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Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

• arcticbull 7y ago
  Well, I mean, the fact that cryptocurrencies are helping North Korea is pretty much undisputed. They've been stockpiling it to run their ballistic missile program. [1] According to the United Nations Security Council, they had almost $700MM back in May. [2] The system is designed to skirt sanctions after all, it's kinda the raison d'être. [1] https://bitcoinist.com/un-north-korea-accumulating-cryptocurrency-for-weapons-programs/ https://bitcoinist.com/un-north-korea-accumulating-cryptocur... [2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/N-Korea-at-crossroads/North-Korea-stole-cryptocurrency-via-hacking-UN-panel https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/N-Korea-at-crossroads/Nort...
  • empath75 7y ago
    Money laundering, ransoms and fraud are pretty much the only actual use cases other than speculation— which is essentially just people extracting profits from criminals in a way that makes them feel distanced from engaging in a criminal conspiracy.
    • DuskStar 7y ago
      Don't forget illegal drugs and kiddie porn!
    • stale2002 7y ago
      No, there is lots of financial censorship being done against people have have broken zero laws. For example, at one point, banks blocked donations to WikiLeaks, even though they were not charged with any crimes. Financial censorship, done arbitrarily, to people who have not even been accused of a crime, is the most common form of financial censorship.
      • wahern 7y ago
        > Financial censorship, done arbitrarily, to people who have not even been accused of a crime, is the most common form of financial censorship. Source? I find that hard to believe considering the prevalence of fraud. In fact, dealing with fraud is one of the primary reasons transactional banking exists in the first place. Notes and other negotiable instruments were in widespread use even when there existed universal gold- or silver-denominated currencies that made direct payments nominally simple and convenient.
        • stale2002 7y ago
          Are you not aware about things like how anything related to sexual content will have their accounts closed? I was talking about things like this, and other related situations.
          • wahern 7y ago
            The claim as I read it was that most financial censorship befalls innocent accountholders. But while there are countless examples we can find online about people wrongly censored or accused, actual fraudsters don't go complaining on Twitter. Fraud is a huge problem. The usual reason for why we can't have nice things--a high-trust civil society--is because of bad people. Because no system is perfect, our transactional and legal systems have to balance administrative efficiency and fairness. The more you try to be fair, i.e. improve your accuracy (fewer false positives), the higher your costs (less efficacy at stopping bad guys and/or more resources need to be expended); the more you aim for administrative efficiency (lower costs but better at stopping bad guys) the more fairness will tend to suffer (more false positives). Now, it's entirely possible that there are more accounts wrongly closed than closed for actual fraud. Personally I would doubt it, but would still like to see data. That notwithstanding, it would still be wrong to characterize such a system as arbitrary simply because of that skewed result; it could just be a manifestation of a high efficiency but low fairness enforcement mechanism. Maybe it is arbitrary, but I doubt it. I had never heard the phrase "financial censorship" before. Perhaps a better term here would be financial blacklisting. The EFF's page, https://www.eff.org/issues/financial-censorship https://www.eff.org/issues/financial-censorship, conflates a ton of individual issues in a way that I don't think is constructive. Everybody trying to shoehorn their issues into the free speech debate tends to obfuscate problems and potential solutions; and I suspect it will one day backfire, harming traditional freedom of speech in the process. Before I even read the EFF's issue page--and definitely so, afterwards--the very phrase "financial censorship" brought to mind Citizens United v. FEC. Keep going down that road and there's no limit--I could just as well characterize murder laws as violating my free speech.[1] For the record, I protested in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco when Dmitri Sklyarov was arrested way back when. I do take these issues seriously. [1] In fact, IIRC not long after Citizens United the very same conservative justices upheld the criminal convictions of people who gave to a charity and advocacy organization implicated in funding terrorist organizations. The juxtaposition of the two decisions seemed to me to evidence the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the conservative's free speech crusade; such inconsistency and hypocrisy is inevitable once you start to characterize everything that's incident to speech as speech itself.
    • ShorsHammer 7y ago
      Are all laws just and all criminals bad people? Being gay was illegal in most of the western world up until a few decades ago. Alan Turing was only pardoned decades after his death, the way that man was treated was utterly horrendous despite playing a pivotal part in defining the 20th century and saving millions of lives on both sides. Then again he did break the "law" and was chemically castrated for it. Would you help Alan Turing avoid punishment given the chance? Just a hypothetical to ponder before blindly accepting the status-quo.
      • wpietri 7y ago
        Oooh, quite the straw man you've constructed. But everybody already knows that laws aren't perfect. If you want to use the "being gay was illegal" line of argument, you have to demonstrate that either a) gay people are using Bitcoin to be gay in places where being gay currently is illegal, or b) you have to make a case that things like "money laundering, ransoms and fraud" are mistakenly illegal, and in a few decades we'll all realize how perfectly normal and acceptable they are.
