10 ms·
The NSA Worked to “Track Down” Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal
- criley2 9y agoBitcoin is aggressively used in dark net, drug dealing, zero day exploit selling, and is used by nationstates to hire and pay "plausibly deniable" contractors to attack NGO's and governments. There was a period when people erroneously thought that bitcoin was anonymous and secure. If the NSA was not working to track down the premiere currency of the dark web and of the nation state actors they work counterintelligence against, this would be dereliction of their duty. This is like suggesting the FBI tracks down "USD" users. No duh, law enforcement and counterintelligence requires regulation of the financial systems in use. Any unregulated financial system is a hive of villainy and scum as a truism.
- sbenitoj 9y ago“Any unregulated financial system is a hive of villainy and scum as a truism.” Wow, you do realize that fiat is the number 1 one way to fund the drug trade and terrorism right? It certainly isn’t crypto. Not exactly a great way to sum up what will prove to be one of the most important innovations in human history.
- portofcall 9y agoWow, you do realize that fiat is the number 1 one way to fund the drug trade and terrorism right? It certainly isn’t crypto. Number 1 by volume (duh) or number 1 by percentage of transactions for illegal goods and services? Not exactly a great way to sum up what will prove to be one of the most important innovations in human history. You hear that atomic energy, antibiotics and computers?
- sbenitoj 9y agoYes, sound money is on par with both of those. Fiat money has indirectly killed more people than the lack of antibiotics ever did. Fiat is what gives corrupt governments like the USSR and China under Mao (and their modern, less corrupt equivalents) the ability to control an entire economy to the detriment of billions of people. Once control over money is finally wrestled from the hands of the elite the world will see a boom in prosperity that hasn’t been seen since the industrial revolution. Read some books, educate yourself on how important this topic is rather than posting a snarky reply. Here’s a good place to start: The Mystery of Banking by Rothbard The Creature from Jekyll Island by Edward Griffin Theory of Money and Credit by Mises All are available for free online by searching for the PDF version.
- mythrwy 9y agoI agree with your thesis on the importance of the invention. More abstract (and international) money and blockchain rules will be huge advances, fully agreed. Less corruption, more stability, these things I believe will finally allow us to set systems up to provide resources with efficiency we haven't been able to before and this is huge. Where I get off is is thinking it's some kind of libertarian revolution wresting control from the hands of government. I don't predict that. The way I see it, governments will be in the thick of it. But they (hopefully) will finally have to play by the rules.
- sbenitoj 9y agoThey’re definitely already in the thick of it, no doubt about it. But ultimately capital goes where it is treated best, and governments treat capital worse than thieves, they’ll never play by the rules. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s going to be a really rocky road, but eventually worldwide governments will not be in control over money anymore. Now that people don’t have to use fiat that is debased on purpose by governments to fund their operations, they will not. It’s not about a libertarian revolution (although I do believe sound money will result in a more libertarian world), it’s about sound money being an order of magnitude more superior to fiat. People in Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic didn’t stop using debased currency because they were libertarians, they stopped because it was clear their money was becoming worthless and there were superior alternatives. Those are extreme examples where it can happen overnight, it will take longer for less aggressive regimes, but it’s only a matter of time before the same happens to all other fiat.
- mythrwy 9y agoAgreed. Over time I do see that happening. An objective international financial system to which nation states acquiesce or are locked out and rapidly decline.
- sbenitoj 9y agoDon’t know why my post got flagged, I provided several valuable resources, going to post it again, exactly as written. ————— Yes, sound money is on par with both of those. Fiat money has indirectly killed more people than the lack of antibiotics ever did. Fiat is what gives corrupt governments like the USSR and China under Mao (and their modern, less corrupt equivalents) the ability to control an entire economy to the detriment of billions of people. Once control over money is finally wrestled from the hands of the elite the world will see a boom in prosperity that hasn’t been seen since the industrial revolution. Read some books, educate yourself on how important this topic is rather than posting a snarky reply. Here’s a good place to start: The Mystery of Banking by Rothbard The Creature from Jekyll Island by Edward Griffin Theory of Money and Credit by Mises All are available for free online by searching for the PDF version.
- jandrese 9y ago> Not exactly a great way to sum up what will prove to be one of the most important innovations in human history. Dude, lay off of the Kool-Aid.
- sbenitoj 9y agoYou don’t consider sound money to be an important innovation?
- jandrese 9y agoIt is, but we were talking about blockchain currencies.
- sbenitoj 9y agoYou don’t believe blockcbain currencies can be a form of sound money? What do you think can? (Not trying to argue, genuinely curious).
- jandrese 9y agoFiat currencies seem to be doing a decent job of it, and they don't require the terawatts of power a crypto currency would need if it were adopted as a primary currency of a major country.
