5 ms·

The ‘Freedom Convoy’ Bitcoin Donations Have Been Frozen and Seized

7 points by ummonk 5y ago

dane-pgp 5y ago
> According to NobodyCaribou, police compelled him to reveal his seed phrase. It would be interesting to know the constitutional thinking around that. I understand that the government can get an injunction against moving money, and of course search warrants exist, but an injunction shouldn't be able to empower police to demand that someone give them the code to a safe that contains only money, so that the police can confiscate the money. I know Canada's legal system differs from that of the US in terms of civil asset forfeiture and the right against self-incrimination, but this situation seems to be going even further than the most controversial examples I've heard of involving those areas of the law. Perhaps bitcoin wallets in future will have to make it easier for people to set up N-of-M key distribution, so that, for example, one person can be entrusted to choose the size and recipient of transactions, but the transaction needs to be counter-signed by some number of people in other jurisdictions.
- rosndo 5y ago
  I thought that US courts could very much compel you to do this if it wasn’t in dispute that you are in control of the money, no? You aren’t providing evidence against yourself if there’s no dispute about whether or not you control the money. Also apparently US federal courts can imprison you for up to 18 months for refusing to decrypt your hard drives https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-to-decrypt-hard-drives-is-free-after-four-years-in-jail/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-...
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    My (non-expert) understanding is that US courts could compel you to decrypt hidden evidence if they could convince a judge that the evidence existed. A cop can also seize physical money or property if they suspect it is involved in a crime. This is different, though. I don't think that a US cop has ever "seized" the contents of someone's mind, and I don't believe that a bitcoin wallet can be considered hidden evidence, because the contents are on a public ledger. I suppose you could argue that by handing over the private key, the suspect has confirmed that they own the wallet, but they could also sign a message using the private key, or, less technologically, just make a hand-signed written statement that they own the wallet with the specified address.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      But if the question isn’t about whether or not the suspect has the key, they’ll just be held in contempt for not complying with the court order to hand over the funds? How the seed phrase is stored and accessed is irrelevant in such a situation. The court order is “hand over the money”, which is hardly an unusual one. > I don't think that a US cop has ever "seized" the contents of someone's mind, and I don't believe that a bitcoin wallet can be considered hidden evidence, because the contents are on a public ledger I don’t think this is different from ordering someone to hand over the money in their foreign bank account, such a situation is likely to also involve passwords stored in one’s mind.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        > The court order is “hand over the money”, which is hardly an unusual one. I admit I haven't read the court order, but that sounds surprising. A more proportionate demand would be "don't move the money" (while the court decides who it should belong to), and I don't see how the government benefits from having the money in escrow, unless they fear the user is a flight risk, in which case they should have jailed him too. If the money is actually being permanently forfeited because it has been proven to be part of a crime (rather than just potentially being used in the future to support a crime) then I would expect not just a court order but some sort of verdict proving the existence of the crime.
        rosndo 5y ago
