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Hacker holds alleged Romney tax returns ransom for $1M in Bitcoins
- rhizome 14y agoIs anybody credible running this story yet?
- teuobk 14y agoSlightly more information at The Atlantic Wire, but they seem to be approaching the story cautiously: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/someones-claiming-be-holding-romneys-tax-returns-ransom/56533/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/someones-cla...
- rhizome 14y agoSave their reticence, that site is all about subjective gossipy stuff. It looks like they have aspirations, but I wouldn't call them credible. If enough other people ran the story they would too.
- ericz 14y agoWell, this is one way to make bitcoins look seedy and give a negative impression to politicians and the mainstream. But on the other hand, kind of bad ass.
- MartinCron 14y agoIn what way is ransoming private sensitive financial information on the Internet "bad ass"? Would it be bad ass if it were a candidate that you liked? You? Your family? I'm no Romney supporter, but this is the ugliest kind of politics.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoI actually am more upset about it being ransomed rather than simply released.
- MartinCron 14y agoReleasing someone's private financial documents against their will is pretty ugly as well, but I agree that the ransom/blackmail/extortion angle makes this particularly ugly.
- rhizome 14y ago"it" is BS.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoWait... I thought as a Presidential candidate he would be handing that over anyway. Is that optional? I'm confused.
- MartinCron 14y agoThere's no legal requirement for any candidate of office to disclose any tax returns. It has become a standard thing to do, and Romney has released at least one (2010) and has pledged to release another (2011), but it is totally optional. Obama, on the other hand, has released tax returns going back to 2000.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoGot it. I guess since they've all done it I assumed that was just what they did. I personally don't really give a crap about their tax returns. I fail to see what it matters how much money they made last year or 10yrs ago. Is that some sort of measure of how good of a President they will be?
- MartinCron 14y agoPeople make the argument that it's a measure of character, but I don't buy it. I kind of like that it has provided a concrete example of how different people pay vastly different effective tax rates, but that could have been done in a bunch of different ways.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoA measure of character? Jeez... I hope we don't have too many people measuring a person's character based on the thickness of their wallet.
- Karunamon 14y agoWell, when a guy is running on a platform of being as American as mom and apple pie, it wouldn't look good for him to be using all kinds of offshore tax havens and loopholes.
- daenz 14y agoThe person/organization in charge has to be caught, otherwise the world is being signaled that bitcoin is the perfect extortion currency.
- lifeguard 14y agoReminds me of the cypherpunk's 'assassination politics' episode. (I do not condone assassination)
- andreyf 14y agoEpisode? Did you mean "essay"? This one, in particular: http://cryptome.org/jdb/ap.htm http://cryptome.org/jdb/ap.htm Side note: the story of the author of that essay in an interesting one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell
- lifeguard 14y agoNo, yes, maybe: I meant legal episode of the author of that essay.
- politician 14y agoNo, Bitcoin is not the perfect extortion currency. The transactions are public, so the value is traceable. Even if it is moved into one billion accounts which are split into another billion accounts, if any of the money ends up being spent to the accounts of known actors then it can be seized and the purchases can potentially be traced. I have no doubt that the Secret Service would monitor that account and the transitive closure of the transaction graph involved for the next 50 years if a payment was made to it. Hell, if there is any value currently assigned to that account it is effectively pinned. The owner of the account would have to work very hard to launder it.
- Bakkot 14y agoWouldn't 'laundering' look exactly like 'sending the BTC to any of the dozens of services which store BTC for you in a centralized account, (SR, instawallet, etc) and then withdrawing that same amount? This produces bitcoins not visibly linked to the originals - it's exactly like depositing and then withdrawing money from a bank (a bank which doesn't make a record of people's identity).
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoPwC has already made a statement to the effect that no such incursion has been detected and no documents were compromised. The whole thing seems like a setup to get a bidding war going(though they're hardly making any bitcoins, yet). http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/09/05/pricewaterhousecoopers-denies-hackers-have-mitt-romney-tax-returns http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/09...