- wongarsu 9y ago>No duh, law enforcement and counterintelligence requires regulation of the financial systems in use I mostly agree with you, but I find this statement odd. There's obviously some regulation that is helpful to law enforcement and counterintelligence (money laundering regulation comes to mind, which you can't even really get around by using BTC). But crime and intelligence operations have a long history of working around those regulations, and both law enforcements and counterintelligence seem to cope just fine.
- stagbeetle 9y agoThank Satoshi we have Monero et al. Although we might run into the same problem as regular drug dealers: only the idiots get caught, i.e only the ones using BTC/non-cryptonote get caught.
- buildbuildbuild 9y agoThe authority of an agency to track criminal targets is well established by law and accepted by American citizens. That concept is not the issue. Using wide scale warrant-less data collection with an unspecified secret sauce, however, is questionable in its legality. Is this what voters intend their government to be able to do? Any time one agency wields immense undocumented powers of surveillance and another agency has a big question mark on a case, humans will be tempted to go the route of parallel construction. That under-table information sharing, to me, is a debate the American people need to be considering.
- ttul 9y agoWe aren’t talking about domestic surveillance here. The supposed privacy tool was foreign-targeted. This is NSA’s legit mission.
- coldacid 9y agoAre you really so innocent as to believe that the NSA was _only_ targeting foreign Bitcoin holders, or that they made effort at least to avoid capturing info on Americans?
- ttul 9y agoPerhaps back in 2013 they were not so careful to avoid collection on Americans. But now they certainly are. Nobody wants to go to jail.
- marssaxman 9y agoWhy would they be afraid of going to jail? None of them have gone to jail so far. You only face consequences for reporting misbehavior, not for engaging in it.
- willstrafach 9y agoThat's the law, no reason to think otherwise without evidence. I assume the story would be very different if there was any indication this was used on US citizens.
- secfirstmd 9y ago>>>>hire and pay "plausibly deniable" contractors to attack NGO's Woah, can you give some sources on Bitcoin being used to pay for attacking NGOs? Do you mean DDoS or do you have specific links on that?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ojr 9y agobitcoin is a horrible currency to do drug deals, the most infamous dark net site, Silk Road was doing $15 million annually at its peak, compare that to the 400 billion illegal drug industry that is mostly transacted with cash. Currently the primary use for bitcoin is speculation. Nation states will hire and pay with cash without the blockchain trail... There was a period of people speculating on a currency whose money supply is controlled by open source software and maintainers and it is still happening.
- root_axis 9y agoWhy would you even bother making the comparison between the sum of all black market drug activity on the planet and a single niche website hidden behind tor?
- ojr 9y agoI was trying to explain how small bitcoin is compared to the sum of all black market activity by using an example of one the most profitable bitcoin dark market to date
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> dark net, drug dealing These are law enforcement things. The NSA should not be deployed against drug dealers. > zero day exploit selling This is squarely within the NSA's purview. Also North Korea [1]. More broadly, Bitcoin takes cash-like transactions and posts them in a unified computer-friendly database. Of course it will be mined for insights. Even collating U.S. dollar transactions involves querying multiple financial institutions, each who hold their data in various formats. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/north-korea-s-bitcoin-play https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/north-kor...
- solotronics 9y agoif the government is collecting data that another department can use you bet they are sharing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- thathappened 9y agoAfter learning about the war on drugs being a ploy to build up the gun and law enforcement markets. I wondered if Bitcoin was created by the us to launder and fund projects while still maintaining control over the majority of it and possibly use to collapse other currencies and governments. They already print cash so we know the anonymous currency isn't frowned upon and the only banned Venezuela crypto none of the other seeming shady coins.
- staplers 9y agoPretty toxic comment section by HN standards..
- toss1 9y agoThis is straight-up dezinformatsiya - disinformation from the Putin asset Snowden, attempting to sow distrust of western institutions. Of friggen course the NSA worked to track down some users of BTC -- it is their job. Especially so when those users are using BTC for illegal ops, particularly state-sponsored illegal ops (how about Russians smuggling cocaine from the embassy? https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-embassy-in-argentina-embroiled-in-cocaine-smuggling-scandal-60617 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-embassy-in-argentina...). And there are obviously many other nefarious uses for cryptocurrency that would be in the legitimate purview of the NSA.
- toss1 9y agoYup, just what we might expect -- hordes of downvotes, zero discussion. I used to think Snowden was cool too, until I read more. He was a lousy sysadmin, and definitely not as pure-intentioned as he claimed. And the information he released had definitely damaged the US and the western democracies' ability to maintain national security. edit:typo (correct to "used to")
- vidarh 9y ago> Yup, just what we might expect -- hordes of downvotes, zero discussion. You were likely downvoted and flagged mainly because of the accusation that Snowden is a "Putin asset". If you want discussion, then making accusations like that is not helpful, particularly given that these documents being published by The Intercept are documents handed over before Snowden ever set foot in Russia. EDIT: For context, the comment I'm referring to above, is the deleted/flagged grandparent of this comment which you need showdead on to see.
