Gavin will visit the CIA

[TiagoTiago]

Be safe, aight G ?

[AtlasONo]

I feel like I'm dealing with children.  Maybe I'm just not used to open message boards; usually my projects have a somewhat more polite, mailing-list-oriented membership, and people treat each other like adults.  They also know how to read and understand nuance, a skill sorely lacking here.  This is certainly not a community that at present is welcoming to outsiders, at least if they're not libertarian or anarchic extremists or, for example, display any doubts about the protocol or the "leadership."  And you don't have to believe me, but it's your loss.

You are absolutely 100% right.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Be safe, aight G ?

He is safe.
If something would happen to Gavin at that meeting, this would be interpreted by everyone here as government attacking Bitcoin.
If they are planning an attack on Bitcoin (but i doubt that is their intention at the moment), they would not want to alert the enemy first.

The CIA/FBI/Gov guys are not stupid. Surely they will want to explore other possibilities than attack first. For example:

a) Exploiting bitcoin for power, using it against other nations, increasing national advantage (perhaps using it to destabilize/manipulate/influence other countries).
b) Actually making a profit on Bitcoin, which can be possibly used to fund Military/Intelligence.

If none of the above options works, they may try an attack.
Just remember that not everything that comes from military/intelligence is always bad. it was military & intelligence that produced the Internet & started the TOR project.

[uniman]

Why would a government agency create a currency that undermines the government's ability to collect taxes?

For the same reason that a government agency would create a routing protocol that undermines the government's ability to censor and collect information.

The CIA would definitely be interested in a distributed, pseudonymous digital currency, in order to transfer money to assets. In order for such a system to be useful, it would have to be used by many other people (to provide cover) as well as be valuable (in order to be accepted by an asset for payment).

This isn't to say that the government as a whole won't be hostile to Bitcoin, but I think most government employees have a sort of tunnel vision.

Does anybody really think the CIA has any problem with fund transfers?  Don't you think they already have plenty of methods of doing that and that it's extremely unlikely that Bitcoin (with all due respect) has come up with something novel that surprises them and gives them some new capability that they simply don't have already?  Sounds farfetched to me.

To the extent that government agencies had anything to do with developing the software for the Internet, I suggest that 1) we can see how primitive and chronically insecure much of it is relative to the results of a blank-sheet effort today and 2) the government at the time had far less understanding of the consequences of the Internet.

My thinking is that the June invite is the opening act of their dance to get engaged with the people of this project in order to ultimately "persuade" them to provide some "backdoor" method of weakening the system so that it becomes ineffective as a defense against government.  Surely they have the source code and the ability to understand this 100% on their own.  Why even talk to Bitcoin people?

Here's a bargaining chip...

"If you want the power to find _real_ criminals who are using Bitcoin, then show us the _guarantee_ that merely _political_ crime such as tax evasion is exempt from any action by government."



 

[JohnDoe]

(Sigh.)  I'm just offering a reasoned argument about project management, informed by my experience.

You still haven't given a single concrete suggestion aside from "You should make me part of the leadership because of my awesome C++ and project management skills that I have yet to display. You are missing out if you don't". And your supposed experience means nothing, even if you were Linus Torvalds nobody would give a shit until you actually do something.

This is certainly not a community that at present is welcoming to outsiders

New people are very welcomed here, except the ones with a hugely inflated sense of self-worth and self-entitlement.

[TiagoTiago]

Be safe, aight G ?

He is safe.
If something would happen to Gavin at that meeting, this would be interpreted by everyone here as government attacking Bitcoin.
If they are planning an attack on Bitcoin (but i doubt that is their intention at the moment), they would not want to alert the enemy first.

The CIA/FBI/Gov guys are not stupid. Surely they will want to explore other possibilities than attack first. For example:

a) Exploiting bitcoin for power, using it against other nations, increasing national advantage (perhaps using it to destabilize/manipulate/influence other countries).
b) Actually making a profit on Bitcoin, which can be possibly used to fund Military/Intelligence.

If none of the above options works, they may try an attack.
Just remember that not everything that comes from military/intelligence is always bad. it was military & intelligence that produced the Internet & started the TOR project.

Don't the feds hang at DefCon and such and threaten and even straight out arrest invited speakers there?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Be safe, aight G ?

He is safe.
If something would happen to Gavin at that meeting, this would be interpreted by everyone here as government attacking Bitcoin.
If they are planning an attack on Bitcoin (but i doubt that is their intention at the moment), they would not want to alert the enemy first.

The CIA/FBI/Gov guys are not stupid. Surely they will want to explore other possibilities than attack first. For example:

a) Exploiting bitcoin for power, using it against other nations, increasing national advantage (perhaps using it to destabilize/manipulate/influence other countries).
b) Actually making a profit on Bitcoin, which can be possibly used to fund Military/Intelligence.