- cbs 14y agoPwC has already made a statement to the effect that no such incursion has been detected and no documents were compromised. In a story that smells like a big pile of bullshit, the one easily-believable piece- No, the one downright-expected part is that a private company was unaware of a data breach.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- motoford 14y agoIf this were legit, why would they ask for Bitcoins when those are so easy to steal anyway ? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4479370 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4479370
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWhat? You can't just steal Bitcoins out of someone's wallet. That's like saying, people get robbed, thus cash is unsafe. The examples like you posted, are people who stored bitcoins in wallets on servers unencrypted. It would be like giving you my wallet and then you getting robbed.
- goggles99 14y ago>Today, a hacker allegedly stole Mitt Romney’s tax returns, is demanding $1 million in Bitcoins for silence, and sent a USB drive and letter to the GOP and Democratic party offices in Williamson County, Tennessee as proof. The hacker stole the information today and was able to physically deliver a letter and usb drive to two government offices? I wonder how he did this without being caught on video? There are cameras everywhere around these offices. He could not have used the postal service as it would have taken more than a day. Courier services would have witnesses. Strange that he would not just email the information to a contact email in each of the offices. This whole thing is nothing but a Con (a pretty good one too).
- zacharycohn 14y agoYou're not groking the grammar correctly. "Today" references the breaking of the story, not necessarily that the entire series of events all happened today.
- rauljara 14y ago>The person also set up a bit of a race for Romney: first to pay the sum will receive the goods. If the person sent the letter to multiple offices (presumably some democrats) they are guaranteeing that the story gets out. If the story gets out, they are all but guaranteeing that Romney will not pay the blackmail money. He has the ability to claim the documents are faked if he does not pay, but he would basically be admitting guilt if he does. If the blackmailer is looking for money, they chose about the worst way to go about doing it. If however, they want to call attention to Romney's taxes, they chose a great way of doing it. However, if their goal is to draw attention to the taxes, it would probably be better to just release the documents out right. While I could see going through the blackmail rouse to draw even further attention, it risks cementing in people's minds that the blackmailer is a criminal and not a reliable source of information. If you're goal is to damage Romney, not releasing the documents immediately only really makes sense if you don't have them. So, while the schadenfreude in me wishes this were true, I seriously doubt it.
- qq66 14y agoGreat logic. One Sherlock award for you :)
- rhizome 14y agoMy sense is that it's a false flag operation precisely to cast doubt on the credibility of any tax returns purported to be his.
- danielweber 14y agoDoes everything need to be a conspiracy? The easiest explanation is that this is just some guy hoping for free bitcoins.
- olefoo 14y ago'Free' bitcoins? I'd think he's taking considerable risk, and the nature of BTC is such that if you can do traffic analysis on more than a few nodes in the network, it's going to be relatively straightforward to track down the node where an address is accessed from. There is no guarantee that he (or she) will be able to access their ill-gotten gains without getting caught.
- Wingman4l7 14y agoThe source article that VentureBeat used, which has more detail: http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/secret-service-takes-alleged-stolen-romney-tax-records-sent-williamson-political-g http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/secret-servi... The ransom note: http://pastebin.com/1j1yzQ9S http://pastebin.com/1j1yzQ9S
- shrikant 14y agoThis appears to be an elaborate troll. A commenter on the Reddit discussion of this news item is shedding further details here: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ze9zn/hackers_say_they_nabbed_romneys_tax_records_plan/c63wiz9 http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ze9zn/hackers_say_...
- ck2 14y agoMaybe not: http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecitypaper.com%2Fcontent%2Fcity-news%2Fwilliamson-gop-confirms-receipt-alleged-stolen-romney-tax-files http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecit...
- gabaix 14y agoAt the end of this Reddit comment is a link to an alleged screenshot of Romney tax filing page 1.