        > I don't see how the government benefits from having the money in escrow How do you think the government would deal with a pile of cash? > unless they fear the user is a flight risk, in which case they should have jailed him too. It’s possible that the government has cause to seize the money without anyone having committed a crime worthy of a custodial sentence. Perhaps he’s only a credible flight risk while in possession of 1M+ USD worth of cryptocurrency? Arresting someone when you could instead just take possession of their money seems downright cruel.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
I see the ability of an individual or group to transfer wealth to another group in the world without criminal or political interference is still an unsolved problem. Aside from the PoW environmental show-stopper, this "Freedom Convoy" failure looks like the death-knell for many ideological aspects of Bitcoin. Not to be negative. We should redouble our efforts. Freedom and democracy may depend on our ability to fund it, and the Ukraine crisis may be the first of coming examples. Perhaps a useful approach is to start breaking the problem space into transfer, storage, spending, and other social utility/tasks as separate concerns rather than keeping focus on a single electronic currency system that solves all of these at once as a replacement for everyday "cash". I've no idea what this "Freedom Convoy" was really all about, and suspect I would not personally support "anti-vax crazies", but wasn't this actually about the weakness of centralised coordination? Couldn't people have, theoretically, just sent paper bitcoin wallets through the regular mail to people they want to support? What other anonymous digital value systems can solve this?
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > the PoW environmental show-stopper You make some great points, so I'm sorry to focus on this one minor aspect, but I don't think the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is a show-stopper. We accept the CO2 emissions of other industries and inventions, from air travel to air conditioning, and perhaps if those were invented today some people would want to ban them, but "the show must go on", and it looks like Bitcoin will sooner be replaced by a cryptocurrency with better scalability (and possibly privacy) than being meaningfully banned because of environmental reasons. For the record, it looks like Ethereum's switch to Proof of Stake has been successful on the testnet, and the live launch should occur in June or July this year.[0] If the "Freedom Convoy" had only waited a few months, they could have avoided the criticism of Bitcoin's environmental impact entirely. [0] https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/03/15/ethereum-successfully-merges-to-proof-of-stake-on-testnet https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/03/15/ethereum-successfully-...
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > For the record, it looks like Ethereum's switch to Proof of Stake has been successful on the testnet, and the live launch should occur in June or July this year.[0] That's kinda the good news I have been waiting to hear. People much smarter than I have been saying PoS will never work, Politically I am for digital currencies so long as they - are in the control of the people not central banks or big corporations - offer small transaction anonymity - remain a complement to cash, not a replacement which would be dangerously irresilient. - Use a PoS scheme and don't require gigawatt datacentres to work I am always told these aims are mutually incompatible, but intuitively at least I reckon it's solvable.
d13 5y ago
Is this correct? - 0.28 Bitcoins were “seized” by forcing NobodyCaribou to disclose the 12 word seed phrase on his self-custodial wallet. Under what law was he compelled, and why did he consent without, apparently, not consulting a lawyer? Couldn’t NobodyCaribou just say “Oops, I forgot”? Something seems not quite right here - can anyone explain?
- ummonk 5y ago
  It's hard to say how much coercion was involved in this rubber hose attack until more details come out. He probably complied after being threatened with arrest and charges, instead of lawyering up.

