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I mean, that would make for an interesting legal case. I feel that you could try and argue though that some Bitcoin 0-day was used to move the funds and retain

I mean, that would make for an interesting legal case. I feel that you could try and argue though that some Bitcoin 0-day was used to move the funds and retain your deniability... Even the officers hope this happens one day (! good luck to them, if the tech existed the coins would be immediately worthless...) "... officers said they were hopeful advances in technology would one day enable them to access the bitcoin so it could be sold."

jacques_chester 7y ago
Doubling down on perjury as a legal tactic is unwise. I think it would only be interesting in that folks who think crypto is magically law-proof would discover that no, it's not. Not at all.
- FDSGSG 7y ago
  >Doubling down on perjury as a legal tactic is unwise. This is Ireland we're talking about. Not the US.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Poor timing I guess. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/perjury-to-be-made-easier-to-prosecute-under-new-law-1.3928733 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/perjury-to-be-made-...
    - FDSGSG 7y ago
      The obvious solution would just be to not say anything at all. For perjury to be on the cards here there'd have to be some next level stupidity involved. Although, claiming that someone else could've done something isn't necessarily untruthful even if you did that thing yourself. Are defendants even sworn in in Ireland? If not, a successful perjury prosecution seems rather unlikely https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2018/112/eng/ver_b/b112b18s.pdf https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2018/112/eng/v... I really can't imagine why the guy running away with the bitcoin would ever be compelled to testify under oath.
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    > This is Ireland we're talking about. Not the US. Perjury being a crime predates the US. As it so happens, I am Australian.
    - FDSGSG 7y ago
      Ok, if this guy was in Australia why would he ever be compelled to testify under oath about this?
      - jacques_chester 7y ago
        The scenario given was that the defendant would argue that the coins moved due to a vulnerability in bitcoin. That's a positive statement, not a refusal to answer.
        FDSGSG 7y ago
        Yes, and when would a defendant be making statements under oath?
        jacques_chester 7y ago
        In the "interesting legal case" that the original scenario envisaged.
        FDSGSG 7y ago
        testify vs argue I don't think anything in the original comment suggested that they'd be under oath, that's something you came up with.
- bowmessage 7y ago
  Not really perjury... no lying... just an argument that the burden of proof isn’t on you just because you’re the last known holder of the keys and some $ moved around.
hnews_account_1 7y ago
It is simpler than that. You can exchange equally valued wallets with someone from another jurisdiction and then just say truthfully that it wasn't you. A good program will make a couple of thousand small feeless transactions that miners may possibly include over many many blocks and poof. Money becomes too spread out to trace effectively.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  The schemes that a smart person can come up with, given a few days, are numerous. The schemes that the many smart people in the legal profession have seen through, collectively hundreds of thousands of times over centuries, are several orders of magnitudes more numerous. A good lawyer would be doing everything short of bodily tackling you before you compounded your problems by adding subversive accounting to perjury to criminal profits. The law is like the Simpsons. It goes on for so long that nothing is left unexamined. The odds that you will think of something that they haven't are slim.
  - hnews_account_1 7y ago
    While I have the utmost respect for the profession of law (except for the fact that it produces politicians whom I abhor), I don't think they've had quite enough time to think through every eventuality in tech yet. I'm not even sure if crypto currency ownership through key control is encoded in modern laws (as it should be for all digital assets). If you have interesting precedents though, please enlighten me. Accounting forensics are always interesting for finance people like me, and the blockchain ledger just makes it easier and yet more complicated.
    - jacques_chester 7y ago
      The law is always catching up, but folks regularly overestimate the scope of what it has already seen. It's an engine for conducting analogous reasoning, and while technology is ever changing, people are fairly limited in scope. Take the key control problem. The separation of ownership and control crops up in a number of places: corporations, trusts, real property, intellectual property, probably a bunch of other places I have no idea about. It's likely that one or more of these would map sufficiently cleanly that a judge would make a binding order. I don't have access to law reports to do a quick look for relevant cases. If you thought STEM paywalls were bad ...

jacques_chester 7y ago

Doubling down on perjury as a legal tactic is unwise. I think it would only be interesting in that folks who think crypto is magically law-proof would discover that no, it's not. Not at all.

FDSGSG 7y ago
>Doubling down on perjury as a legal tactic is unwise. This is Ireland we're talking about. Not the US.
- grawprog 7y ago
  Poor timing I guess. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/perjury-to-be-made-easier-to-prosecute-under-new-law-1.3928733 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/perjury-to-be-made-...
  - FDSGSG 7y ago
    The obvious solution would just be to not say anything at all. For perjury to be on the cards here there'd have to be some next level stupidity involved. Although, claiming that someone else could've done something isn't necessarily untruthful even if you did that thing yourself. Are defendants even sworn in in Ireland? If not, a successful perjury prosecution seems rather unlikely https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2018/112/eng/ver_b/b112b18s.pdf https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2018/112/eng/v... I really can't imagine why the guy running away with the bitcoin would ever be compelled to testify under oath.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > This is Ireland we're talking about. Not the US. Perjury being a crime predates the US. As it so happens, I am Australian.
  - FDSGSG 7y ago
    Ok, if this guy was in Australia why would he ever be compelled to testify under oath about this?
    - jacques_chester 7y ago
      The scenario given was that the defendant would argue that the coins moved due to a vulnerability in bitcoin. That's a positive statement, not a refusal to answer.
      - FDSGSG 7y ago
        Yes, and when would a defendant be making statements under oath?
        jacques_chester 7y ago
        In the "interesting legal case" that the original scenario envisaged.
        FDSGSG 7y ago
        testify vs argue I don't think anything in the original comment suggested that they'd be under oath, that's something you came up with.
bowmessage 7y ago
Not really perjury... no lying... just an argument that the burden of proof isn’t on you just because you’re the last known holder of the keys and some $ moved around.

hnews_account_1 7y ago

It is simpler than that. You can exchange equally valued wallets with someone from another jurisdiction and then just say truthfully that it wasn't you. A good program will make a couple of thousand small feeless transactions that miners may possibly include over many many blocks and poof. Money becomes too spread out to trace effectively.

jacques_chester 7y ago
The schemes that a smart person can come up with, given a few days, are numerous. The schemes that the many smart people in the legal profession have seen through, collectively hundreds of thousands of times over centuries, are several orders of magnitudes more numerous. A good lawyer would be doing everything short of bodily tackling you before you compounded your problems by adding subversive accounting to perjury to criminal profits. The law is like the Simpsons. It goes on for so long that nothing is left unexamined. The odds that you will think of something that they haven't are slim.
- hnews_account_1 7y ago
  While I have the utmost respect for the profession of law (except for the fact that it produces politicians whom I abhor), I don't think they've had quite enough time to think through every eventuality in tech yet. I'm not even sure if crypto currency ownership through key control is encoded in modern laws (as it should be for all digital assets). If you have interesting precedents though, please enlighten me. Accounting forensics are always interesting for finance people like me, and the blockchain ledger just makes it easier and yet more complicated.
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    The law is always catching up, but folks regularly overestimate the scope of what it has already seen. It's an engine for conducting analogous reasoning, and while technology is ever changing, people are fairly limited in scope. Take the key control problem. The separation of ownership and control crops up in a number of places: corporations, trusts, real property, intellectual property, probably a bunch of other places I have no idea about. It's likely that one or more of these would map sufficiently cleanly that a judge would make a binding order. I don't have access to law reports to do a quick look for relevant cases. If you thought STEM paywalls were bad ...