you're serious about this project you should read through Civil Rights Corp's cases.

You'll learn the most a clever, well-resourced team can push the existing rules in practice to hold governments accountable.

In my unexpert opinion a nonlayer can most efficiently get an impression of how an area of law sort of works by reading decisions from lower-court judges who dispense justice assembly-line style.

When you're reading a Supreme Court decision or a law it's incredibly easy to miss a procudure that makes any remedy inpractical.

For example, you might read through a whole process for deciding the merits of a complex argument a prisoner's civil rights were violated. But you'd be missing that prisoner's lawyers can only make an argument if that prisoner, without a lawyer, wrote the exact right words on a complaint form and handed it to a warden within (for example) two weeks of their rights being violated.

Get used to this search engine. And when you read about a case in the news, look it up. This (or a related resource) is usually how the reporter got their primary sources.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#217

Post by drdeca »

hef19898 wrote: post #153
drdeca wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say it was? They were contradicting your claim that the state having a monopoly on violence is limited to democratic states.

A claim I never made, at least I hope I never did.

I misinterpreted your original comment. I suspect the other person may have misinterpreted it in the same way.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#218

Post by mrguyorama »

teekert wrote: post #190

Can you even say "stealing back" when the Feds just had some copy of a private key while there always have been (many) others? I mean, would you call it stealing back if the Feds seize a real key to a vault, know there may be others out there and then leave the fault completely accessible only to act surprised when the vault is empty after some time? Ownership of blockchain assets is defined by who has access to the…

>Ownership of blockchain assets is defined by who has access to the private keys.

Nope, like everything else in the world, the "owner" of a thing is purely defined by who the government will go to bat for. If the court says your bank account is now owned by the feds, and you withdraw money from it, that's not your money.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#219

Post by FormerBandmate »

cyphertruck wrote: post #122
FormerBandmate wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's simple, like all crypto newbies this prosecutor has just learned: Not your keys, not your coins. The US government can throw your ass in prison for the rest of your life so yes, it is their coins. This is the basis of all government power and in a lot of cases, like this, it's good

Ah the old “violence makes it moral” argument. The government cannot do those things under the law, but only by violating the laws. Problem is they have done it so much you think its not only legal, but moral! Innocent until proven guilty.

It’s moral because he’s a scammer who stole money and violated the law. He shouldn’t keep ill-gotten gains because he’s good at using computers and his victims weren’t. If this were Edward Snowden (say what you want about his dealings with Russia in exile, what he did should not have been a crime) I’d have a very different opinion, but as it stands this guy is a scammer getting his just desserts

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#220

Post by folmar »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #67
wmf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides what other people said, if a device is always on, dumping data directly to the Feds then it will be hot and its battery life will be very short.

Maybe smart phones would last a week on one charge if they weren't running the fed rootkit? :-p

My cheap mid-end Android phone with Lineage+microG lasts some 10-12 days if used as a phone+email.
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