7 points by ummonk 5y ago

> According to NobodyCaribou, police compelled him to reveal his seed phrase. It would be interesting to know the constitutional thinking around that. I understand that the government can get an injunction against moving money, and of course search warrants exist, but an injunction shouldn't be able to empower police to demand that someone give them the code to a safe that contains only money, so that the police can confiscate the money. I know Canada's legal system differs from that of the US in terms of civil asset forfeiture and the right against self-incrimination, but this situation seems to be going even further than the most controversial examples I've heard of involving those areas of the law. Perhaps bitcoin wallets in future will have to make it easier for people to set up N-of-M key distribution, so that, for example, one person can be entrusted to choose the size and recipient of transactions, but the transaction needs to be counter-signed by some number of people in other jurisdictions.

rosndo 5y ago
I thought that US courts could very much compel you to do this if it wasn’t in dispute that you are in control of the money, no? You aren’t providing evidence against yourself if there’s no dispute about whether or not you control the money. Also apparently US federal courts can imprison you for up to 18 months for refusing to decrypt your hard drives https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-to-decrypt-hard-drives-is-free-after-four-years-in-jail/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-...
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  My (non-expert) understanding is that US courts could compel you to decrypt hidden evidence if they could convince a judge that the evidence existed. A cop can also seize physical money or property if they suspect it is involved in a crime. This is different, though. I don't think that a US cop has ever "seized" the contents of someone's mind, and I don't believe that a bitcoin wallet can be considered hidden evidence, because the contents are on a public ledger. I suppose you could argue that by handing over the private key, the suspect has confirmed that they own the wallet, but they could also sign a message using the private key, or, less technologically, just make a hand-signed written statement that they own the wallet with the specified address.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    But if the question isn’t about whether or not the suspect has the key, they’ll just be held in contempt for not complying with the court order to hand over the funds? How the seed phrase is stored and accessed is irrelevant in such a situation. The court order is “hand over the money”, which is hardly an unusual one. > I don't think that a US cop has ever "seized" the contents of someone's mind, and I don't believe that a bitcoin wallet can be considered hidden evidence, because the contents are on a public ledger I don’t think this is different from ordering someone to hand over the money in their foreign bank account, such a situation is likely to also involve passwords stored in one’s mind.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      > The court order is “hand over the money”, which is hardly an unusual one. I admit I haven't read the court order, but that sounds surprising. A more proportionate demand would be "don't move the money" (while the court decides who it should belong to), and I don't see how the government benefits from having the money in escrow, unless they fear the user is a flight risk, in which case they should have jailed him too. If the money is actually being permanently forfeited because it has been proven to be part of a crime (rather than just potentially being used in the future to support a crime) then I would expect not just a court order but some sort of verdict proving the existence of the crime.
      - rosndo 5y ago
        > I don't see how the government benefits from having the money in escrow How do you think the government would deal with a pile of cash? > unless they fear the user is a flight risk, in which case they should have jailed him too. It’s possible that the government has cause to seize the money without anyone having committed a crime worthy of a custodial sentence. Perhaps he’s only a credible flight risk while in possession of 1M+ USD worth of cryptocurrency? Arresting someone when you could instead just take possession of their money seems downright cruel.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

I see the ability of an individual or group to transfer wealth to another group in the world without criminal or political interference is still an unsolved problem. Aside from the PoW environmental show-stopper, this "Freedom Convoy" failure looks like the death-knell for many ideological aspects of Bitcoin. Not to be negative. We should redouble our efforts. Freedom and democracy may depend on our ability to fund it, and the Ukraine crisis may be the first of coming examples. Perhaps a useful approach is to start breaking the problem space into transfer, storage, spending, and other social utility/tasks as separate concerns rather than keeping focus on a single electronic currency system that solves all of these at once as a replacement for everyday "cash". I've no idea what this "Freedom Convoy" was really all about, and suspect I would not personally support "anti-vax crazies", but wasn't this actually about the weakness of centralised coordination? Couldn't people have, theoretically, just sent paper bitcoin wallets through the regular mail to people they want to support? What other anonymous digital value systems can solve this?

dane-pgp 5y ago
> the PoW environmental show-stopper You make some great points, so I'm sorry to focus on this one minor aspect, but I don't think the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is a show-stopper. We accept the CO2 emissions of other industries and inventions, from air travel to air conditioning, and perhaps if those were invented today some people would want to ban them, but "the show must go on", and it looks like Bitcoin will sooner be replaced by a cryptocurrency with better scalability (and possibly privacy) than being meaningfully banned because of environmental reasons. For the record, it looks like Ethereum's switch to Proof of Stake has been successful on the testnet, and the live launch should occur in June or July this year.[0] If the "Freedom Convoy" had only waited a few months, they could have avoided the criticism of Bitcoin's environmental impact entirely. [0] https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/03/15/ethereum-successfully-merges-to-proof-of-stake-on-testnet https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/03/15/ethereum-successfully-...
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > For the record, it looks like Ethereum's switch to Proof of Stake has been successful on the testnet, and the live launch should occur in June or July this year.[0] That's kinda the good news I have been waiting to hear. People much smarter than I have been saying PoS will never work, Politically I am for digital currencies so long as they - are in the control of the people not central banks or big corporations - offer small transaction anonymity - remain a complement to cash, not a replacement which would be dangerously irresilient. - Use a PoS scheme and don't require gigawatt datacentres to work I am always told these aims are mutually incompatible, but intuitively at least I reckon it's solvable.

d13 5y ago

Is this correct? - 0.28 Bitcoins were “seized” by forcing NobodyCaribou to disclose the 12 word seed phrase on his self-custodial wallet. Under what law was he compelled, and why did he consent without, apparently, not consulting a lawyer? Couldn’t NobodyCaribou just say “Oops, I forgot”? Something seems not quite right here - can anyone explain?

ummonk 5y ago
It's hard to say how much coercion was involved in this rubber hose attack until more details come out. He probably complied after being threatened with arrest and charges, instead of lawyering up.