        • ShorsHammer 7y ago
          > But everybody already knows that laws aren't perfect. Do they really? I'd argue the complete opposite and indeed my main reasoning for writing the original comment. The biggest destinations on Earth for money laundering all hypocritically accept the money without shame, all Western countries with strong legal systems, so why is this occurring? Many of them proudly proclaim how much they are against money laundering. Do you know how complicit those governments are at virtually all levels happily accepting the illegal money that clearly is flowing into their suburb/state/nations? The rest of the world begs these places to please stem the tide of illegal funds or at the very least investigate the people spending this cash and yet nothing happens. Corrupt Russian real estate purchases in London is basically a joke for locals now. A common joke. Are Londoners not complicit in this? Or is there enough separation to wipe their hands clean? Very eager to hear your defense given the site we are on and the decent chance you have personally benefited from your own governments intentional willingness to ignore the huge amounts of corrupt, illegal money flowing into the west in the last few decades. Laundering into the West funds entire industries built around it and the blatant complicity from regulators/homeowners is on show for all to see. You need more identification to get a library card than buy a house here. Does that not strike you as strange? My own example: the biggest real estate purchase in Australia happened years ago, a massive mansion in Sydney, it was on the front of most newspapers, including the biggest newspaper read by millions. We only just discovered it was illegal despite many suggesting it at the time. The property has now been confiscated by the government years later. The owner simply fell foul of the government rather than any real insistence on justice or some sort of semblance about money laundering, it simply doesn't register for most. Sydney, Vancouver and London are all singled out as the main destinations on Earth for clearly illegal money, The Australian government has sat on proposals for basic laws to ascertain ownership of the money for well over a decade at the behest of the real estate industry to not investigate this stuff. Hopefully I had a decent crack at one of your points there. But that said you didn't answer my "strawman", so here's the question again: > Given the chance would you personally help Alan Turing avoid punishment for the law he broke that resulted in his chemical castration and ultimate death? Simple yes or no suffices here. Not all laws are good, not all criminals are bad people. These things are gray at the best of times.
    • CryptoPunk 7y ago
      Yeah why else would someone need financial privacy. You won't mind giving up your privacy if you have nothing to hide.
• rahuldottech 7y ago
  > Assistant Attorney General John Demers said: “Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions. By this complaint, we begin the process of seeking justice for such conduct.” Wow, that seems like an incredibly dumb thing to do. Isn't all that information readily available on the internet anyway? I'm sure the NK govt. has access to the web.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • sfttty 7y ago
    As you've said, a video call would suffice for that. What can NK offer that other countries can't and why this needed to travel there?
    • whymauri 7y ago
      There's an adrenaline rush from going to somewhere where travel is explicitly prohibited, and it's not that expensive to boot. I've seriously considered going on my non-American passport but have decided not to for two reasons: * Even though my birth country is on allied terms with NK, I'm unsure how my dual citizenship with the US would pan out. I do not want to be considered a spy and imprisoned. * I do not feel comfortable contributing to a totalitarian economy, even if the individual citizens (guides, translators, etc) benefit a lot from payment. And there are probably many other valid reasons not to go, but those are the most immediately obvious to me.
      • mthoms 7y ago
        FWIW, a friend is a dual US-Canadian citizen and visited without problems using his Canadian passport. He was even allowed to take pictures, mostly unrestricted. Having said that, he went with an organized tour so the places he visited were highly curated. That was about 5 years ago though.
• Operyl 7y ago
  > ... announced today the unsealing of a criminal complaint charging VIRGIL GRIFFITH, a United States citizen, with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”) by traveling to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“DPRK” or “North Korea”) in order deliver a presentation and technical advice on using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to evade sanctions. And he thought he’d get away with this how? Jeez..
• alcio 7y ago
  When you have traveled to the DPRK despite warnings of the Department of State, visiting the US is not the best decision to take.
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    Certainly not after they made US passports not valid for travel to the DPRK in the wake of the Warmbier... situation.
    • gruez 7y ago
      How's this enforced? You'd think that the enforcement would have to be done by the host country, making this restriction impossible to enforce.
      • arcticbull 7y ago
        I'd imagine in three ways: (1) the host country refuses to admit you (2) the host country stamps your passport and you're totally SOL at the border on your way back in, or commit some sort of fraud if they ask you where you went and you don't answer truthfully which brings us to (3) exactly like this haha.
        • alcio 7y ago
          in this case, the defendant got a visa detached from its passport. from what I could gather from the complaint and his social media (https://twitter.com/virgilgr/status/1161217917427470337 https://twitter.com/virgilgr/status/1161217917427470337), he just never tried to hide it.
