Bitcoin Forum

Who removed/deleted the topic ? I clicked through on google reader and the thread is missing/off limits.

Not that I am paranoid or anything but when a thread talking about the governement taking actions against bitcoin is wiped out it makes you go hmmm...
 :-\

I did.

Somebody (I think it was you) said it was not a good idea to publicly brainstorm about how to counter bitcoin.

I thought it made sense.

well.... lets have an i2p or tor thread then.....

perfect. that makes more sense

Ok fair enough. Not that I think it matters what we do.

Yes, don't give your adversary free ideas. Discuss it somewhere more private.

We need a private short message service.  :)

Security trough obscurity does not work. Any methods that might have been discussed in that thread the government will think of them too. I think it's better to openly talk about the ways we could get attacked so that we can be better prepared when the time comes.

Anything that is said about bitcoin could be said about cash.

Why is it different just because its online? You can buy child porn and sponsor terrorism anonymously be sending cash in the mail....yet they dont ban cash. ::)

Yes indeed.  Governments can't do anything against people sending some stuff via mail, of course ;)

Therefore there is no reason why we should worry about governments doing anything against bitcoin.

That's kind of silly. Do some of you think there is a way to take bitcoin down, and that we are going to think of it and do nothing about it, and that 'they' will never think of it? If there are vulnerabilities that anyone can exploit we should talk about them publicly. And even if there is none, we can benefit each other by talking about what they might try.

Obviously we'd be talking about tyrannical governments. Governments loved by their people surely have nothing to fear.

Then why not make the topic "How to make bitcoin resilent against attacks"?

Leave the governments out of it, it could just as well be a ISP, bank or other corporation that tries to bring down bitcoin ... or even a group of script kiddies with a botnet / big connection.

IMO, at least for the short term that is a much more realistic threat.

Sure, and I think there are threads with content like that.

I was only saying that the reason provided for closing the thread was weak.

I agree here that removing this thread was a bad idea and shouldn't have been done.  While the discussion on that thread perhaps was going away from the topic a bit (suggesting moderation, not deletion) I also think that the discussion of threats by governments against Bitcoins is extremely useful.  There certainly are plenty of examples that I'm sure participants on these forums can point to where software developers were imprisoned or had other substantial legal consequences happen to them simply for participation in something which law enforcement officials were thinking was dangerous.

I sure hope that nobody forgets the situation with Dimitri Sklyarov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Sklyarov), which to me was one of the most embarrassing moment in recent history in terms of injustice and wrongful arrest that I am aware of.  I don't want to see that situation happen with Bitcoins developers and it is certainly useful to talk about what limits would generally be a problem to avoid when dealing with law enforcement and the intersection of software development and politics.

While I openly admit there are some troll around where content should be deleted because it only opens up a flamefest, I don't think that particular thread qualified in that manner.  Some very well reasoned and thoughtful responses were on that thread that I guess is now lost forever?

If you are not worried at all then why did you delete the thread?

I was trying to be ironic here.  Truly I believe bitcoins are much harder to control than cash, for cash has a physical existence, while a bitcoin wallet, once encrypted, is just a bunch of bits.

Security through obscurity will not work. We need to address concerns and problems.


Edit1: revised second sentence.

qft