Another disturbing point: Hearn said very few bitcoin nodes are run through Tor. I don't know if that's true, but I think people who run full nodes from an IP that can be traced to them are very naive.
The fact that very few run through Tor makes your statement brainless and useless. I haven't heard of anyone having problems, but maybe you know something that I don't or you are just spreading useless FUD.
You're probably right. Yesterday I was probably extra paranoid because I saw the story that commenters on an article at Reason about the Silk Road were being targetted by a government prosecutor. In the light of the morning, I can see it's a little outlandish to think that the government will start targetting people because they ran a bitcoin full node. That would be like government revenue agencies targetting people because of their political activism. We're fortunate enough to live in a time and place when that sort of thing doesn't happen.
/sWell this is what I call "knowing only half of the information". Do you know what were the actual comments that started this targeting?
Yes, I do know the comments. They were listed in a secret subpeona that got leaked. More info, along with explanations why the comments are not threats and perfectly legal can be found here:
https://popehat.com/2015/06/08/department-of-justice-uses-grand-jury-subpoena-to-identify-anonymous-commenters-on-a-silk-road-post-at-reason-com/One example is:
Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.
This is a deontological statement, a statement about how the world should be. A threat would look like, "I am going to shoot this judge." None of the comments were of this form.
Here is another example:
I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman.
Really? It's illegal to say that? That's a
"threat"?
Something's wrong with people who defend this kind of tyrannical overreach by government prosecutors.
Regarding nodes. Do you see a massive increase in people that get arrested for being a peer in the torrent network? Because I don't.
No, but retroactive paranoia is notoriously ineffective.
Suppose Alice and Bob both run Bitcoin full nodes. Alice is paranoid and runs her node over Tor. Bob thinks she's nuts and runs his in the clear. He doesn't believe there's any risk that a tyrannical government will use the fact that he runs a Bitcoin node to target him and use it as an excuse to punish him (perhaps for something unrelated in his personal life, like multiple visits to an island with Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein).
Two futures are possible:
Alice is right. Bob goes to prison and Alice doesn't.
Bob is right. Neither goes to prison. Bob gets to keep fucking kids with Bill Clinton.
In both possible futures Alice was the prudent one, not to mention that Bob was a pedo who should be taken out back and shot and end up in a special place in hell.
PS: tvbcof beat me to the punch with his "two basic possibilities" post above. I should've typed faster.