- toss1 9y agoIt is not an accusation, it is the fact of the matter. He's a defector, he had help before and during his defection, and he is staying in Russia at the pleasure of the FSB (successor to the KGB), who, as we have seen has no problem terminating people for whom they have no use. Here's just the first article that pops up with some of the details: https://warisboring.com/the-defection-of-edward-snowden/ https://warisboring.com/the-defection-of-edward-snowden/ Here's about the third one, from an author who worked at NSA: https://20committee.com/2016/07/02/the-kremlin-admits-snowden-is-a-russian-agent/ https://20committee.com/2016/07/02/the-kremlin-admits-snowde... There are many more, if anyone cares to read them, but this audience remains far too enamored of the 'state surveillance is always evil' mentality (and I formerly had the same attitude, not that it cannot be very evil, but certainly not always so). Snowdon and Putin's efforts to spin the 'hero/whistleblower' yarn, partly through outlest such as Sputnik, RU, Intercept, do not change the facts, and these outlets should be read with extreme skepticism.
- apeace 9y agoThis is the most important and disturbing part in my view: > At the same time, MONKEYROCKET is also described in the documents as a “non-Western Internet anonymization service” with a “significant user base” in Iran and China, with the program brought online in summer 2012. It is unclear what exactly this product was, but it would appear that it was promoted on the internet under false pretenses... > The scope of the targeting would then expand beyond terrorists. Whatever this piece of software was, it functioned a privacy bait and switch, tricking Bitcoin users into using a tool they thought would provide anonymity online but was actually funneling data directly to the NSA. One has to wonder what this tool was. Later in the article they speculate that it could be a VPN. My advice if you want your traffic to be anonymous and private: use a VPN over Tor (not the other way around!). That way the VPN can't see who you are, and Tor exit nodes can't spy on your traffic either.
- DennisP 9y agoIt may also have been a Bitcoin mixing service.
- kardos 9y ago> That way the VPN can't see who you are So how do you get around the part where you pay for the VPN service and provide login credentials to use it?
- AgentME 9y agoWith a privacy-based cryptocurrency like Monero or Zcash, or Bitcoin anonymously purchased using a privacy-based cryptocurrency.
- fwdpropaganda 9y agoI remember there was a VPN (can't remember the name right now but I'm sure if you're interested you can find it easily) that accepted logins without e-mail, or any kind of ID, and accepted payments in cash in an envelope.
- _emacsomancer_ 9y ago
- divbit 9y agoAlthough bitcoin could be used for some bad things, but also there are some (501c) charities that accept bitcoin too, - give directly - redcross (used to at least) - water project - .. (there are at least two others but I forget) So hypothetically (assuming it would pass like sec / whatever regulations) at the right point in time you could make like a coinbase type thing that - buys $30 of bitcoin - automatically watches some exchange API until it appreciates to 'desired amount in US / GBP / Whatever currency you use' - makes the donation automatically at say 10x the value - gets 'the actual registered charity' to send you a non-deductible receipt for that amount, (non-deductible since you no longer 'have control of the coin once it's in the app', which would is essentially the price you pay for getting the increased amount of 'social-benefit', since it's 'going to hurt' to see the potential missed profit, even though the alternative would be to lose the $30 at the earlier time in just a 'tethered' amount) There is a 'large benefit' to automating / appifying this process to people in that, putting such a system together in one place could lessen the dangers in a manual process of doing this like: lost receipts, hacked exchanges, constantly watching prices, actually dealing with crypto. In any case, my point is that, given that there is probably 'some good potential to bitcoin (although it might require a team of some creative / dedicated thinking at the right time)' it seems that there might be some benefit from viewing it less as an entrapment / tracking device, and more as a tool for social benefit, and thus making a strong push in the warnings / regulations area to get people on the social benefit track of it's potential use rather than the negative aspects of it. To restate: you have the choice of either guiding bitcoin use towards being a law enforcement tool, or towards being a social benefit / solve world problems tool. I think the recent SEC exchange warnings thing is probably a step towards pushing it in the right direction... (potentially there are some deep sci-fi strategic reasons for viewing crypto-coins in a certain way in terms of desired world progress in a certain direction, which would be interesting to think about).
- divbit 9y agoBy the way, I don't have the depth of experience or team to build something like this in a way that I would feel happy with, so feel free to please use this idea if you think it is good.
- ncmncm 9y agoAlways and forever, surveillance is a precursor to and enabler of extortion. The extortion we usually hear about is people forced to testify, often to lie, about others still under investigation, or to recruit other informants and exfiltrate secrets. We hear about it because it is useful for us to have heard about it. In the other instances there is no reason to tell us, so the only way to find out about them is to be extorted.