Bitcoin Forum

The MI5  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5) has a long and proud(;)) tradition of infiltrating anti-establishment and/or disruptive organisations - under the catch all of "national security".

   They have managed to penetrate organisations as diverse as the environmental movement, the KGB, the IRA, the Labour Party etc  etc - but my personal "favourite" was the way they managed, in the early 1970's, to entice Jo Gormley (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/true_spies/2351547.stm) onto the payroll. Jo Gormley had formerly been the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, the most powerful union in the UK, and one of the most powerful in Europe at the time - back in the day when we still had mines and unions still had real clout (NUM brought down Consevative Government in 1974).

    As we all know Bitcoin/the blockchain is potentially a truly disruptive technology - and it strikes me as being a real threat to many existing vested interests.
     This being the case I cannot imagine that it has not, therefore, received attention from (amongst others) MI5.

  And having been looked at it has either been deemed that :-

                                  a) BTC poses no threat - I can only see this as being the diagnosis if it is seen as being "on side" and reactionary by nature (comments ??)  (leaving MI5 to concentrate on IS and "Save the NHS" activists).     or
  
                                   b) BTC is a threat to the status quo.



      My question is - is the open source nature of the protocol sufficient a protection if  BTC is deemed a threat ? Or would the open source part be seen as a dream come true for TPTB ?
     Would the counter measures undertaken by the intelligence services not come from within (the Bitcoin community) but from without ie. regulation/negative media representations etc. ? Or from within and without ? If from within - how ?

    In what ways could the protocol be compromised to better serve existing vested interests and the large financial conglomerates ? And would this necessarily be at the expense of Bitcoins core values ? What are they BTW - in your opinion ?

   Am I being paranoid ? Do I really need that Tails USB stick ?


So many questions, so little time  ;D

Imo, they're already here - and if you ask me - in plain sight is not unthinkable.
Also realize that for people working with these organizations, bitcoin is very useful. Look at TOR for instance and who made it originally..

a few points to make

MI5 was the small section of GCHQ that dealt with counter intelligence. mainly they deal with changing versions of history or twisting words.. we brits commonly call them 'The BBC news' :D

which really is not a big deal as most people can easily see behind the propaganda that's spouted out.

so lets concentrate on the umbrella organization of 'national security' called GCHQ.

if you did not know this already, GCHQ has many tools it uses and all of these tools show that they are actually highly knowledgeable about bitcoin.
take for instance MI1. the cypher and code braking section of GCHQ. this section helped the american security agency to get information on ross ulbrich's PC.

take for instance MI10 who work with BT, IBM etc to get technical information on possible threats. well if you just google 'IBM police' you will see that IBM are highly involved in the police department of many countries. (mainly UK and US) where the police in many UK counties are managed and paid by IBM (google 'southwest one')
and of course you can then google IBM Bitcoin and see that they are really getting into the bitcoin game.

as for the whole concentrating on foreign affairs such as al qaeda (the eastern hemisphere's proper name for what us westerners have branded ISIS), that is being monitored by MI2. where by although the sections do talk to each other and pass intelligence around. just because MI2 and MI5 are busy chatting about al qaeda, does not mean that MI1 and MI10 are sitting on their hands doing nothing.

samsung, IBM, Apple, Google, BT, plus many other corporations are definetly involved with MI1 and MI10 (plus other sections) and many of these do actually know about bitcoin and are involved in bitcoin projects.

but with that said. bitcoins open source nature means that if someone see's bad code. it can instantly be communicated to everyone to not upgrade to that version. people can make their own code and as long as everyone sees that its not filled with trojans or backdoors, people will use it. and thus there is no infiltration of bitcoin because bitcoin is too open.

bitcoin is not a 'threat' but bitcoin is a pivot point of change

Of course they know about BTC. That is their job. And I think they have a department who tackles about that.

They are probably laughing their butts off that the terrorists lost a fortune in Bitcoin.