Being labeled Satoshi regardless of truth is pretty much going to get you robbed, kidnapped or killed. This dude lives in this town and has $400M of untraceable currency? The article gives his name, face, address and relatives. You can be sure as hell that somebody will do something stupid to try and get to it.
I wouldn't wish this label upon anybody, it's exactly why the community tries to avoid speculating about it. It's extremely irresponsible of the newspaper to publish this — truth or otherwise — especially in such vivid detail.
I hear Bitcoin advocates frequently claim that government has an interest in "shutting down Bitcoin", but compared to the all-cash industry of most organized crime, Bitcoin's pseudonymity is law enforcement's dream come true. A state actor would merely have to obtain the identity of one key in a series of transactions on the blockchain, and would gain far more information than any informant could provide. Sure, mixers and other methods could obfuscate this, but it's not like 7/11 tracks serials of hundred dollar bills, so the blockchain by definition is richer source of transaction data.
Full disclosure: I believe strongly in the concept of crypto currencies and Bitcoin, but do not own any coins/alt at the moment.
> Bitcoin's pseudonymity is law enforcement's dream come true. A state actor would merely have to obtain the identity of one key in a series of transactions on the blockchain, and would gain far more information than any informant could provide.
This is true. Bitcoin transactions has already been used as evidence in Sweden. In 2013 bitcoin transactions were evidence in at least 6 drug cases alone.
One thing that someone noted is that for a seller of illicit goods, bitcoin is better than paper in that with dollar bills you have to physically pick them up at one point.
With bitcoin, sure you can trace coins, but laundering services (namely things like exchanges) can make you disappear a bit quicker.
I love the idea that bitcoin is the beta test for a global cryptocurrency to replace all money in the future and it is created by the government to test this form of currency. They will regulate all transactions/exchanges and will be able to trace the life of every coin.
It's true. The blockchain is at best pseudoanonymous. If you are careful about how you get your coins, and use a high latency mixer (which don't exist as far as I know, but can be faked by multiple runs through a low latency mixer) and take your profits out slowly, you can make them quite anonymous. While they are a richer stream of data that a purely cash business, they don't have the same hassles (mostly physical size and security issues) as cash.
Blockchain anonymity is what Darkcoin is aiming to solve. Beta tests are currently ongoing on what they call Darksend, a method of anonymously transferring money between wallets.
The main issue here is that Newsweek is not a newspaper anymore. It was sold for a pitance to a small Internet only publisher named IBT media ans is now a glorified blog.
A recent article on France showed that fact checking wasn't part of the editorial process anymore...
At this pace, the name will be completely worthless within five years...
edit: well, it seems it is back in print just this week, but with very few printed
"Being labeled Satoshi regardless of truth is pretty much going to get you robbed, kidnapped or killed."
People say that a lot as it pertains to Satoshi, but I don't see any realistic basis for it except watching too many bad movies. Even if you had $400M in stolen bitcoin, how are you going to unload that quickly enough for the payoff to be worth murder/kidnap or whatever else? The Winklevii seem to have fulltime jobs getting PR on the fact that they hold $40M in bitcoin, what's the tipping point at which they will certainly be killed?
If a "feature" of bitcoin is that if you happen to get wealthy in it you're bound to be killed, well that's a pretty shitty feature of a currency. Luckily, the idea that this will happen is just hogwash.
The whole beauty of bitcoin is that because nobody is sure how to regulate it, you can steal/embezzle huge amounts of it and likely never get in trouble. Why fuck that up with the dirty business of murder and kidnapping, which are very clearly illegal?
Why are you so certain he will get robbed, kidnapped, or killed? There are many many people with $400M+ and their information is freely available online and in the media as well.
Their money is in banks. The existing financial system is much better at protecting peoples money from extortion and kidnapping than Bitcoin is: you can either request money in cash (and get arrested the moment you try and pick it up), or you can request a wire transfer to an account you had to give a passport to open up and where the transactions can be rolled back at any time.
The fear is that it's not actually safe to be rich in Bitcoin at the moment. In theory, this can be resolved through the use of tamper-resistant secure hardware (like the chips used in credit cards): you put your bitcoins under the control of such a device and then it's programmed to only allow small "cash" withdrawals to unauthenticated addresses, and it does risk analysis and requires authenticated addresses for everything else. But no such devices exist yet.
You can't hold all your wealth in a currency that is built to avoid government regulation and to send transactions around the world instantly (both of which would help in the event someone tried to rob/extort you) and then cry foul when you don't have any recourse for someone robbing or extorting you.
