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"Griffith was arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in November 2019 after he travelled to Nor
by chrisco255 5y ago
"Griffith was arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in November 2019 after he travelled to North Korea to give a talk on blockchain and crypto."
This is pretty wild to me. The guy gave a talk in North Korea and gave them non-classified information they could easily find on YouTube or any other public website. And now he's facing 20 years.
- antocv 5y agoHilarious, land of freedom, justice muh democrazy. Hilarious.
- arcturus17 5y agoYou think people should be free to collaborate with a degenerate regime that has killed millions?
- antocv 5y agoAre you talking about the US, UK or NK?
- nix23 5y agoBuuummm shots fired and full hit! :)
- jamespo 5y agoYes they are all the same, very edgy
- h_anna_h 5y agoThey are indeed not the same. After all NK does not regularly drone-strike civilians in the middle east.
- the_dune_13 5y agoI think this thread should get Dang'ed.
- jamiegreen 5y agoImplying moral equivalence between the US, UK and NK is somewhat silly in my opinion.
- arcturus17 5y agoBadum tss! What a clever retort! The lack of empathy towards the North Korean people and the burden their regime imposes on them is absolute.
- nix23 5y agoThe problem is, do you think it helps the NK people when you make an embargo? The government gets his caviar and plasma tv's anyway, AND the gorverment has a good/true point that the rest of the world is evil. Embargoes just don't work in such a closed down country.
- melomal 5y agoOf course, USA and China still seem to be doing fine and everyone wants to do business. US of A and their war on [drugs|WMDs|insert other reason] happens outside of the country so the millions of dead doesn't matter?
- Lariscus 5y agoIt is certainly ethically questionable but I don't think it is reasonable to imprison someone for giving a talk at a conference.
- darkhorse13 5y agoDo you realize that people in the Middle East could literally say the same thing about USA?
- arcturus17 5y agoThey can say that the US systematically silences, murders and imposes totalitarian dread on its own people?
- h_anna_h 5y agoI can certainly say that it is a "degenerate regime that has killed millions". As for your new question, I would argue that yes, this fits the US.
- darkhorse13 5y agoDo you realize I was replying to your comment where you called it a "degenerate regime that has killed millions"?
- dnautics 5y agoI'm not sure the us death count in the middle east has quite hit millions yet.... High hundreds of thousands, maybe.
- selfhoster11 5y agoIDK about the murder and totalitarian dread, but silencing is done via NSLs (aka gag orders).
- chrisco255 5y agoIn 2019 we were in active peace talks with North Korea and our own president even stepped foot in the country to collaborate on peace. It didn't pan out the way we hoped but it was worth a shot.
- arcturus17 5y agoWhat’s wild to me is that someone would think that it’s a good idea to give talks about anything in North Korea, a regime that has murdered and starved millions of people. Also, the people of North Korea do not have access to the internet or Youtube as far as I know.
- Bayart 5y agoPeople who need access to the internet do have it. I think they route through China.
- hypervisorxxx 5y agoYup. Only a few businessmen who work for the North Korean dictator, and they are up to no good. Anyone else using the internet not doing work for the North Korean government would be murdered if caught. In North Korea they have the "intranet" which is an internal network of learning resources you can use at the local North Korean libraries and schools! It is all propoganda.
- hypervisorxxx 5y agoPeople who "need access" doesn't everyone brainwashed by an authoritarian dictator need access to the internet to help themselves escape? Not everyone who needs access has access. A select few who are at the mercy of the dictator do to do his work. Some people have been known to try to sneak across the border and meet Chinese people in the woods to exchange goods. Some people send balloons with notes from the outside world over the border to reach people inside. Perhaps a select few have some garnered enough information about how to use the internet without getting caught they are willing to risk being murdered to do so if they find something dire enough using the internet for but to say people who "need" the internet fire up wiregaurd and call it a day before watching their daily stream of YouTube influencers is an understatement to say the least...
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- johnny53169 5y ago> "During and after the conference, Griffith was alleged to have discussed means through which North Korea could use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctions."
- nix23 5y agoOnce i had a discussion if there's a better system then democracy...faced a firing squad.
