Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder(hosted.ap.org) |
Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder(hosted.ap.org) |
Granted, I don't think Leah McGrath Goodman and Newsweek did anything illegal by breaking this story. I don't think it's wrong for Goodman to attempt to contact Satoshi's relatives over the phone.
What really crossed the line for me was Leah McGrath Goodman and Newsweek's decision to post the photo of the house, with the car's plate info on it.
Why would you do this? What relavence if any did this have to the story?
Showing of the house with car license plate resulted in identifying his address really easily. Let's face it. She wouldn't have done this to Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos even though they are far more famous, rich and public. She did this to this guy only because he's reclusive and powerless.
I wouldn't be so sure. Both may be subject to tort liability if Dorian Nakamoto != Satoshi Nakamoto. See my tweet: https://twitter.com/declanm/status/441711365888040960
And a response by an attorney who works on Internet issues: https://twitter.com/SeanFlaim/status/441727448539873281
This principle has been established many times by people who were mistaken for criminal defendants (not always defendants with the same name), including the Boston U student who killed himself shortly before the Boston Marathon bombing.
You can go to the post of the Newsweek article and get a billion comments exactly like yours. It is pointless to keep harping about it in every related discussion...
Leah McGrath Goodman said that after she asked him about BitCoin he promptly stopped emailing her. The timeline is unclear, but it seems like this was before Goodman contacted his family members. Why would she contact his family members if she was directly talking to him and they could blow her pretext of wanting to talk about model trains?
This strongly suggests that he knew enough about BitCoin to be chased away by the question. He uses English and American spellings, just like Satoshi's mailing list postings. He has a computer engineering background.
When she came to his house he said, verbatim, exactly what happened with BitCoin - "I'm not involved in that anymore." And something to the effect of "That's been handed over to others, I have no involvement with that anymore." This, if it was said, strongly suggests to me that this is in fact Satoshi.
Given that this would be catastrophe for both the journalist and Newsweek if it turned out to be wrong, and they must have seen some compelling evidence if they went forward with the story - I'm skeptical about Dorian Nakamoto's denial here.
A Satoshi Nakamoto then turned up whose profile and background offered a potential match (as he used to be an engineering contractor and had shown libertarian views in the past), if you were willing to ignore a lot of facts (such as his less-than-native mastery of English). She then interviewed the man's family, fabricated a few quotes implying involvement with Bitcoin, and published a clickbait story destroying the man's privacy.
Well at least, Dorian Nakamoto got a free lunch out of it.
No harm in giving this some time and seeing if "Man Denies He's Bitcoin Founder" turns out to filed next to[1] "Man Denies Connection to Olympic Bombing" or next to "OJ Announces Search For Real Killers".
[1] pedantry disclaimer: not meant as perfect analogies
On what planet is this not evidence:
"Newsweek writer Leah McGrath Goodman, who spent two months researching the story, told the AP: "I stand completely by my exchange with Mr. Nakamoto. There was no confusion whatsoever about the context of our conversation -- and his acknowledgment of his involvement in Bitcoin."
1. Dropped all contact with the reporter when the topic of Bitcoin was brought up over email.
2. Called the cops when the reporter went to his house to ask him about Bitcoin.
3. Said to the reporter: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
Someone here is lying, because a person who only heard of Bitcoin three weeks ago doesn't do and say those things.
1. Dropped all contact when it was clear the person had misrepresented themselves and thought he was Satoshi.
2. Called the cops when this stranger came to his home to persist in this line of questioning.
3. Reporter says he said this, but also the cop just happens to be familiar with bitcoin and quip something appropriate. It could easily be a paraphrase of this man saying he's no longer involved in the govt projects we know him to be involved in, and he has no connection with them.
Why didn't the reporter record this exchange? Seems elementary when you're ambushing the guy. And has no one contacted the cop involved to see what he said or knows?
Do editors and journalists not read what is being published? Feels like we've all been transformed back 7 to 10 years ago where this kind of "investigative journalism" was prevalent and hardly investigative at all. NewsWeek either need to put up some conclusive proof or retract everything they've said and give mr Satoshi an apology.
It'll be interesting if from a legal perspective Dorian Satoshi has a case against NewsWeek considering this has already gone to print. If it causes Satoshi's life to crumble, make it hard for him to get employment, subjects him to harassment from armchair Internet investigators and whatnot, he might have some kind of case. But having said that, this would mean if it went to court, he would have to offer up access to info that NewsWeek and others don't have and if he is the real Satoshi, it would come back to bite him.
The real question is, if this is the real Satoshi, why isn't he using his incredible stash of Bitcoin to live a little more comfortably? Hiding in plain sight perhaps. Just let the poor guy be. Nobody should be subject to this kind of speculative journalism. It's the Boston bombing situation all over again.
Edit: the real Satoshi responded to his original announcement here, his first communication in 5 years: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour... — a simple one liner.
That would've been pretty embarrassing.