          • elliekelly 7y ago
            I think this is the norm for some of the more “controversial” countries. I went to Cuba (with permission from the State Department) before Obama eased sanctions and I was quite disappointed that they didn’t stamp my passport. Instead I got a little slip of paper that was about the size of a page in my passport. It was my understanding that the Cuban government had designed the visa system this way on purpose to allow Americans to more easily skirt the sanctions. And once I got past border patrol and saw all of the items coming out with the luggage (car parts, toilet seats, televisions, a grill, etc.) it was clear that this system allowed the wealthier families to avoid most of the inconveniences of the US embargo.
• fastball 7y ago
  At first I was concerned that the US was overstepping it's bounds a bit with cryptocurrency. But then I read the charge, and he apparently literally traveled to North Korea to advise them how to evade sanctions -- pretty stupid if you ask me.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
    • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I think that's a very aggressive level of skepticism for what's outlined here. It seems very unlikely the DOJ could mistakenly think he attended this conference, or that the messages of his they say they have are all fabrications.
      • maehwasu 7y ago
        Sure, but it also seems unlikely that anyone would be this dumb. OP’s point isn’t that Griffith is innocent, just that we’re likely missing some piece of info which would make his motivations/thought process make more sense.
  • bogwog 7y ago
    It sounds so incredibly stupid that I suspect there's more to this story that we're missing
  • drcode 7y ago
    I don't have any real wish to defend this guy since he likely did some really boneheaded things, but "advise them to evade sanctions" could easily just mean "explained to them how to install a crypto wallet on a computer."
    • dmix 7y ago
      His best defence will be he didn't specifically explain how to evade sanctions. But the government can make "evading sanctions" any off-mainstream network finance stuff. It's easy to twist this stuff in a court room. But of course any sort of technology transfer which would help them in their effort, even indirectly but still very obviously possible to any rational person, which the courts very much take into account (in this case an expert in the field) could fall into breaching embargos. In this case it's like selling a terrorist group's local community police force non-military low-power handguns, possibly believing they aren't practical for a military effort. But you're still giving a terrorist group firearms which could none-the-less be useful for their overarching cause. I highly doubt he practically helped them hide any significant amount of money. Billions aren't flowing through blockchains into their pockets without notice. But the whole idea of sanctions is to make everything, even small-time indirect help off-limits... even banks doing business with legitimate NK businesses.
• roadbeats 7y ago
  He is also the author of WikiScanner, the project revealed FBI and CIA computers used for editing Wikipedia pages.
  • jessaustin 7y ago
    OK, he can forget about parole...
    • greenyoda 7y ago
      He wouldn't get parole anyway, since the federal justice system no longer grants parole. > For persons convicted under civilian federal law after November 1, 1987, federal parole has been abolished [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_parole_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_parole_in_the_United_S...
• Jd 7y ago
  I know Virgil. I was at the lunch in Palo Alto where he suggested "GAS" should be the name of the internal accounting unit for smart contracts. As with many of the early Ethereum adopters he was quite gifted, a bit eccentric, and leaned a bit in an ideological direction. Offhand I can't see any reason why he would go out of his way to N. Koreans advice on how to evade sanctions, so I will look forward to some statement on his part. 20 years is a long time. I know he was working for the Ethereum foundation recently but doubt that the foundation would go out of the way to anger the US government (although they reportedly have a lot of Chinese government involvement). Here is his twitter: https://twitter.com/virgilgr?lang=en https://twitter.com/virgilgr?lang=en
  • TylerE 7y ago
    The same reason anyone does something obviously reprehensible: A briefcase full of cash.
    • iforgotpassword 7y ago
      Or, considering this guy is said to be pretty eccentric, just for the sake of it. Working against the system. Being rebellious. Just the faint idea of having a global impact on the distribution of power. Similar reasons, aside from money, drove people like Karl Koch to do what they did.
      • r00fus 7y ago
        I’ll go with the follow-the-money argument. It is almost always the correct answer.
        • andrewflnr 7y ago
          Maybe not here. Ideology and thrill are canonically right up there with money as reasons people engage in espionage.
          • dmos62 7y ago
• flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  This is ridiculous. Both that this US Citizen ignored direct warnings from the US Federal Government not to attend and teach at the Pyongyang Blockchain Conference, and then volunteered to travel back the United States. And that the US Federal Government is worried about North Korea getting their hands on the WMD-level technology that are Ethereum Tokens. I suppose they'll be rounding up the people who built https://ethereum.org/developers/#getting-started https://ethereum.org/developers/#getting-started next?
  • nootropicat 7y ago
    Well DAI (dollar stablecoin) is probably the best way to evade sanctions for international dollar transfers, relatively small supply notwithstanding.
    • flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
      I own DAI and I can hardly sell $1000 of it into any other crypto currency without incurring 1%+ price slippage.