If none of the above options works, they may try an attack.
Just remember that not everything that comes from military/intelligence is always bad. it was military & intelligence that produced the Internet & started the TOR project.

Don't the feds hang at DefCon and such and threaten and even straight out arrest invited speakers there?

Do they really ?

Well, even if it is so, threatening is far from actually hurting people.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I'm not sure why I'm taking the bait and continuing to respond, but in my world it's hard to let wrong comments slide by, particularly when they're so hostile.

http://xkcd.com/386/

[bitdragon]

I'm not sure why I'm taking the bait and continuing to respond, but in my world it's hard to let wrong comments slide by, particularly when they're so hostile.

http://xkcd.com/386/

[marcus_of_augustus]

If it all goes pear-shaped I wonder if Gavin will be given a "burial at sea"?

[LightRider]

No, he'll have to develop kidney failure and hide in Silicon Valley for 10 years evading detection.

[bitcool]

I dunno... at best I see a neutral outcome with this cia meeting. I do not foresee a net positive for bitcoin in the long term with this meeting. ...

I think there can be positive outcome, however remote it is.
Let's say dollar's collapse is unavoidable at this point, and it turns out Fort Knox's gold had been "leased" out and long gone... all the sudden supporting bitcoin is of national's interest, just think about how many bitcoins are in the hands of US citizens and how much computational power US has.

[gusti]

I dunno... at best I see a neutral outcome with this cia meeting. I do not foresee a net positive for bitcoin in the long term with this meeting. ...

I think there can be positive outcome, however remote it is.
Let's say dollar's collapse is unavoidable at this point, and it turns out Fort Knox's gold had been "leased" out and long gone... all the sudden supporting bitcoin is of national's interest, just think about how many bitcoins are in the hands of US citizens and how much computational power US has.

So, is Gavin the next Bernanke ?   

[LH66]

I dunno... at best I see a neutral outcome with this cia meeting. I do not foresee a net positive for bitcoin in the long term with this meeting. ...

I think there can be positive outcome, however remote it is.
Let's say dollar's collapse is unavoidable at this point, and it turns out Fort Knox's gold had been "leased" out and long gone... all the sudden supporting bitcoin is of national's interest, just think about how many bitcoins are in the hands of US citizens and how much computational power US has.

Point taken. 

[Shortline]

Does anybody really think the CIA has any problem with fund transfers?  Don't you think they already have plenty of methods of doing that and that it's extremely unlikely that Bitcoin (with all due respect) has come up with something novel that surprises them and gives them some new capability that they simply don't have already?  Sounds farfetched to me.

They're experts at moving money around, no doubt. And the only thing they can't easily do is duplicate the robustness of p2p networks. It seems highly likely to me that they need failsafe backups just like the rest of the world - something that always works if the internet is still switched on. See Tor for a good example of that strategy.

My thinking is that the June invite is the opening act of their dance to get engaged with the people of this project in order to ultimately "persuade" them to provide some "backdoor" method of weakening the system so that it becomes ineffective as a defense against government.  Surely they have the source code and the ability to understand this 100% on their own.  Why even talk to Bitcoin people?

I'd guess that many people in the organization completely and thoroughly understand bitcoin better than the majority of people that actually use it. But they're a big bureaucracy with a bunch of different departments and conflicting internal goals, just like any major branch of the government. If the guys in the analysis department want the guys that make decisions to take notice, they do it like any other office worker does it - however they can. And in this case they bought a bit of time from a guy to make a presentation.

Here's a bargaining chip...

"If you want the power to find _real_ criminals who are using Bitcoin, then show us the _guarantee_ that merely _political_ crime such as tax evasion is exempt from any action by government."

I fail to see how this would work. What guarantee can the US gov't give that they couldn't immediately revoke as soon as it's convenient for them?


 

[sortedmush]

The CIA torture people.

I'm not saying that Gavin is in danger of being tortured. I'm just saying that I would have totally ignored any communication from an organisation that tortures people.

[Ian Maxwell]

Hm.

Advantages to the CIA of a backdoored bitcoin: it would be easy to gather intelligence by, say, identifying the bitcoin addresses of interesting people and tracking their cash flow.

Advantages to the CIA of a secure bitcoin: they don't have to worry about "bad guys" finding the backdoor and identifying all their spies, which probably would happen eventually with an open source program.

We have plenty of suspicious people vetting the source code already, and if I catch wind that the CIA is contributing code, I'll be one of them. So I'm not too worried about that scenario.

[TiagoTiago]

If all USD was backed with BTC, how much 1 BTC would be worth right now?

[MoonShadow]

Prove the mixnet isn't a honeypot.

[bitcool]

If all USD was backed with BTC, how much 1 BTC would be worth right now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States

as of Oct 2009, M2 was 8.36 trillion, with ~8 million bitcoins in circulation, that's about $1M/btc.