The police

[John P]

If your Bitcoins are stolen, why should the police help you?

[DELTA9]

because stealing is wrong

[SlickTheNick]

wait..... police actually help you?

[Dansker]

Because stealing is criminal*

It may be fraud though, check your local laws.

[davout]

because stealing is wrong

private property is an illusion

[edd]

Why would I even ask the police to help me? I'll ask an IT expert, thanks.

[kuba_10]

OH NOES!

[kseistrup]

for great justice

[MoonShadow]

because stealing is wrong

private property is an illusion

Seems pretty real to me when I walk on it, eat it or drive with it.  Still, Bitcoins are not physical, so when you call the cops about being scammed in an online bitcoin trade ask yourself, "would the cops do anything if I had been scammed out of cash on the street?" and if the answer is "probably not" then the next question then becomes "should I invite the cops into my life if there is little chance of recovering my losses?"

Some people think of the cops with admiration, but they are not there to "serve and protect" the individual citizen.  They "serve and protect" the state.  If you really believe that would include yourself; are you happy when you see police lights in your rear view mirror because they are enforcing the law, or do you tense up and check your speed?

[FreeMoney]

If your [insert anything here] are stolen, why should the police help you?

Seriously have the police been helping you a lot?

[FreeMoney]

Also, if Bernake keeps printing dollars until we we all suffocate are the police going to come help you?

[marcus_of_augustus]

Sting was awesome ... bit greenie now for my liking though ... Andy Summers was pretty cool too.

[Anonymous]

If your Bitcoins are stolen, why should the police help you?

Because the government hates competition.

[commlinx]

It probably depends on how they steal them, many (most?) countries have laws against unauthorised access to computers so if you're talking about a technical attack on your wallet.dat file they've probably broken other laws and you might or might not get someone interested in pursuing it if you have decent evidence.

Fraud's another possibility, but more likely they couldn't be stuffed with it for small scale stuff especially if they get two different sides to the story, so they'd probably tell you to take civil action against the other person.

[hazek]

because stealing is wrong

private property is an illusion

Good thing to know. If I should ever need a vital organ transplant I'll look you up and just take your organ. Since private property is an illusion you wont mind, right? Retard.

[eturnerx]

because stealing is wrong

private property is an illusion

Private property is mutual agreement backed by force.

[Gareth Nelson]

If someone stole them through deception, then you could file a lawsuit using fraud as the cause of action, if they stole your wallet.dat you'd have to press criminal charges - whether either would be possible depends on having the person's real ID.
Plus this assumes that bitcoins don't at some point get outlawed, which could happen - in which case the state will not help you.

[rezin777]

because stealing is wrong

private property is an illusion

Private property is mutual agreement backed by force.

Your sentence doesn't make any sense to me. Mutual agreement, by it's definition, does not require force. It's when someone uses force to break that agreement (initiation of force) that force first enters the equation, in which case a response of force is appropriate (and optional).

Let's say:
We can agree that you own your bike and I own my bike. No force required.
If you try to take my bike, I can either let you (in which case I agree it's not my property).
Or I can stop you (in which case I disagree and I'm simply responding to your initial force with force in return).
You are the initial actor in trying to take my bike (you do not agree that it is my bike and are acting on that idea).
You bring force into the equation and accept it as valid.

If you claim there is no right to private property and use force to take what is mine, you respect the use of force, so you accept force to be used against you in return.
 

[Zaft]

I work in network security, and some of us have been discussing this recently.

Because Bitcoins are traded anonymously, they will be extremely easy to steal once the malware community begins to take notice unless something is done to secure how we access Bitcoins. At the moment, we simply turn on the program and go. We can even rip them straight from the computer. There's a tutorial on this very website on how to rip your Bitcoins and back them up to DropBox. Obviously, there needs to be an additional layer of security. Files need to be secured with passwords, the program needs to require a password that CANNOT BE RETRIEVED (if it is retrievable, it is possible for an exploiter to remotely retrieve it) IF LOST, and everything needs to be encrypted.

Here's what I mean.

With programs like ZeuS and SpyEye, the former of which now available free to the public, and both of which are STILL not detectable by any of the current anti-virus programs, having unsecure "money" sitting on your computer is almost inviting somebody to come steal it. With a normal person, I have to wait for you to log on to your bank account, so I can then save your information, log in myself, transfer your money out to a money mule and have them transfer the money overseas where it won't be affected by U.S./international law. With Bitcoins, I just need to access your computer, send the BitCoins (which is, as Bitcoin often touts, anonymous), and I'm done. You can't call up your bank and have them protect you. You can't get insurance on your Bitcoins. You can't "freeze" your Bitcoin account (considering it's your computer I'm accessing, and not an actual account). You're just shit out of luck.





And to migrate back to the main topic at hand, good luck getting the police to help. First off, you have to be able to convince them that Bitcoins have real value. Anything under $20 of damage is, by law, not dealt with by the police/courts. Second, you'll need to find the person who took it. Since Bitcoins are transferred anonymously, that means you'd have to get a professional cryptographer to decrypt my ZeuS and find where I'm accessing you from. And then, after all of that, you have to hope that I still have your Bitcoins. Chances are, by the time you actually figure out what's happened, I've already sold them, or transferred them to somebody else.

[rezin777]

Responsibility is a bitch, but I'll take it over the alternative.