This was an egregious invasion of his privacy! Look, these postings from years ago on various message boards don't match his writing style -- these Amazon reviews don't match the style either -- his INS form doesn't match the timeline as close as expected -- From the streetview of his house, it doesn't look like the house of a hundred-millionaire -- this transaction made 3 years ago to buy juice in New York is off too -- I can't believe Newsweek invaded his privacy!
It was filled with claims that it's not doxxing because NewsWeek posted his address already, that Bitcoin users should have no expectation of anonymity, it could have huge ramifications to the economics of Bitcoin as a whole, etc.
Key excerpt: He also said a key portion of the piece — where he is quoted telling the reporter on his doorstep before two police officers, "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it" — was misunderstood. Nakamoto said he is a native of Beppu, Japan who came to the U.S. when he was 10. He speaks both English and Japanese, but his English isn't flawless. Asked if he said the quote, Nakamoto responded, "no." "I'm saying I'm no longer in engineering. That's it," he said of the exchange. "And even if I was, when we get hired, you have to sign this document, contract saying you will not reveal anything we divulge during and after employment. So that's what I implied."
He is probably scared for his life and scared for the safety of his family. And it might be with good reason. So I am not going to bother him or anything, but lets be honest: he is probably the guy.
I think the bitcoin community will help him regain his anonymity. It is in their interest that the mystery of Satoshi survives. I am sure he is a great person but the face of Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto just does not seem to inspire billion dollar valuations.
It's a common Japanese name, like "John Smith".
It seems much easier to steal bitcoin. None of the significant bitcoin thieves have been caught thus far, and we are talking large sums being stolen.
Regarding his name being uncommon, I have to admit, I know little of Japanese names or how common they are. I trusted the Newsweek article which suggested the name was very uncommon and they also kind of suggested that they checked all the Satoshi Nakamotos they could find on record. But of course they may be wrong.
Is this not a perfect metaphor for the print journalism industry? Can we bet on when Print Newsweek 2.0 also goes belly-up?
It turns out they were wrong about something far worse than claiming that some guy created Bitcoin. And yet, the AP is still around today...and is now being cited by the tech community as a paragon of journalism.
I look forward to hearing the Ship of Theseus discussed in court.
People need to leave him the hell alone.
Edit: link to previous article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326
Readers who believe Dorian == Satoshi: What would you have to see to convince you that Dorian != Satoshi?
The hallmark of a good belief system is that your beliefs are falsifiable -- there exists some hypothetical set of experiments which could return unexpected results that would make you change your beliefs.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/06/satoshi_n...
This guy, whoever he is, is definitely one step ahead of the rest of us.
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence would know that it's effectively impossible to remain truly anonymous in this day and age. So what do you do if you want to be left alone? Either you make sure you have enough "insurance" that no one would risk messing with you, or you play the system against itself: leak just enough information to lead people down your trail but not so much that the trail can't equally plausibly be denied. It's all rather reminiscent of Vinnie "The Chin" Gigante's decades-long ruse of feigned insanity to avoid prosecution.
Side note: I think the last high-profile anonymous figure that managed to remain truly anonymous for any length of time was "Deep Throat", and he did all of his talking pre-internet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828576
>I am only certain of one thing when it comes to bitcoin, the creator(s) are not Japanese.
But actually, what makes you say the creator of Bitcoin ("the real Satoshi") is not Japanese?
According to Newsweek the man acknowledged that he had worked on bitcoin: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it"
AP says the main is denying he ever worked on bitcoin.
He very well could have said both of those things.
A woman started (from his perspective) stalking him, emailing him under false pretenses, phoning him, calling his son, and then showing up at his house in person. He called the cops to keep this stalker (again, from his perspective) away from his house. She yelled some questions at him from a distance and he might have thought she was asking about DoD work. "No longer involved and cannot discuss" is a reasonable answer. As well as: Don't come back.
I asked Newsweek's editor in chief a few hours ago about any recording: https://twitter.com/declanm/status/441713108763951104
No response.
yet, we have nothing better to up vote than every major news outlets satoshi nakamoto story.
It did seem a rather short article for that amount of talking.
Also: they'll do a writethru soon enough.
That said, if the guy wants his privacy, we can afford it to him, and if the only way to do that is to pretend he isn't the founder, so be it. So that is how I am going to interpret these denials and those agreeing with them.
Lance Armstrong and the members of the US Postal Service team denied using performance-enhancing drugs for more than a decade before finally confessing.
JK Rowling denied writing the Cuckoo's Calling for months.
The Duke Lacrosse Stripper changed her story at least a dozen times before finally admitted nothing happened.
JJ Abrams claimed that Star Trek Into Darkness wouldn't be about Khan for months.
IOW, unsupported denials mean nothing. The Newsweek story may not be right, but it at least has compelling supporting evidence that it could be right.
(There are more examples; these are just the ones I remembered off the top of my head.)
[1] http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Arts/articl...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/business/media/rowling-boo...
But there isn't any good explanation of why he would later deny it unless it really was a misunderstanding in the first place.
> This strongly suggests that he knew enough about BitCoin to be chased away by the question.
No it does not. Not understanding why a reporter out of nowhere would contact him, he thought that "Bitcom" was one of the confidential engineering projects that he was previously involved in. Which he could not discuss under NDA.
