Gavin will visit the CIA

[The Script]

I wouldn't be too surprised if, instead of a 3,000USD cheque, Gavin would receive some nice bracelets once he arrives there:

Not if they openly approached him.  If they weren't going to play nice, they wouldn't have bothered with a ruse.  Like I said, openly inviting him to speak and offering him a speaker's fee tells me that they intend to play nice.  It's a very bullish signal.

You've obviously never heard of companies catching hackers by offering them jobs.


It goes like this:

*hacker is messing with a company*

Company: Hey wow thats impressive why don't you come on over for a job interview?

*hacker goes and gets arrested*

I think Valve tried to do it recently.....yup found the article. FBI helped set it up.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/

Wasn't the only reason they offered him a job interview to get him to come to the United States where they could arrest him?  Gavin is already in the United States so if they wanted to arrest him they would just do it.

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[marcus_of_augustus]

The "slave" talk is rubbish.  I'm calling on him to say what he'll do with the money

Me and my good friend Charlie will spend it on hookers and blow, of course.

Elliot Spitzer goes to washington !!

[Raoul Duke]

 

[junomoneta]

I accepted the invitation to speak because the fact that I was invited means Bitcoin is already on their radar, and I think it might be a good chance to talk about why I think Bitcoin will make the world a better place.  I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances.  And I don't think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government.

This quote of yours should give reason to question your judgment or allegiance to a free and unfettered money system

JM

[Veldy]

I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories:  I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.

I accepted the invitation to speak because the fact that I was invited means Bitcoin is already on their radar, and I think it might be a good chance to talk about why I think Bitcoin will make the world a better place.  I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances.  And I don't think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government.

I'm only very slightly worried that talking about bitcoin at the CIA will increase the chances they'll try to do something we don't want them to do.  I think accepting their invitation and being open about exactly what bitcoin is will make it less likely they'll see it as a threat.

PS: Full disclosure: I'll be paid a one-time fee of $3,000 to cover expenses and pay me for my time.  I don't want any "Gavin is on the CIA's payroll" rumors to get started, either...

As always, comments and questions and discussion welcome.  I'd really rather not hear any conspiracy theories about how they'll secretly implant a mind-control chip in my head while I'm there, though....

Rest assured, they are worried about international transfers and any connection it could have to national security (Market cap is too small for them to worry about bitcoin yet, but the idea proves it has legs).  The CIA does not deal with domestic issues [the NSA and FBI do however].  I would be more worried about talking to either of those agencies.

[Veldy]

I think they might be very much interested in the hashing power of the network.
Imagine if they could use the hashing power to help them with the "stuff they do"... 

A Cray super computer or two would probably easily dwarf the entire network if applied [CPU may have to be modified for efficiency, but they have been doing that for nuclear explosion and weather simulation for decades.

[Anonymous]

All this proves is that bitcoin is a meritocracy and that gavin has earned his position as lead developer through peer review. No one has been appointed nor promoted by a non existing bitcoin company. Its akin to the guys you see representing Anonymous the media like to trot out when they troll facebook.

Better Gavin talking about  bitcoin than socially awkward penguin.


 

[marcus_of_augustus]

I think they might be very much interested in the hashing power of the network.
Imagine if they could use the hashing power to help them with the "stuff they do"... 

A Cray super computer or two would probably easily dwarf the entire network if applied [CPU may have to be modified for efficiency, but they have been doing that for nuclear explosion and weather simulation for decades.

This is not quite correct ... the last best Cray for integer work (spook crypto stuff) was produced circa 2005.

It is not a trivial difference between integer optimised hardware and floating point.

Most declassified supercomputers have moved away from integer machines in the last 5-10 years to concentrate on the bigger markets of floating point machines (scientific/engineering simulations).

[xf2_org]

yeah but above all:  how messy

That all depends on the group.

The speaker is still the moderator, and controls the pace and flow of the presentation.

95% of the time this works fine.  Sometimes you have an audience member who asks a 15-minute question that is basically an advertisement for their product/service/job/etc.  You politely tell them to shut up. 

[humble]

keep your friends close and your enemies closer

+1

[Jim Hyslop]

And you'd trust him as much regardless?  What if it were a $300,000 yearly contract?  Would you trust him to speak for the community regardless of who was paying him and how much?

I don't really understand your objections to all this.

I don't have to trust Gavin, I can trust the source code. Gavin's not the only one who understands what the code does and how it works. If the CIA, or any other TLA-organization, tries to inject some suspicious code, there are enough programmers involved that the bad code will be quickly spotted.

And if the community feels he no longer speaks for them, then the community can easily speak up and say that he no longer represents our viewpoint.

I think some people in this thread have been reading too many spy novels.

[Jim Hyslop]

 

+1

[abstraction]

They are waiting for you Mr. Andresen.

[BitterTea]

But it leads to potentially unfortunate project-management dynamics if, when the one chosen as "development lead" is asked to speak somewhere, he pockets the fee as if he has earned it personally rather than as a result of the efforts of the community of developers.