      • nootropicat 7y ago
        The spread with usdc is more like 0.2% (both coinbase and dydx), but if the alternative is smuggling suitcases full of cash, 1% is hardly a problem
      • Acrobatic_Road 7y ago
        May I ask what exchanges you are using? There is 1.5M in dai liquidity on uniswap and as you can see plenty of people are moving huge sums without incurring noticeable slippage. https://uniswap.info/token/0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f https://uniswap.info/token/0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac...
  • rodgerd 7y ago
    > And that the US Federal Government is worried about North Korea getting their hands on the WMD-level technology that are Ethereum Tokens. There's significant evidence that North Korea has been using cryptocurrency to evade sanctions and prop up their murderous regime, so I don't see what seems ridiculous to you about that.
• confeit 7y ago
  Hacker arrested for sharing information.
  • gruez 7y ago
    what he's essentially doing is aiding/abetting.
    • crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Be careful with that. So in-person talks is aiding and abetting? What about videoconference? What about emails? What about a semi-hidden webpage meant primarily for them? Or how about a general developer FAQ that would get anybody dev-minded up to speed? Where do we draw this line of "aiding and abetting"? Material good? Information? Congratulations? This appears to be strongly a 1st amendment issue of speech. Not that I like NK, but that point is a distractor. Why is it a crime to talk about cryptocurrency and monetary censorship of countries?
      • otterley 7y ago
        Attorney here! (Not providing legal advice - seek licensed counsel in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice.) Any act that would provide material assistance is sufficient. Criminal law is pretty liberal about what constitutes an "act" in furtherance of a crime. If it concerns you, stay far far away. But merely publishing information in a book or on a publicly-accessible website for all to see is not generally going to get in you trouble (subject of course to copyright, publishing classified information, etc.).
        • syshum 7y ago
          >>But merely publishing information in a book or on a publicly-accessible website for all to see is not generally going to get in you trouble They Tried that, but that pesky 1st amendment got in the way. Research the CyptoWars (which is seems are heating up all over again) and the PGP Source Code Book. The US Government has been attempting to censor speech for as long as it has been in existence. the latest attack on crypto by the US Government for "national security" reasons is just the latest in the long line of abuses
• alcio 7y ago
  According to the complaint, the defendant: - went back to the US several time after traveling to the DPRK despite being warned not to by the US state department - had several consensual interviews with FBI agents - consented to a search of his phone It's hard to read this and not think that he brought this upon himself. If you really want to do what he did, get a lawyer, don't travel back to the US, don't speak to law enforcement.
  • Kinnard 7y ago
    Or that he was entrapped.
    • defap 7y ago
      Entrapment by what, reverse psychology? He didn’t walk into a sting set up by FBI agents; he went to a real conference in the real North Korea despite official warnings not to do so.
      • Kinnard 7y ago
        Why is reverse psychology not an effective method of entrapment. I'd expect it's a standard component actually.
    • Kinnard 7y ago
      This was downvoted as if entrapment is not a common behavior of law enforcement: https://twitter.com/Kinnardian/status/1200465791520428033?s=20 https://twitter.com/Kinnardian/status/1200465791520428033?s=...
• flatline 7y ago
  This is like a pure distillation of ancap crypto hacker egoism. See where it might land you, kids?
  • keiferski 7y ago
    Not sure how actively aiding a rogue totalitarian state qualifies as remotely ancap.
    • kloitruyio 7y ago
      According to most bitcoiners, it's the US who is a rogue totalitarian state.
      • tylersmith 7y ago
        The vast majority of those people don't think any better of North Korea.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • baddox 7y ago
      Because someone dislikes both of those things which makes them the same.
  • golergka 7y ago
    > ancap > helping North Korea Something here just doesn't add up.
  • kemonocode 7y ago
    Ah yes, the imaginary ancap who's totally into helping out a totalitarian state. Kinda like freedom-loving tankies, really.
    • dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
• rhegart 7y ago
  North Korea has killed or tortured over 1 million in death camps and threatens nukes at the whim of 1 man who recently used anti aircraft guns to kill his uncles. In my opinion this moron deserves life in jail
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into political or national flamewar. We're not going to get anything better than a generic discussion out of this and probably a nasty one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666273 and marked it off-topic.
  • duskwuff 7y ago
    While the leaders of North Korea have, without question, done a lot of horrible things, the anti-aircraft-gun story has appeared repeatedly in conjunction with numerous people, many of whom have reappeared alive afterwards, or who have been confirmed executed by other, more ordinary, methods. It's not clear if these anti-aircraft gun executions have ever been carried out, or if it's simply a recurrent rumor. https://www.38north.org/2016/09/aabrahamian090216/ https://www.38north.org/2016/09/aabrahamian090216/
    • arcticbull 7y ago
      Also seems like a pretty quick/painless -- if dramatic -- way to go. They'd have a lot of cleaning up to do afterwards of course, but that's obviously not my problem lol.
