Gavin will visit the CIA

[BitterTea]

You have not established that he is representing the community. Gavin is an individual that spends his time improving a free software we that use. He has been invited to speak on his time and is being compensated for it. How do you fit into this picture exactly?

[goatpig]

What I'm doing is saying that in this one narrow capacity (accepting a speaker fee for his "time" for a speech given in his representative capacity), he is not representing his community properly.  You're not arguing against that; you seem to be saying I shouldn't even say it, but there's no basis for that.  This part of the discussion is part of the evaluation of whether he is representing "properly" in this particular instance.

I'm arguing against the fact that some here think giving this speech hereby makes him a representative of the community. It's like saying a developer at Blizzard giving a speech about his work with MMORPGs is representing the wow player base oO.

I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but he'll be attending a technological conference. What he'll be presenting is the technological aspect of Bitcoin. I don't acknowledge the existence of a community under the terms I think you are defining it, but for the sake of the argument, I'll admit to it. Now, if community there is, its motive is economical, not technological. The technology is merely the tool that allows for the economical aspect to exist. This is why I see Gavin as only giving a speech on his experience with the crypto/p2p/mining thing, not discussing that fact that the big majority of users here hate the fed or have anarchist tendencies. I see the fee as legitimate compensation for sharing his knowledge.

Your analogy strikes me as calling Mark Zuckerberg a representative of the Facebook community, in which case that community would have died long ago, given his character. I got dozens more analogy like this if you'd like.

[ribuck]

What I'm doing is saying that in this one narrow capacity (accepting a speaker fee for his "time" for a speech given in his representative capacity)

Dude, you're totally missing the point. Gavin isn't being invited to represent the Bitcoin community. He is being invited in his technical capacity as lead developer of an interesting open source project (and probably because he is a smart and articulate guy).

[ribuck]

The relationship is like Torvalds's to a kernel developer, not to a Linux user.

So? Torvalds gets speaking fees all the time.

[cypherdoc]

actually i think Gavin is the perfect "representative" for the community.  he's well spoken, articulate, understands the tech just as well as anyone, has a Princeton degree, and looks honest. 

[cypherdoc]

actually i think Gavin is the perfect "representative" for the community.  he's well spoken, articulate, understands the tech just as well as anyone, has a Princeton degree, and looks honest. 

actually that Princeton degree could be a negative

[Cusipzzz]

Agree.. Bernake was a prof at Princeton...hmmmm 

[cypherdoc]

actually it really bothers me that FerBanke is willing to go to such extremes experimenting with our economic lives.  he could easily be known as The Destroyer of the greatest civilization ever.  and to watch him do it in such a biased manner for the banksters.  truly amazing.

[c-rock]

Interesting.   

[gigitrix]

I am sorry Gavin is accepting Tax payer's money in order to do something like that.

If he accepts 3,000$ to give a presentation about bitcoin, what would he do for 300,000$ or 3,000,000$?  Would he accept a full time job as trying to find a way to destroy bitcoin?

Why do CIA need to have someone explain bitcoin in flesh and bone?   Can't they read Satoshi's white paper, source code and other information available on this forum?

I must say I am a bit disappointed by Gavin.  I hope he reconsiders.

It's a small amount, but if I were in Gavin's position I'd be willing to accept reimbursement for expenses but would devote the rest of the payment (for my "time") back to the community.  Even applying it to, say, the Bitcoin Faucet would be fine.  Leaders of open-source communities generally should face skepticism when profiting from external payments that arise from their status as spokespeople of the communities they represent; profiting from external payments does potentially bias incentives and undermine trust.

Gavin is lead developer. Him getting money from Bitcoin like this means he can personally spend more of his time on bitcoin. Plus, wouldn't you go anyway, just to see what happens? Providing he doesn't think he's going to get into trouble, I think it would be good to inform and educate, because if they come into it themselves they might overreact more than if it explained academically to them (although they are still going to be pissed).

There's little the 3 letter orgs can do now anyway, or at least under the radar. Any mass crackdown is going to cause a major Streisand effect, and the world, already primed by wikileaks and gitmo, will use it out of spite. They can't exactly be covert in such a paranoid community. And they can benefit from the same technology that is a threat, so it'll be interesting to see the reaction.

[hazek]

Doesn't Gavin already live on the east cost of the US?  I thought he was only originally from Australia.

Yep, I live in Amherst, Massachusetts; my family moved to the US when I was 5 years old.

I will be visiting Australia (Sydney for a couple of days then Tasmania for a couple weeks then Cairns for a week or two) in July.

Just one advice. Triple read anything they'd want you to sign and don't sign it.

[xf2_org]

gavinandresen: pause frequently during your talk to ask if the audience has any question. For technical talks, I favor this technique over reserving the end of a talk for Q&A time. Remember that the crypto guys in the audience will get it, even if the presentation is of average quality. Your goal is to make the non-technical guys understand it as best as they can. Quite frankly Bitcoin is very hard to explain correctly. I have never watched or listened to a Bitcoin presentation that did a good job at explaining it. The only reason I understand it is because I read the white paper and have a crypto background.

The "Linux style" conference presentation method is to ask that people interrupt whenever they have a question.  It's really free form, and permits the audience to direct the speaker to the audience's main interests.

[xf2_org]

yep and he does not even have to tell us what he has decided to do with it

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?

Trust is earned by example, not conspiracy theory (or lack thereof).

Gavin has earned our trust many times over.

However, ultimately, we trust the source code and the miners, not Gavin specifically.

I would be far more worried if the CIA was getting together me (xf2.org mining pools), slush, [Tycho], vladimir, ArtForz, mrb and other big miners.

[dishwara]

Nice to hear Gavin got invitation from CIA.

I will be happy, if Gavin NOT threatened & NOT bribed to leave bitcoin.

Resistance.......Don't worry, we pull the plug.

[FatherMcGruder]

The "Linux style" conference presentation method is to ask that people interrupt whenever they have a question.  It's really free form, and permits the audience to direct the speaker to the audience's main interests.

How cool.

[grondilu]

The "Linux style" conference presentation method is to ask that people interrupt whenever they have a question.  It's really free form, and permits the audience to direct the speaker to the audience's main interests.

How cool.

yeah but above all:  how messy

[JohnDoe]

I'm speaking specifically of the (relatively small) community of developers.  I agree that he doesn't owe anything in this context to someone who downloads the client and experiments with it or mines.  The relationship is like Torvalds's to a kernel developer, not to a Linux user.

Not sure I'm reading this right. Are you calling yourself a Bitcoin developer without having developed anything yet?

[FatherMcGruder]

yeah but above all:  how messy

That all depends on the group.

[bitcoinBull]

RE: me == satoshi:  here's some C++ code I wrote 15 years ago:
  http://oss.sgi.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/inventor/apps/demos/revo/RevClass.c%2B%2B?rev=1.1.1.1
I have a very different coding style from Mr. Nakamoto.  And I don't know nearly enough crypto to build something like bitcoin by myself.

And one final note:  the US government is a really, really, really big organization.  Like any big organization, different parts have different motives and goals.  I hope I'll get a little tiny glimpse into what one part of that big organization thinks about bitcoin.

Come on Gavin!  The coding style of anyone who can hack their way out of a wet paper bag is going to change over the course of 15 years.  So all this proves is that your style changed. 

Satoshi or not, infinite gratitude for your leadership and spokesmanship.  Best of luck to you with the spooks.  And best of luck to them, they're going to need it!  (somewhere on the order of one in 2^256)

[CryptikEnigma]

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/