First, as far as I am aware, Gavin was not "chosen" to be development lead, by the community or any individual; he just stepped up. Second, he is not being paid because he is the creator of Bitcoin, nor the lead developer. He is being paid because he is knowledgeable on the subject, a good speaker, and willing to spend his time doing so. You sure do seem to have a sense of entitlement.

[kiba]

But it leads to potentially unfortunate project-management dynamics if, when the one chosen as "development lead" is asked to speak somewhere, he pockets the fee as if he has earned it personally rather than as a result of the efforts of the community of developers.  I don't need to be a committed developer (yet?) on this project to say that; my point is that it decreases my willingness, and perhaps that of others, to volunteer time and effort to contribute. 

Who these others? You?

There is a more ethical and mature ethos at organizations like the Apache Software Foundation than I see in evidence in this thread.  I recognize the countercultural spirit of this group (though I find the anarchic extremeness of many of its members bizarre, difficult to read, and distortive of the discussion -- for example, Bitcoin almost certainly does not represent any sort of threat to the White House, the Internal Revenue Service, or other countries' analogues of those organization, and grandiose claims of that nature are at best distracting), but that doesn't mean that the development group doesn't have lessons to learn from other open-source communities of developers.

WTF? What does these paranoia about the state have anything to do with bitcoin development mistakes?

[kiba]

I have no sense of entitlement at all; I'm not asking for the money myself, obviously.

I think it's manifestly wrong to suggest he's being paid as a random person knowledgeable about Bitcoin, rather than as the lead developer.  I would be very surprised if his speaking ability, whatever it might be, entered even slightly into the decision to invite him.  Someone almost surely made a list of interesting new technologies and then contacted the corporate or community leaders they identified.

Dude, you can't explain why this is wrong.

Secondary, Gavin actually presented bitcoin as a speaker.

[MoonShadow]

Second, he is not being paid because he is the creator of Bitcoin, nor the lead developer. He is being paid because he is knowledgeable on the subject, a good speaker, and willing to spend his time doing so. You sure do seem to have a sense of entitlement.

I have no sense of entitlement at all; I'm not asking for the money myself, obviously.

I think it's manifestly wrong to suggest he's being paid as a random person knowledgeable about Bitcoin, rather than as the lead developer.  And I would be very surprised if his speaking ability, whatever it might be, entered even slightly into the decision to invite him.  Someone almost surely made a list of interesting new technologies and then contacted the corporate or community leaders they identified.

If that were the case, then Gavin was chosen because he was functionally promoted by Satoshi to take command, as it was Satoshi that added Gavin's email address to the main contact page of Bitcoin.org and then removed his own.

[MoonShadow]

If that were the case, then Gavin was chosen because he was functionally promoted by Satoshi to take command, as it was Satoshi that added Gavin's email address to the main contact page of Bitcoin.org and then removed his own.

Right, exactly.  And the question is what was implicit in that "promotion."  Either Satoshi could answer that question, or we could infer it from the situation.  The latter is what I have been doing throughout this thread.  (That seemed obvious to me, but perhaps not to others; thanks for elucidating the point.)

It's obvious to me that Satoshi doesn't want to break his cover, and isn't available.  Gavin is an independent entity, his service to Bitcoin is not binding upon his labor time.  The CIA didn't want you, suck it up.

[stillfire]

But it leads to potentially unfortunate project-management dynamics if, when the one chosen as "development lead" is asked to speak somewhere, he pockets the fee as if he has earned it personally rather than as a result of the efforts of the community of developers.

That's nonsense. Unless you are Ada Lovelace your work as a programmer always builds upon that of others. That does not make your work worthless and unworthy of recognition, monetary or otherwise.

What is even more absurd is the storm in a glass of water over such a tiny amount of money. If Mr. Andresen held a regular day-job as a software developer, the lost income of just being out of office would be comparable to the sum we are discussing here.

Nothing about this says that Mr. Andresen is 'cashing in' on the 'efforts of the community of developers'. And if we must necessarily think of it as him being 'paid' for something, it is at most a pittance for a tiny share of his personal contributions. Frankly, had he been paid $300 000 - not that it would be any of our business - I would still be hard pressed to find someone else to suggest as a speaker at this time.

[Jim Hyslop]

Oh, my objections aren't of the "spy novel" variety. 

That comment wasn't aimed at you. I don't think. I'd have to go back and re-read the entire thread to be sure. :-)

I'm just talking about the motives of those who represent and help drive open-source communities forward.  The chances that Gavin will be bought off by the CIA as a result of this conference speech are nil.  But it leads to potentially unfortunate project-management dynamics if, when the one chosen as "development lead" is asked to speak somewhere, he pockets the fee as if he has earned it personally rather than as a result of the efforts of the community of developers.

Well, by that logic, one could argue that all the bitcoins ever mined are the result of the efforts of the community of developers, and should not be pocketed by the miners.

As far as I'm concerned, what Gavin does with whatever money is left over after he's finished is none of our damn business. You clearly disagree, and it's pretty clear neither one of us is going to convince the other. Gavin's accepting of the engagement and fee is not going to affect my involvement in this project (I have already submitted one pull request and have more planned when time permits).

BTW - we do agree about certain people distorting the discussion :-)