- hypervisorxxx 5y agoOh no... How do I tell you this? People in North Korea don't have access to YouTube and the internet. Are you aware of what life is like for the people of North Korea? Only a few select businessmen working for leaders of North Korea are ever allowed to leave and they usually travel to china for unknown business. Giving a talk like this in North Korea is like teaching businessmen how to engage in moving criminal/ terrorism money without getting caught. No normal citizen can run the internet/has access to the internet and if they were caught doing so they would be murdered so there's no way any of them could engage in this anyways. I'm so sorry noone told you what North Korea is like.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- OscarCunningham 5y agoThe fact that he was allowed to give the talk indicates that the North Korean government was happy for these people to know this information. So they also would have been fine with giving the same people the same information from the internet.
- thefr0g 5y ago> Giving a talk like this in North Korea is like teaching businessmen how to engage in moving criminal/ terrorism money without getting caught. Since when is that problematic? Should we lock up CIA agents for 20 years too? I thought USA was the land of the free.
- chrisco255 5y agoThe point about the information being publicly available on the internet is that it's public information. Not that your average Joe in NK can access it. The regime most certainly does have internet access though, so pretending like this guy gave some top secret info worth locking him up for 20 years of his life for is ridiculous. Nevermind that in 2019 we were in active peace talks with North Korea and even Trump was seen walking across the border without secret service protection to speak with Kim Jong Un that year.
- mytherin 5y agoJust because information is publicly available does not mean they know how to best utilise that information. You can find guides online on how atomic bombs work, but if a physicist traveled to North Korea and gave a talk instructing them how to build an atomic bomb that person should absolutely be arrested. The Ethereum Foundation dev was arrested over a year ago after US authorities claimed then-36-year-old’s conference presentation contained info that North Korea could leverage to launder money and skirt sanctions. Griffith was denied permission to travel to North Korea by the State Department but decided to attend the DPRK Cryptocurrency Conference anyway. North Korea is reportedly keen to find ways to get around sanctions imposed by what it regards as a US-led financial system. He gave a talk that instructed NK how to use cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions imposed by the US government, after the US government explicitly forbade him from giving that talk. Very hard to feel sympathy for the guy.
- h_anna_h 5y agoThe US government forbidding a citizen from giving a talk sounds quite totalitarian to me. Looks like the constitution of the US is not worth any more than the paper that it is written on.
- mytherin 5y agoInformation is power. Sharing critical information with a hostile nation can be incredibly dangerous and can lead to many people being killed. Labeling that as "just giving a talk" is misleading. Any government on earth will arrest people that share critical information with a hostile nation. If doing so makes a government totalitarian then every government on earth is totalitarian, which simply means the totalitarian label is meaningless.
- chrisco255 5y agoThere is nothing critical about open source software. There's teens shilling how to use crypto on TikTok. We use it to breed virtual cats and buy expensive jpegs. You think Kim's hackers don't have access to YouTube? You think they didn't start mining Bitcoin 9 years ago? It's not that critical. This is over the top and unjustified.
- mdoms 5y agoHe was expressly told by very serious people not to do it. He knew the consequences.
- legutierr 5y agoNorth Korea is building nuclear weapons in order to threaten the United States and its allies with them. Tens of thousands of American soldiers are stationed in South Korea in order to defend it from North Korean aggression. The war between the US and North Korea—which began 70 years ago when the current dictator’s grandfather invaded the South and declared war on the United States—is technically not over, and the possibility that active hostilities may resume at any time still exists. Sanctions are one of the few tools that the US has to exert leverage against the North Korean regime, and Virgil Griffith is alleged to have travelled to North Korea specifically to help North Korea in violating those sanctions. What he is alleged to have done has been illegal for 70 years. This is not just about one guy giving a talk.
- 0x008 5y agoI am sorry but to me the wording of your comment seems way too political and biased-sounding for hacker news.
- intev 5y agoI'm sorry, but what? Their comment to me reads like an objective statement of facts. They don't lean one way or another, or even say if they agrees with it or not. You can't even do that on HN?
- vkou 5y agoGive me six facts about the most honest of men, and I'll have enough to hang them. Which facts you include and exclude is quite relevant to your bias, politics, etc.
- intev 5y agoThis is a philosophical slippery slope. The next question is "what are facts?", or "who decides what's immoral?". I'm not interested in going down this because it's pointless. Reading the original comment, what can construed as "too political" for HN? There wasn't any strong support or opposition.