    • rhegart 7y ago
      Different intelligent agencies have confirmed numerous deaths as well as reputable journalists from multiple witnesses. I’m sure some are exaggerated and run wild with but there is too much evidence to suggest ALL are fake
• 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  > Finally, GRIFFITH announced his intention to renounce his U.S. citizenship and began researching how to purchase citizenship from other countries. At first I thought maybe there was some monetary incentive to going to NK that might not be unsealed, but now I doubt it. It sounds like this guy was simply a crypto “believer”, with probably a bit of an ego. To these people the inability of governments to enforce control on crypto is one of the biggest features, and I’m sure he wanted to see that used in the real world.
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    Yes indeed, the cold hard world order came crashing down on this dude. It's not much research to figure out how to buy a passport from somewhere else, the BBC has a nice write-up [1]. 1. Malta wants $1.15M for a full EU passport, and Bulgaria is another popular choice. 2. Sant Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda will give you a passport for a donation of around $100K to charity or if you buy some real-estate around the half million mark. 3. The cheapest possible if you don't mind limited travel options is the Comoro Islands, $45K all-in. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27674135 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27674135
    • dmix 7y ago
      > the cold hard world order came crashing down on this dude. He asked the state department before leaving, he knew what he was doing.
      • 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
        > At no time did GRIFFITH obtain permission from OFAC to provide goods, services, or technology to the DPRK. I think in this case intent matters. If you ask permission to travel as a formality, but provide some goods and services while there then that’s very different things.
        • rodgerd 7y ago
          Intent to assist a regime obtain the currency it needs to continue running murder camps and the like?
• kloitruyio 7y ago
  And the SilkRoad guy also knew that creating the "Amazon of drugs" is very illegal. Yet he is a hero of the crypto community (and of HN).
  • Tenoke 7y ago
    DPR? Some subsets of the crypto community and hn might be fans but definitely not the majority.
  • meowface 7y ago
    After the 6+ murder-for-hire allegations and related publicly released chat logs, not so much. Only people who think the chat logs are doctored (which I personally find extremely unlikely) still support him.
    • seibelj 7y ago
      https://freeross.org/ https://freeross.org/ Even if he did try to order murders (which I disagree that he did), the penalty for conspiracy to commit murder for hire is 10 years. Yet he wasn’t charged with that, and instead has double-life + 40 years. Ross was made an example of, no question. I see no reason to keep him in jail, nor the hundreds of thousands of other non-violent criminals the US houses in prisons.
  • dang 7y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666233 and marked it off-topic.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• tontonius 7y ago
  ”An Ethereum staff” ?
  • BostonFern 7y ago
    Yes, but HN isn't exactly a bastion of correct grammar. Also, it shouldn't be capitalized.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • dang 7y ago
    We've changed the title.
  • asveikau 7y ago
    I read that as someone not native in English trying to say "staffer" or "employee" but I don't know anything about the structure of organizations behind ethereum, whether it has a lot of employees or whether they really mean "contributor". Edit: I see the title has been edited to match the DOJ website rather than this seemingly ungrammatical summary.
• tempsolution 7y ago
  Well deserved. There isn't much else to add. And on top of that he has the audacity to set foot on American soil again.
• drtillberg 7y ago
  Is the logical endpoint that any U.S. person with a "technical" blog might need to block IPs from NK, Iran, Venezuela, etc? At some point the rule swallows the exception in an open, democratic society.
  • gruez 7y ago
    AFAIK intent matters. There was a story from a while back where a seller of "secure" android phones got busted because he was knowingly selling to criminals. "knowingly" as in, his customers told him that they were going to use it for illegal activities, but he sold it to them anyways. It's the same principle why sellers of cannabis paraphernalia explicitly label their products "for tobacco use only".
    • drtillberg 7y ago
      Looks like from a prior HN discussion, maybe if he published a book and mailed it to the conference, it would be ok?[1]. But export of electronic code is not ok? I also am under the impression the case is about unlawful export, but perhaps they're concentrating on a different theory. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7885238
• mthoms 7y ago
  This submission title is a train wreck. Paging @dang!
  • dang 7y ago
    Fixed now. The submitted title was "US Citizen, a Ethereum Staff, Arrested for Assisting N Korea in Evading Sanction".
• crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  So, it's illegal for me to explicitly talk about things that could be illegal? That seems to fly in the face of the 1st amendment. He was teaching about a skill that could be used to break law, but also be used in legal transactions. Seems more like thoughtcrime, than actual crime. And if talking about implementation of technology is a crime, it shouldn't be.
  • chance_state 7y ago
    He traveled to North Korea to teach them how to evade international sanctions. That's "thought crime"?
    • crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      I still see nothing wrong with that. It's words, either spoken, written, or on a screen. It matters not that he's in person, or remote. They could derive that from the multitude of developer FAQs, Stack Exchange, or other sources. Long story short, this is the US government throwing a fit about a US citizen in NK. Have to set an example. Now, if he gave them cryptocoins or other assets, then there might be a legitimate case of breaking international law. But you know, there's this pesky thing called 'proof'.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • fouric 7y ago
        > It matters not that he's in person, or remote. It matters very much, both legally, and morally (unless, of course, you support the humans rights abuses going on in the DPRK[1]). The law differentiates between words put in a book and the same words said to a criminal in order to further a crime[2], and it's pretty obvious that Griffith was intentionally providing assistance to a country that commits human rights abuses that are crimes under the legal systems of many, many other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21666553
• krackle 7y ago
  Sanctions are nonsense and so is the US hegemony. It is without doubt the most abusive country on the world stage. Every US citizen should be ashamed of their horrible country and its foreign interventions, wars and murders. Having said that, as an outsider to the US, it's enjoyable to watch its slow demise now that the incompetents are in power.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • miguelmota 7y ago
    What country do you live in? I'm sure they have sanctions against NK too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_North_Korea
  • fouric 7y ago
    Do you know what the DPRK is? It commits human-rights violations on a pervasive basis and massive scale (relative to the size of its populace). The US is nowhere near as bad as it. The only viable options we have for pressuring them to stop their atrocities are sanctions and an actual war. Unless you either support their human-rights violations or actually losing lives in a war, then you should be applauding those sanctions.
    • jessaustin 7y ago
      We need more imagination than this, and more hope. Lots of situations have been defused through dialogue rather than aggression. Maybe DPRK is uniquely awful. However, we've been aggressive for nearly seven decades now. When our goofball President tried dialing back the aggression a few notches, he was pilloried for it. How many more decades must the aggression continue with no good result before we can stop "applauding"? Before you repeat for the nine-trillionth time that KJU is a bad guy... yes, we know. He might suffer for his sins, in this world or the next, he might not. He might be a lot worse than other autocrats, whom USA supports, he might not. Why is it important that we distill every situation into the most cartoonish good-guy/bad-guy terms? Cui bono?
• Canada 7y ago
  The complaint[1] leads with the allegation that the State Department denied him permission to travel to DPRK and attend this conference. How does that work? Did he seek permission from State and receive a denial, then go ahead and do it anyway? Edit: 15(c) alleges that he did in fact seek prior approval. Well, I guess it's no mystery why he's in deep trouble now. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1222646/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1222646...
• johnpowell 7y ago
  Maybe I am the only person that watched the show. But I guess he was on the first season of King of the Nerds. It was a reality show on TBS.
  • johnpowell 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BpSAT3sMUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BpSAT3sMUA I don't really want to comment.. But here we are.
  • johnpowell 7y ago
    https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2016-May/000355.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2016-May/... Not sure what to think of this. But it is there.
• alpb 7y ago
  Better title for HN: Arrest of Cryptocurrency and Tor expert [...]
• qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  No matter how you look at this, this indictment now shows that we are not free to travel as we wish.
  • drtillberg 7y ago
    I don't understand the waves of down votes in this thread. Not very HN-like.
    • syshum 7y ago
      Yes it is. Libertarianism is not a welcome here
      • drtillberg 7y ago
        That's part of it. But I think it's bigger-- when it comes to topics like this, especially legal/economic ones, a community that ordinarily impresses on technical and scientific subjects as wise and timeless, displays a bizarre groupthink that levels at a secondary school-level sophistication. It's sad.
      • dang 7y ago
        People with opposite politics have the opposite picture: HN often aligns with more Libertarian ideologies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316611 There is a definite right-libertarian bias on HN, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. Everything not toeing that line is attacked and downvoted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833 Hacker News has become a forum for uber nationalistic right-winged libertarians https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231654 There's a lot of very neoliberal or libertarian politics going on in the comments round here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186128 hacker news is a bubble of mostly middle class white male libertarians https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20637454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20637454 If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged. It's always been this way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695 It's totally expected. This is a heavy technolibertarian site https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230037 the techno-libertarian norm around here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18671955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18671955 Hacker News has a libertarian leaning ideology among both its community and site-runners https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019694 Because it's HN, where opinions other than "hooray libertarian technocracy" are frowned upon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307091 this site is a haven for alt-right and libertarian people who believe this stuff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14205262 There are just as many claims of the opposite; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21449589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21449589 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245485. In reality, HN is a large pluralistic community, with more than enough material to support any impression of bias that you're primed for. The comments you notice and dislike make a stronger impression than the comments you agree with, building up a feeling that the community is against you. This can't be a function of HN, because HN is the same for everybody. Rather, it's in the eye of the beholder: an afterimage of the things they ran into and disliked here. The phenomenon is so consistent that you can not only predict what someone's opinions are, but also how intensely they hold them, from their image of the community's bias.
