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I am a cyber criminal. One day I get arrested and the court demands I decrypt my wallets. I refuse and get hit with contempt. My wife flees to Russia and moves

I am a cyber criminal. One day I get arrested and the court demands I decrypt my wallets. I refuse and get hit with contempt. My wife flees to Russia and moves the coin to another wallet, without my knowledge. Or maybe it was an agreed plan. Who can prove otherwise. Eventually I give up and decrypt the wallets. What are your legal grounds for prosecuting me for this further action? What can you prove? How are you going to prove that I conspired, and that this wasn't my wife going rogue?

ddingus 6y ago
In that scenario, the coins ended up somewhere other than where the court ordered. That didn't just happen. Someone intended it to happen. Investigations and all available means will be used to obtain the coins. That could continue for the remainder of time all involved have here.
- doggosphere 6y ago
  Yes. I'm not a lawyer, but this is now an issue outside the purveyance of the original court order to decrypt. It requires new charges to be laid, evidence to be provided, and due process in reasonable time. My point was the hard physics of it: the assets can be moved, and proving who moved it is very difficult.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    That order is very likely part of a greater matter, and that will likely remain unchanged, IMHO. Others, myself included, totally recognize the physics. That doesn't change the law much, just how it's enforced. Should all that prove ineffective, as in justice is not served, we can all look forward to new and innovative law too. In the end, we've got the basic human control issues in play. The basic human remedies will also remain in play. Prime example being it's quite possible to make life a real living hell for people, if nothing else. It's also possible to make that all being worth it very difficult to actualize.
klodolph 6y ago
You’re talking about a scenario where your wife is moving to Russia avoid US jurisdiction. You can already do that. You can move to Russia, put your money in a Russian bank, and voilà, it is difficult for the US government to sieze it.
- doggosphere 6y ago
  The point was to show the flexibility and control over owning your assets. Accounts can be frozen and its game over.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    I don’t understand what point you are trying to make, I guess. What I’m hearing is that you can commit the same crimes, but now you can commit these crimes with Bitcoin, and maybe the law will catch up with you, maybe it won’t. It doesn’t sound much like flexibility and control, it sounds like gambling that you are better at hiding assets in Bitcoin than other types of assets. If you are living in the US and spending money to support your lifestyle you are very likely within the reach of the law, and the money you are spending has to come from somewhere and go to somewhere. If you are not spending your Bitcoin and benefiting from it, then what’s the point? And if you are spending the Bitcoin and benefiting from it, then law enforcement can investigate those transactions.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      The point I'm trying to make: Taking someone's assets vs coercing them to hand over their assets, are not the same thing. You can take my gold, my dollars, my factories, my real estate, all by force. You can take my freedom, you can take my life, by force. You cannot take my Bitcoin by force. You might be able to put me through enough pain for me to give it up. But this is not a guarantee. We have been discussing this in the context of being a sneaky cyber criminal with a just law system. But imagine you live in a nation where the government (military junta) is "nationalizing" all wealth and assets. Then tell me the best way to protect your money.
jacques_chester 6y ago
You'd be fairly well boned on obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Any brilliant plan you think up in the course of a few seconds will be likely to run into the fact that the common law has a thousand years of collective experience.
- doggosphere 6y ago
  I didn't know we have thousands of years of breaking encryption and concepts like zero knowledge proofs. There's no brilliant plan, there's just mathematics.
  - jacques_chester 6y ago
    You don't understand my point at all. Which is also my point.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      You just said it would be obstruction of justice, yet a transaction occurring from a known wallet while a suspect is in custody is not enough to prove that. You'd have to prove the conspiracy. You're hand-waving the details away in an attempt to dismiss the argument. What does the prosecutor do when the funds get moved and the suspect is under lock and key? Because of the decentralized nature of crypto, you cannot even show who moved the funds. All you know is that they were moved. So if you're a prosecutor, what are you going to show the judge to persuade them that an obstruction of justice has occurred?
      - jacques_chester 6y ago
        Saying "it's math, yerhonner" is itself handwaving. My point is that a court doesn't need to fixate on the crpytographic impossibilities. They can rely on literally any other evidence. They can gladly drag your friends into court to answer questions. Any of your other assets can be seized or frozen. Folks who think cryptocurrencies are magic cheat codes are just not aware of the flexibility and enormous powers that a court has to overwhelm mechanistic attempts to defeat their decisions.