- ralfd 14y ago
- goggles99 14y agoI have always thought that not releasing the returns was part of Rommney's strategy. The Dems will put so much effort into slamming Mitt for this that it serves as a distraction. In the 11th hour he will release them and there will be nothing much there to criticize. This will not only have distracted the Dems, it will make them look like bafoons.
- chestercheetaz 14y agohighly doubtful.
- cpeterso 14y agoGood point. Like Obama's birth certificate and college transcripts, the more "birthers" talk about them, the crazier they sound.
- r00fus 14y agoExcept that every single other presidential candidate has released several years of tax returns and no other president has ever has his birth certificate put in question. But yeah, other than that minor point, the situation is exactly equivalent.
- lifeguard 14y agor00fus, you are a rose among thorns!
- adrr 14y agoDems have control of the executive branch which includes the IRS and DOJ(if Mitt took amnesty in 2009). They probably have a good "sense" of what is on his tax returns. Previous administration knew and leaked info about "Valerie Plame". CIA covert agent's identity are little more secure than someones tax returns.
- ck2 14y agoNOT a hoax, GOP confirmed they received a copy: http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecitypaper.com%2Fcontent%2Fcity-news%2Fwilliamson-gop-confirms-receipt-alleged-stolen-romney-tax-files http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecit... Of course that data could be fake. But something in meatspace is happening.
- eli 14y agoRight, because if you wanted to send a message to the Romney campaign, you would do it through a regional GOP office in TN...
- jmsduran 14y agoThis situation appears to be no more than an attempt to scam money off frenzied people. But it does sound like an entertaining book/movie plot.
- jfornear 14y agoRomney war room's reaction: http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9405/b6e532a7a0ba.jpg http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9405/b6e532a7a0ba.jpg
- salimmadjd 14y agoEveryone should read this for some interesting comparisons, http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-trickster-rove-bugging-his-own.html http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-trickster-rove-b...
- csense 14y agoBlogspam. The linked article isn't even comprehensible. I really wish I had enough karma to downvote.
- salimmadjd 14y agoFor people who didn't know the background story on Rove, is probably incomprehensible. I wish I could find a better synthesis, other option is to link to the entire documentary.
- phaus 14y agoI don't understand why someone would think that this would work. The person who hacked into Palin's personal email account didn't even find anything interesting and he was sentenced to a year in prison (some of it was served in a halfway house). A person who attempts to blackmail a politician for $1 million is probably going to prison for a couple of decades.
- munro 14y agoIt's probably the person that recently stole the $250k worth of bitcoins. Just hype up your commodity with a PR stunt before you unload it. It worked well for Facebook!
- wavesounds 14y agoAgreed. I think the real goal is getting a mention of bitcoin on major news outlets then hope increased interest means increased demand and prices. Seems like it might be working already: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgMzm1g10zm2g25zv http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgMzm1g10zm2g25...
- wseymour 14y agoWhen will we see Obama's college records offered under the same deal?
- barmstrong 14y agoWhile pitching Coinbase to investors today, I got asked several times about early use cases. Opportunity? FYI, users are not anonymous on Coinbase.
- ixacto 14y agoNeither Romney or Obama care about civil rights. It is a one party system. The only thing that Obama has done that is any good is the Affordable Care Act, we still have a military empire running most of the fucking world. Why are there bases in Germany/Italy/Japan/central Asia/...? We have more social [race relations/healthcare/education] problems here in America than Western Europe does, yet we are fighting wars halfway across the planet. Neither Obama nor Romney will change that.
- Gustomaximus 14y agoOne option I have not seen put forward is the possibility of someone in the Romney camp doing this. If Romney really has something to hide this could be political back up in case the tax forms go public. Two big benefits; 1)it is now harder for the democrats to release them if they have copies on ice 2) If released the Romney camp can then say some democrat bought them from a 'terrorist' (or suitable term) and muddy the waters by flinging accusation backs. I really don't think this is likely, but it is possible.