I'll never wish Satoshi (or anyone else) is robbed or extorted for his wealth. But just like you shouldn't keep millions of dollars under your mattress, maybe you should diversify your (considerable) funds to better protect yourself from single points of failure.
And many of them have protection. For instance ExxonMobil has security for its executives. They need it: one of their execs was kidnapped for ransom and stuffed alive in a box.
As I pointed out in the now dead earlier thread that while there's obviously privacy issues and Newsweek should have written the article without so many personal details there is clearly a public interest angle here.
If the article is accurate the bitcoin founder has a background working as a software engineer on classified US government projects, which makes it a public interest issue due to pre-existing concerns that a government could have designed bitcoin to have secret vulnerabilities/backdoors.
The pre-existing concern wasn't that the government wanted to backdoor the crypto (as they have done with BSAFE, etc.) rather that Bitcoin might have been invented by a government for their own reasons.
Obviously you can argue how likely that would be, but it's been widely discussed in the bitcoin community in the past and has been an issue of concern given there are "arbitrary" cryptographic decisions in the bitcoin algorithm design without clear reasoning.
Not that I think publishing his name and address was in any way a good idea, but how many US citizens from this list:
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#tab:overall
get "robbed, kidnapped or killed" each year?
Their money can't be irretrievably sent across the world instantly. You'd have to hold them hostage for at least a few days, make them sell all their shares and other holdings, wait for those transactions (which may well have tanked some stocks, leading a dozen reporters to your hostage situation) to clear, wait for the money to get into the bank, wait for the bank to transfer it to another account, and hope that at no point in the process anyone gets suspicious that a billionaire is liquidating everything and sending it to Eastern Europe.
I'm pretty sure that the real issue here is that if he starts spending his money he's going to get hit with a very large tax bill which he would rather not receive.
I'm not debating the affordability, I'm debating the wonderful crime-free world described by parent, where kidnappings and burglaries just don't happen.
That isn't, strictly speaking, true. It's certainly his right to refuse to comment, appear on camera, accept interviews, etc., but it's also Newsweek's right to say what they want about his life and his work. As long as they aren't writing falsehoods and don't cross the line into harassment, they're free to publish.
Oh, I agree with you. The Grantland thing from a bit ago is I think a better example than this Newsweek piece though. Here there's arguably a legitimate public interest served by knowing where this huge and valuable thing comes from. While it right on the border, and others may certainly disagree, I think it's a stretch to call this piece so far over that line as to merit outrage about it.
He used his real name. And a distinct name, at that. There are only 8 results on LinkedIn for "Satoshi Nakamoto", and at least one of them is a fake one. If he truly wished to remain anonymous. And despite this, it took journalists 5 years to find him. If he'd made up a name, he could have probably been anonymous for life. But he chose vanity over anonymity. And now he's an outed public figure. He can no longer sue for 'slander' and must instead argue the much more difficult case of 'libel'.
Minor correction. Slander is oral; libel is written. Nothing to do with public figures or not. The distinction you're looking for is that, for public figures (which may or may not apply in this case), actual malice--as opposed to just falsehood--may need to proven in order to get a judgement.
Could you explain how you think this right works, and to what extent it protects people aiming to effect the world from scrutiny by that world?
The US does have a right to privacy, but invoking to suggest nobody should have asked about Nakamoto suggests you are talking about something entirely different.
In it there is a section where he asks "Why would you want privacy anyway?" and this is exactly one of those reasons. You get labelled in some way, even if its not true, and that label sticks with you forever, potentially ruining your life or putting you in danger...
Not for nothing, but it's a bit ironic that you rail on against the irresponsibility of the paper for publishing this, then throw up a non pay-walled link to help ensure that people can access it.
I don't think Gavin is acknowledging that this is the real Satoshi (he cannot even know). He's just complaining about the doxing of the Nakamoto family, regardless of if this guy is or not the real Satoshi.
Doxxing? That is such a stupid term. It’s called journalism. Reporting on people with a huge impact on the world is sort of what journalists do. Of course that includes identifying information.
Sure, publishing identifying information of people who did nothing special is unethical but that can hardly be said about Satoshi. If the story is correct then this is some insanely rich dude who got rich by inventing Bitcoin which now got huge. I don’t think he needs you to defend him. (If any of this is incorrect her reporting is quite obviously highly irresponsible and unethical, but I’m assuming it is for now.)
This is what the Nakamoto family now has to worry about. It wasn't a random killing. There were at least 6 people arrested in connection with the murders. Apparently the robbers had people inside the bank who they were paying to alert them whenever someone withdrew large amounts of cash.
