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>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
by 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.
- tptacek 14y agoThe risk here being? That Romney will sue the guy in civil court? He's trolling the media for bitcoins, how much do you think he has to lose? I guess there's an extortion case to be made.
- tomrod 14y agoBut caught where? Eastern Europe?
- WalterSear 14y agoAnywhere that you can use TOR, or a VPN that doesn't keep logs.
- rhizome 14y agoYou use the word "conspiracy" to pre-emptively discredit my position, grasshopper.
- andreyf 14y agoI understood what you were trying to say, but I think you discredited yourself by misusing the term "false flag operation" before he said anything. Edit(ing because I can't reply yet): I think in the context you were using it, "hoax" would have been a more appropriate term. "False flag" would mean the intent is to falsely attribute blame on someone innocent (usually some geopolitical entity), and is more simply referred to as "framing" on a smaller scale.
- rhizome 14y agoWhat name do you suggest for the concept?
- rhizome 14y agoFalse flag is a kind of hoax, and my point is that the goal is for it to benefit Romney.
- danielweber 14y agoThat's exactly what I thought you were saying. Maybe it's because I've been dealing with other people today who think that the simplest explanation of the Dan Rather memos was that it was all a master plot by Karl Rove, so my patience for people suggesting non-obvious routes that lead back to a politician had already been significantly spent. Is it possible this is something set up to benefit Romney? Yes, it's possible. It's also possible it's something set up to benefit Obama. Such speculation seems useless since the simplest explanation is that someone thinks they can make some money. EDIT or for the lulz.
- pstuart 14y agoJust like Karl Rove did with Dan Rather's forged letter about Bush going AWOL. Worked like a charm.
- nostromo 14y agoIf their goal is to harm Romney, blackmailing implies that the taxes are very very heinous, even without releasing them. It also extends the story through many more news cycles. If they just released the taxes people would quickly find out that Romney does what most very rich guys do: minimize their taxes through legal shenanigans. The story would be out of mind come November. By letting people's imaginations run wild about what is in there, each individual will create his or her own bogeyman. It's definitely below the belt, but may not be a bad strategy.
- lifeguard 14y agoThis has already hurt Romney because we are talking about his wealth and taxes and implicitly -- if we can trust him. He obviously does not want to talk about these subjects.
- nikcub 14y agocrazy political hacker. demands bitcoins for anonymity sends USB keys in the mail that part lead me to believe he/she is probably clueless
- jentulman 14y agoWould you expand on that a little? [edited for tone/less brevity]
- lifeguard 14y agoYou can walk up to any mailman/mailwoman in the USA and hand them a stamped, addressed letter and they will throw it in their mailbag and then at the end of their shift they will dump all the outgoing mail into a sorting machine. There are un-surveiled postal drops all over the USA. Remember the anthrax letters? Case was never solved.
- phaus 14y agoYou are technically correct about the anthrax case, but that's because the guy who most likely did it killed himself. I know that the original suspect was the wrong guy, and that the government basically tried to ruin the guy's life anyways, but the second suspect (the dead one) seemed to be the real deal. This doesn't really detract from your statement about the post office though, I believe they found the anthrax guy because they can trace the source of the anthrax. EDIT: It's been a while since I looked into this case, but apparently in the last few years a lot of the evidence has been called into question by external scientific organizations.
- hollerith 14y agoIt might be an attempt to goad the U.S. political establishment into outlawing Bitcoin.
- politician 14y agoWell, it certainly will further damage Bitcoin's reputation.
- mtgx 14y agoWell now it would certainly be on of Romney's top priorities if he ever gets to become president.
- nkurz 14y agoI agree, although I think the 'trick' is even more devious. Let's presume this is fake, there are no stolen documents, and Romney's campaign wisely pays nothing. Then the blackmailers quit bluffing and silently drop out of sight. From the public's point-of-view, this result is indistinguishable from Romney paying $1M to prevent the release. The campaign really only has two options: ignore it, or try to get the blackmailers arrested. If they ignore it, many will conclude that they must have paid to prevent incriminating documents from being released. If they pursue legal channels, they'll call more attention to the tax returns, and in the worst case may even cause the real returns to be revealed by the court. It's really no win for them.
- benburleson 14y agoFrom another comment thread, I saw transactions on the two Bitcoin accounts are public, so we would know if the ransom was paid.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kzrdude 14y agoAll bitcoin transactions are public.
- arbitrarywords 14y agoAnother option, pay the ransom yourself and then there would be no way for Romney to prove it wasn't him.
- dexen 14y agoWe can confirm a particular account got paid, but we can not rule out a person got paid -- simply because it's easy to get new account to be paid at. So parent post's point stands -- his campaign can't reliably claim they ignored the blackmailer.
- samstave 14y agoThey could also just release them claiming that someone paid the million bucks. This would harm Romney even more. Ecause them Romney would be sweating bullets wondering who had the money to make him look so stupid. And to everyone else it would appear that if someone was willing to pay the ransom to release these then there must be good meat in them and it would have an even more negative impact on Romneys credibility.
- amatus 14y agoIt is not trivial to check the bitcoin block chain to verify that enough money was transferred into the publicly-known release-now account?
- samstave 14y agoI am completely ignorant to bitcoin, so I cannot answer.
- politician 14y agoYes, the purpose of the Bitcoin block chain is to disseminate transaction information to prevent double-spending.
- mrb 14y agoYes it is trival. As of right now: 0.338 BTC (~4 USD) have been sent to prevent release of the information: http://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8 http://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8... 1.145 BTC (~16 USD) have been sent to vote for full disclosure: http://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB http://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6...
- lifeguard 14y agoOf course there is no way to know it was not the 'hackers' who made these BC transactions.
- repsilat 14y ago
- Cyndre 14y agoActually I think he increases his chances of getting paid by your own reasoning. Who says it has to be paid by Romney? The 1 million Bit Coins could be paid by anyone with a desire to make him look guilty, but not something that might cause an issue with the election (like the release of stolen tax documents of the candidate). If the blackmail is paid the day before the 28th, everyone will assume Romney was hiding something, even if he wasn't.