ddingus 6y ago

In that scenario, the coins ended up somewhere other than where the court ordered. That didn't just happen. Someone intended it to happen. Investigations and all available means will be used to obtain the coins. That could continue for the remainder of time all involved have here.

doggosphere 6y ago
Yes. I'm not a lawyer, but this is now an issue outside the purveyance of the original court order to decrypt. It requires new charges to be laid, evidence to be provided, and due process in reasonable time. My point was the hard physics of it: the assets can be moved, and proving who moved it is very difficult.
- ddingus 6y ago
  That order is very likely part of a greater matter, and that will likely remain unchanged, IMHO. Others, myself included, totally recognize the physics. That doesn't change the law much, just how it's enforced. Should all that prove ineffective, as in justice is not served, we can all look forward to new and innovative law too. In the end, we've got the basic human control issues in play. The basic human remedies will also remain in play. Prime example being it's quite possible to make life a real living hell for people, if nothing else. It's also possible to make that all being worth it very difficult to actualize.

klodolph 6y ago

You’re talking about a scenario where your wife is moving to Russia avoid US jurisdiction. You can already do that. You can move to Russia, put your money in a Russian bank, and voilà, it is difficult for the US government to sieze it.

doggosphere 6y ago
The point was to show the flexibility and control over owning your assets. Accounts can be frozen and its game over.
- klodolph 6y ago
  I don’t understand what point you are trying to make, I guess. What I’m hearing is that you can commit the same crimes, but now you can commit these crimes with Bitcoin, and maybe the law will catch up with you, maybe it won’t. It doesn’t sound much like flexibility and control, it sounds like gambling that you are better at hiding assets in Bitcoin than other types of assets. If you are living in the US and spending money to support your lifestyle you are very likely within the reach of the law, and the money you are spending has to come from somewhere and go to somewhere. If you are not spending your Bitcoin and benefiting from it, then what’s the point? And if you are spending the Bitcoin and benefiting from it, then law enforcement can investigate those transactions.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    The point I'm trying to make: Taking someone's assets vs coercing them to hand over their assets, are not the same thing. You can take my gold, my dollars, my factories, my real estate, all by force. You can take my freedom, you can take my life, by force. You cannot take my Bitcoin by force. You might be able to put me through enough pain for me to give it up. But this is not a guarantee. We have been discussing this in the context of being a sneaky cyber criminal with a just law system. But imagine you live in a nation where the government (military junta) is "nationalizing" all wealth and assets. Then tell me the best way to protect your money.

jacques_chester 6y ago

You'd be fairly well boned on obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Any brilliant plan you think up in the course of a few seconds will be likely to run into the fact that the common law has a thousand years of collective experience.

doggosphere 6y ago
I didn't know we have thousands of years of breaking encryption and concepts like zero knowledge proofs. There's no brilliant plan, there's just mathematics.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  You don't understand my point at all. Which is also my point.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    You just said it would be obstruction of justice, yet a transaction occurring from a known wallet while a suspect is in custody is not enough to prove that. You'd have to prove the conspiracy. You're hand-waving the details away in an attempt to dismiss the argument. What does the prosecutor do when the funds get moved and the suspect is under lock and key? Because of the decentralized nature of crypto, you cannot even show who moved the funds. All you know is that they were moved. So if you're a prosecutor, what are you going to show the judge to persuade them that an obstruction of justice has occurred?
    - jacques_chester 6y ago
      Saying "it's math, yerhonner" is itself handwaving. My point is that a court doesn't need to fixate on the crpytographic impossibilities. They can rely on literally any other evidence. They can gladly drag your friends into court to answer questions. Any of your other assets can be seized or frozen. Folks who think cryptocurrencies are magic cheat codes are just not aware of the flexibility and enormous powers that a court has to overwhelm mechanistic attempts to defeat their decisions.