Add to that the ambitions of a reporter looking to score a cover story for her magazine's "relaunch of its print edition after 15 months and reorganization under new ownership".
Hypothetically speaking, if I were both Batman and Bruce Wayne and someone outed me as Batman, of course I would say, as Bruce Wayne, "I am not Batman."
Also you might have a bunch of English major editors saying FAA engineer == computer engineer with significant cryptocurrency domain expertise. It's all the same, amiright?
So... did Newsweek get the real Nakamoto who is panicking now? Or did they get the wrong guy, and the real guy feels like this time (rather than those previous times) he has to step in to protect the innocent?
It's not really evidence in any direction.
The man being targeted by NewsWeek is old and just because he says he's not the real Satoshi won't stop conspiracy nut jobs from stalking him and trying to find out the truth. Pictures of his home and location, children's photos and names have been plastered all over the Internet, I really feel for the guy even if he is the real Satoshi.
This whole situation highlights while the real Satoshi will probably never come out of secrecy if this situation is anything to go by. Not only that, but given NSA's extensive surveillance program, he would no doubt be subjected to more focused observation than others.
NewsWeek either need to put up some conclusive proof or
retract everything they've said and give mr Satoshi an apology.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6804870
The plausibility depends a lot on the competence you anticipate from such processes. But such contradicting signals of competence are pretty typical of large organizations, especially ones that are silo-ed to some degree.
I've worked in newsrooms with direct AP feeds and I've seen as many as a dozen writethrus with major AP stories. On the internal feeds, at least, they're marked with version numbers and a terse explanation of what changed.
I'm mildly surprised that AP hasn't published a writethru on their own website. It's been over an hour. Perhaps they have on their direct feeds, not sure.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_(computing)#Writing_polic...
"Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 online proposal also hints at his age, with the odd reference to "disk space" - something that hasn't been an issue since the last millennium"
1. Showing great concern for the small details, side cases, resource conservation is a timeless and ageless sign of a good programmer.
2. Disk space is most certainly still an issue.
i'd love to see the email to the merchant, bet she didn't identify as a journalist.
That's it, it's a slam dunk case Newsweek is liable for bajillions of dollars. He sure didn't act like a secretively paranoid inventor of bitcoin.
I bet newsweek would love to see his entire email history. He should probably sue them so he can see that email to the merchant and newsweek can read his entire email history, as well as subpoena various other people for their private emails with satoshi. This will be a winning legal strategy to protect his privacy.
All of the top comments in that thread[0] specifically asked not to publish the transaction id, but some people just want to interpret things the way they want to interpret things.
Opening a case against Newsweek lets them subpoena all sorts of records that they aren't entitled to with out a case, primarily because the truth is a defence to slander / libel, and if this guy loses then he's forever Satoshi.
Also it's going to be pretty difficult to prove that he suffered damages from the article.
It depends on what the fallout from it is, in terms of internet attention. If he's not "the real Satoshi" and he starts getting harassed because of this article, I'd say he has a pretty decent case: If the statement "is false, caused harm, and was made without adequate research", then most non-celebrity citizens have a pretty strong case.
I'm not sure if he'll fully recover from that kind of trauma.
It's unfortunately not uncommon for strangers to be killed over a few thousand dollars cash. Apparently professional hit men charge only a little more than that.
Are you really suggesting that the worst he might endure is annoying reporters knocking at the door?
That's the worst that will happen to him.
Oh wait, people have reason to think he has est.~400 million in bitcoins. But it's okay, I'm sure he'll recover from this (https://xkcd.com/538/) kind of trauma, too.
The number of people who could do the former would be pretty much every freshman CS student who took the relevant classes. The number of people who could do the latter is a far smaller fraction.
In any case, the burden on proof here is on Newsweek. I don't believe, given the evidence we have, that they've met it. Strong claims require strong proof.
Hear here! I think there's something profound here. Not to put words in your mouth in what follows, of course.
As a physicist, I'm really tired of the attitude that some things are just too complicated for the "common man" to understand, and I can easily see how crypography is similar with respect to public perception. This idea that "not everyone can understand" is propaganda put forward by the most intellectually insecure among us, and it does us damage in the long run.
Inevitably, someone comes by that sells the public a load of snake oil under the cover of being "too complicated". When they're eventually proven wrong, public trust erodes. Eventually, the very idea that expertise exists is in jeopardy.
Thank you for calling out the bullshit, even though you might not have meant it as such. These "technical" topics are open and understandable by everyone that cares, and I'm convinced that anyone who suggests otherwise is not worth their salt.
(edit: No offense intended whatsoever to declan. This is just something I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while and bennyg just reminded me of it.)
[1] That's a quote from here:
The reason why he thought the reporter was asking about his work at a defense contractor vs. bitcoin? Plain ole' miscommunication... Leah perhaps presented herself in an unconfident, possibly suspicious manner like she's out to get him and the guy's like "nope, not gonna get into this". And to be fair, English is this guy's second language.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-man-denies-hes-b...
