New Jersey slaps MIT Bitcoin hackers with subpoena(venturebeat.com) |
New Jersey slaps MIT Bitcoin hackers with subpoena(venturebeat.com) |
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.
It seems to me that you'd be complying exactly with their request, as furnishing a copy of data does not obligate you to delete your own.
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.
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.
I don't know of any, and it's not the case here.
(If law enforcement had a legal claim to the balances controlled by the keys, they'd craft their order or enforcement action to achieve that end. I think the sweep of funds to a new address, after the Ross Ulbrecht arrest, suggests they understand the key-control issues involved.)
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"
That doesn't sound right...
14 years: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/14/man-jailed-on-civil-cont...
Prosecutors need to lose their immunity, then we might get some sanity back in the justice system.
Just for violating a ToS? I thought those were mostly legalese and overly broad.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aarons...
All prosecutors, obviously.
Or can you just be subpoena'd without any case?
> ...the language in the subpoena reads much like the state’s computer fraud act, which carries some stiff penalties. Last year, New Jersey alleged that E-Sports Entertainment (ESEA) hijacked their [subscribers'] computing power to mine Bitcoins... the state believes Tidbit may similarly violate consumers’ rights.
According to the EFF:
> the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs issued a subpoena to Rubin, requesting he turn over Tidbit's past and current source code, as well as other documents and agreements with any third parties. It also issued 27 interrogatories -- formal written questions -- requesting additional documents and ordering Rubin to turn over information like the names and identities of all Bitcoin wallet addresses associated with Tidbit, a list of all websites running Tidbit's code and the name of anybody whose computer mined for Bitcoins through the use of Tidbit, although Tidbit's code was not configured to mine for Bitcoins.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/eff-challenges-new-jer...
If they do open source the code, I strongly hope that webmasters would actually replace obtrusive ads with the mining protocol and not just add it in addition to ad revenue.
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.
[1] : http://primecoin.io/
No, that's what P2Pool, or really any pool, does. Stratum, as the link states, is just a long-poll protocol to reduce stale shares when a new block is found.
But speaking of pools, it seems like the best bang for their buck would be a scrypt profit-switching multipool, that mines the most profitable scrypt coin and exchanges for btc or dollars or whatever. This would potentially create a huge pool so p2pool is better in that respect, but it's just not profitable to mine BTC like this at all.
(That assumes there will always be a cryptocoin worth mining with a CPU/GPU. Right now it's silly to do so for 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...)
Unfortunately, due to the antics of many other major Bitcoin players, anyone doing something Bitcoin-related is generally deemed untrustworthy unless they prove otherwise. (And from a ideological standpoint, if one believes in the free market, this is how it should be--trust must be earned, not granted.)
Back in 2000 (best data i can find on short notice), at least 12 states permitted prosecutors to serve investigative subpoenas on targets, witnesses, and record keepers before they charge a person with a crime
That said, I don't know the procedure for determining whether or not an actual crime has been committed, and without there being an actual case in hand, I have no idea if the subpoenas are valid.
We don't have all the evidence. We just have Tidbit's claims. Unfortunately, no entity in the Bitcoin industry has proven itself trustworthy, so Tidbit doesn't get the benefit of the doubt. It has to prove it. (Note: it's a civil case, not a criminal case, so it's not a matter of guilt and thus the presumption of innocence doesn't apply.)
That’s like arguing that there is no such thing as ownership of land. (Which some have argued, but it is a bit tenuous.)
I would guess that I still own it. In the same way, you still own the bitcoin until someone else does.
When I leak a private key and the coins remain unspent, I can still spend them.
Tossing money into the air clearly ends my ownership of it. Pastebinning bitcoin keys does not (at least until someone sweeps the coins somewhere else using that published key).