41–50 of 59 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The prosecutor's would have to... 1. prove they have the evidence. or 2. prove they destroyed or concealed it. Greatest quote I've ever heard: "it's not what they know, it's what they can prove in court"
Law Abiding Citizen is a pretty thought-provoking (and pessimistic) take on the US justice system.
If these New Jersey prosecutors fail with this one, I'm sure they can slap some felony computer fraud charges on them for violating X website's ToS agreement. Prosecutors need to lose their immunity, then we might get some sanity back in the justice system.
> "felony computer fraud charges" Just for violating a ToS? I thought those were mostly legalese and overly broad.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aarons...
Follow the lobbyists. Figure out who was threatened enough by a bitcoin model to want the government to step in. Because there is no way they have this kind of time on their hands to pursue this and have such in depth technical knowledge to know what to look for, without some corporate lobbyists spoon feeding it to the prosecutor. Not that I believe tidbit could ever be profitable or useful, but still.
"With a snippet of embedded code, Tidbit could enable websites to tap into visitors’ computers and borrow CPU cycles to mine Bitcoin."
Ads that take over the screen for a few seconds are bad enouogh. A website that takes over a computer to run computationally expensive tasks? With ads, at least their is the opportunity to run adblockers. With a javascript miner, visitors are left with the choice of disabling javascript, and essentially their access to the modern web, or risking a website abusing their computer.
The subpoena and accompanying interrogatories issued to Rubin demonstrate that the people working for New Jersey’s division of consumer affairs have made little effort to understand what Tidbit’s software actually does.
Based on how Tidbit has described their software, it sounds like New Jersey knows exactly what the software actually does: it runs a BTC miner on a website visitor's computer, potentially without their knowledge. And as the ESEA fiasco demonstrated, this could result in actual, physical damage to people's computers.
Is this overreaching? Maybe. Maybe not. That's what the purpose of the investigation is for.
Can someone with a background in law tell me if or why it wouldn't be legal to turn over bitcoin private keys, complying exactly with a request, while also using your own retained copies of those keys to sign transfer transactions sending all those bitcoins held by the previous (now compromised) keys to your new ones that are not covered by the subpoena? It seems to me that you'd be complying exactly with their reque…
In practice you'd be hard pressed to find prosecutors or judges who understand the conceptual difference between bitcoins and keys. The DoJ has a digital currency task force that is working on a legal blueprint for dealing with these sorts of issues, but it will be months before they get anywhere.
Follow the lobbyists. Figure out who was threatened enough by a bitcoin model to want the government to step in. Because there is no way they have this kind of time on their hands to pursue this and have such in depth technical knowledge to know what to look for, without some corporate lobbyists spoon feeding it to the prosecutor. Not that I believe tidbit could ever be profitable or useful, but still.
No conspiracy necessary. From the article: "With a snippet of embedded code, Tidbit could enable websites to tap into visitors’ computers and borrow CPU cycles to mine Bitcoin." Ads that take over the screen for a few seconds are bad enouogh. A website that takes over a computer to run computationally expensive tasks? With ads, at least their is the opportunity to run adblockers. With a javascript miner, visitors are…
Sounds like a wonderful way to waste electricity and kill browser performance at the same time.
[1] : http://primecoin.io/
Can someone with a background in law tell me if or why it wouldn't be legal to turn over bitcoin private keys, complying exactly with a request, while also using your own retained copies of those keys to sign transfer transactions sending all those bitcoins held by the previous (now compromised) keys to your new ones that are not covered by the subpoena? It seems to me that you'd be complying exactly with their reque…
Isn't this like suggesting that when the image of an HDD is subpoenaed, you might first copy all the data off it, then wipe it, then image that? Because that trick doesn't work. Relevant statute: 18 U.S.C. § 401. It's pretty broad.
And transferring your coins to different keys.
The subpoena isn't "for all keys, and no using them on the blockchain". It's just for the data. There is no such thing as ownership of bitcoin.
this is one reason why i am reluctant to buy any bitcoins or cryptocurrency in general - esp given the strong background of money laundering.
its a shame. i do think the future of currency lies in bitcoin or similar... its just not there yet.
sure if everyone ends up using it the legality will need resolving sooner, but to a very good approximation nobody uses it at the moment (!)
i base this on the data that there are a great deal fewer bitcoin addresses in use atm than enough to assign one of them to each out of 0.1% of the world population - given that many people use multiple addresses i don't think its unreasonable to consider it very close to non-existent in that naive sense... penalising all of the people currently involved is not out of the question yet... not by a very long way imo.
(source: http://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses?timespan=30...)
Bitcoin mining using malicious javascript will cost people a lot of money in power bills if done without permission, and this project has good intentions, but I'd be unsurprised if it has already been forked to run without victims knowing. It's just another form of intrusive advert.