• miguelmota 7y ago
  > Finally, GRIFFITH announced his intention to renounce his U.S. citizenship and began researching how to purchase citizenship from other countries. Maybe Virgil should have renounced his US citizenship _before_ aiding NK. He should of seen this arrest coming from miles away because of strict sanction laws. Not sure how much they paid him to go to NK to make this all worth it.
• woah 7y ago
  Here are the main allegations: 1. In or about April 2019, GRIFFITH traveled to the DPRK to attend and present at the “Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference” (the “DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference”). 2. After the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference, GRIFFITH began formulating plans to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency between the DPRK and South Korea, despite knowing that assisting with such an exchange would violate sanctions against the DPRK. 3. GRIFFITH also encouraged other U.S. citizens to travel to North Korea, including to attend the same DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference the following year. 4. Finally, GRIFFITH announced his intention to renounce his U.S. citizenship and began researching how to purchase citizenship from other countries. I wonder if 1-3 basically just amount to speaking in person about technology that is very well documented on public web sites? As far as I'm aware, 4 isn't a crime or even immoral in any way. This seems like it's basically just a real-life scenario of what people were worried about in the 1990's "crypto wars", but with a very unsympathetic defendant and an especially evil foreign power. Although if he was paid to go there then it would seem to violate whatever commercial sanctions are in place.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • tptacek 7y ago
    Let me simplify the accusation further, so we don't need to noodle as much about it: Griffith asked the State Department if he could attend and present at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, because attendance at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency almost certainly violates sanctions on North Korea that are enforced by countries around the world very much including the United States. Unsurprisingly, the State Department told Griffith he could not in fact present or attend the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. Regardless, Griffith attended and presented at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. Then he (apparently? and despite previously taking some marginal steps to conceal the issuance of his DPRK visa?) tweeted his visa. That's not a crime, so much as an indicator of the level of opsec at play here. Neither, by the way, is his indication that he might want to switch citizenship; the only criminal count he's charged with is the single one at the top of the complaint, Conspiracy To Violate The IEEP, most likely in the enhanced configuration (conspiring with a state involved with nuclear/chemical/biological weapons); guideline base range 5-6 years.
• bb88 7y ago
  I get that people hate US monetary policy so much they tried to bypass it with crypto currency and the like. But this strikes me as another reason for the US government to step in and regulate crypto currencies.
  • CodeWriter23 7y ago
    They already do. See IRS letters sent to CryptoCurrency Owners, 2019.
• hugelgupf 7y ago
  Why on earth did he agree to those FBI interviews where he admitted all this?
  • drcode 7y ago
    Maybe he realized he was in deep st and thought (wrongly) that cooperating would help his situation.
• bjourne 7y ago
  The intent of the law is to prevent individuals from harming each other. Exactly who was harmed, or risked being harmed, by this person talking to North Koreans about crypto currencies? This is a case about the state abusing the law to suppress free speech.
  • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    He asked state dept if it was ok, they told him no it would be a crime, he did it anyway... how is anyone surprised at the result here?
    • syshum 7y ago
      I did not realize that the State Dept was the ruler of US Citizens and that we are their subjects Pretty sure my copy of the constitution says "We the people" form the government not "The State Dept" forms the government
      • mthoms 7y ago
        The State Department didn't create the law that made this a crime, they merely informed him of such. That's literally their job.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • drak0n1c 7y ago
    Helping the elite caste of an incredibly authoritarian country preserve its financial power can very well end up harming millions of people over the long run.
    • bjourne 7y ago
      So let's prosecute the US president for his support of Saudi Arabia's elite caste...
• StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Ironic but not at all surprising that the same authoritarians who speak with religious reverence about the sanctity of, "free markets" also reserve the right to control access to those markets at the point of a gun to anyone deemed "bad".
• syshum 7y ago
  >>> GRIFFITH and other attendees discussed hmmm it will be interesting if he uses the 1st amendment as a defense, he all he did was discuss idea's and technology then it should be a clear 1st amendment violation for the US government to censor him, even against if he is talking to the DPRK This reminds me of the PGP Source Code book case where the government attempted to proclaim Phil Zimmerman was exporting technology with PGP Book, they failed because of the 1st amendment.
• bcrypto 7y ago
  is it time to ban 'crypto' yet? most of us (actual) engineers think eth and others are shit from an engineering point of view - never mind all the other problems this is probably an unpopular viewpoints considering half the people on this site are heavily 'invested' in it
• xeromal 7y ago
  ```The cult hacker Virgil Griffith combines geekdom with a James Bond-like suaveness.```
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sneak 7y ago
  Traveling somewhere the government doesn’t like and teaching things to people there should not be a crime in any reasonable, civilized society.
  • throwaway2048 7y ago
    So hypothetically, traveling to North Korea, and teaching them how to build ICBMs and nuclear weapons should be something anyone is be allowed to do? I think you will find most people disagree with you here.
    • sneak 7y ago
      Be careful with that “them”; most people living in North Korea are even more threatened by the DPRK government than you are. I have the belief that most human beings, in all places, are good, peaceful, and decent. Giving the people in North Korea all the help and resources they can will doubtlessly accelerate the downfall of their terrible, criminal leaders. It would be working in the USA except for the similar systems in place here to control easy access to information. I do not think that peacefully teaching any subject, to any group of people, in any place, should be illegal, as no one is victimized by the act of teaching.
      • tptacek 7y ago
        Sure, but the allegation is that Griffith traveled to the DPRK at the behest of its government, not its people.
    • boomboomsubban 7y ago
      Most people would disagree because they don't want to live under the threat of being attacked by such weapons. If they don't want to live under such a threat, maybe they should stop threatening others rather than trying to limit the spread of information.
  • landryraccoon 7y ago
    That's reaching. I'd say that traveling or not, teaching people to torture other people should be a crime in any civilized society, from which it follows that at least sometimes it's a crime to travel to teach people things.
• sneak 7y ago
  Can we examine for a moment how ridiculous the concept of state sanctions are? That they can lock you up for going somewhere and teaching people things, simply because some of the people in the government of that place commit human rights abuses? That does nothing but punish thousands, or, in this case, millions of people who are themselves suffering under that country’s government. I’ve been to North Korea. I’ve spoken to the people there and seen directly the fear and suffering in their eyes. The DPRK government is terrible. The people there need all the help, love, information, and compassion we can give them. The real crime is making it illegal to go there and do that. Could you imagine other, more civilized countries e.g. in Europe jailing their citizens for coming to the US to peacefully speak or present? After all, we run indefinite detention torture prisons all over the world (or, more specifically, human rights criminals in our government do). We (criminals in our government) tap the phone lines and emails. We (criminals in our government) assassinate citizens without trial. We have had thousands of government officials fail to seek justice against our leaders for war crimes. Nearly every accusation that can be leveled against the DPRK government can be leveled against the US government, if at a smaller scale in most cases. How do we do the mental gymnastics to punish normal people simply traveling and teaching because of criminal acts committed by others they have never met? I agree that the DPRK government is bad, just that I agree that the US government is bad. But a country is absolutely not its government, and punishing normal, peaceful people by the millions who happen to live with the misfortune to be trapped in such places where the leaders are criminals or tolerate criminals amongst themselves, or punishing people who travel to these places to teach and speak is madness.
  • quazeekotl 7y ago
    How many non-complicit-with-the-government North Koreans do you think have safe, unmonitored access to computers and the internet, and so can safely (or even unsafely) use cryptocoin? If the number is not 0 it is very, very close to 0. We already know that the North Korean government is using cryptocoin tech to evade international sanctions to fund their missile and nuclear programs. How many North Korean non government officials do you suppose were permitted to attend this conference? Actions like this absolutely enable this terrible regime to perpetuate itself and its horrific actions, they do little or nothing to aid any ordinary North Koreans.
• landryraccoon 7y ago
  Meta observation : It's really interesting to view these comments as a meta commentary on the tribes that Hacker News members affiliate themselves with. Imagine that instead of being a hacker, Griffith was a financial expert, and instead of attending a Cryptocurrency conference, after consulting with the DOJ on whether or not he could travel to North Korea to teach the regime how to best invest it's money in financial instruments abroad, they told him that wasn't allowed and he went anyway. Would he still seem as sympathetic? Would a lot of HN comments rise to his defense because he was a financial nerd instead of the sort of programming nerd that Hacker News readers identify themselves with?
  • busterarm 7y ago
    As someone who has been hanging around hackers for roughly 30 years, my social media is filled with sympathy for this guy (most of us know him personally). I find it mildly unbelievable. I had similar reactions with MalwareTech, but at least he's somewhat sympathetic. It should not be alarming when "Do Crimes" turns into prison time.
  • st1ck 7y ago
    There is nothing sympathetic about helping the world's most oppressive regime to stay in power.
• todipa 7y ago
  I'm not sympathetic. You're talking about a regime that essentially enslaves people. History will not be on his side.
• Sam777666 7y ago
  "Virgil Griffith, also known as Romanpoet, is an American programmer, known for being the creator of WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory." WikiScanner exposed edits that Diebold and CIA employees were making to Wikipedia pages.
• Razengan 7y ago
  OT: My immediate reaction was wondering whether his name was a Berserk reference.
• whinythepooh 7y ago
  > Griffith jeopardized the sanctions that both Congress and the president have enacted to place maximum pressure on North Korea’s dangerous regime Griffith jeopardized the sanctions that the US's dangerous regime have enacted to place maximum pressure on North Korea’s dangerous regime. Fixed that