People get killed over money a lot. It's probably not paranoia. I would recommend you watch the video to understand the gruesome nature of what Nakamoto now has to live with.
So? Nakamoto can spend money on security too if he feels like it. As a cryptographer he's surely familiar with the adage that 'tehre's no security in obscurity,' and I'm only surprised it's taken this long to ID him.
64 year old post stroke retired government security contractor with a paranoid streak who doesn't want to talk to a reporter in any way shape or form to the extent he called the police as soon as she shows up and the evidence she wants us to take as an admission that he is whom she thinks he is is a couple of sentences of dismissive talk about no longer being involved in "that thing".
I find it had to believe that was actually the admission she made it out to be, considering the lengths the real Satoshi took to remain anonymous, it just doesn't make sense that is the venue he would choose to voluntarily rescind his until now well maintained anonymity.
Taken altogether all we have is a collection of completely circumstantial evidence coupled with plenty of things that suggest he is not the real Satoshi and the sole final admission is supposedly hurriedly made in an offhand manner direct to a reporter whom he clearly does not want to have anything to do with.
This wasn't a random robbery though. This was a systematic killing involving dirty banking employees who sent people to hunt them down. The connection is that $20,000 is a ton of money in Ecuador, and Nakamoto has a ton of money, so Nakamoto now has to worry about being hunted.
Yes, but he's not the only person in LA with a net worth that large. And people who hold a large amount of stock in a company are in a similar situation.
> And people who hold a large amount of stock in a company are in a similar situation.
Initiate a Bitcoin transfer at the same time as a stock sale followed up by a bank transfer from your brokerage and let us know which one finishes faster.
Plus, the brokerage and the bank can choose to hold and/or reverse your transactions, for reasons like "hmm, we should probably see if Bill Gates really meant to sell all his Microsoft shares..."
There are not many people sitting on tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in a format that you can store in your house and send irretrievably to a guy in Eastern Europe in an instant.
Seriously. Isn't this the reason why we pay many billions of dollars each year for the rule of law? If you're an exceptional case that needs extra security, get extra security.
Except his actual net worth is probably a fraction of what his theoretical net worth is. It's assumed for instance that he still has access to all those bitcoins, but something could have happened to that wallet. There's also the difficulty of actually converting those coins into something the average business will accept. It's like suggesting that handing someone a billion dollars in un-vested bonds suddenly makes them a billionaire, but in reality there not really any richer currently than they were before, although in some theoretical future they might be (assuming they hang onto the bonds till they vest and can cash them in).
Fair point. It's a tricky situation. But, hey, sometimes, life hands us lemons. I'm sure there are many reasonable solutions. Perhaps not his preferred solution, but solutions nonetheless.
I understand the fear, but the article seems to clearly say that he has less than any aging engineer -- I’d say with his actual name out there, he was a target, but no more. If anything it ties him to Federal security people, who tend to scare random Ecuadorians.
More importantly, ‘doxx’ing covers two situations:
* bad individual actors (disrespect in a public space, violence against weaker beings) where the outrage is the motivator; it is often wrong to make those information public, and the investigation should rapidly fold and forward its conclusion to law enforcement; it's not journalism, or gutter-journalism at best, and even low-level rags do it properly;
* people with significant impact, but whose role requires anonymity (or rather: empathic pseudonymous steganography): leakers, etc. Revealing their motivation but not their identity is good journalism. I agree that in Satoshi Nakamoto’s case, revealing details about his life adresses key issues (BitCoin public image; the incredible dedication of so many, humility and gender-role in technical fields) against his will. This article, hopefully will take away the unwanted attention from his back, focus BitCoin as an open-source project with contributors, and a product-vision that was grown/twisted by Andersen’s more clear and open views.
However, there is a word that is morally loaded and useful to describe the irresponsible behaviour of 4chan and ‘Flesh search engines’. It’s distinct from good journalism. This article is the later, not the former -- but it’s very much on the edge. The journalist could easily have avoided mentioning the location, or said that the name was a pseudonym or a mispelling.
> "Sure, publishing identifying information of people who did nothing special is unethical but that can hardly be said about Satoshi."
This is wrong on so many levels. Here is a guy who created arguably the largest financial innovation of the century and who only wants to be left to live a humble, private life instead of claiming his riches, and you think that a mass of curious strangers have a right to intrude into his life, jeopardizing his safety and that of his family just so you can have the satisfaction of putting a face with a name?
Journalism isn't the same as stalking. This is a man who clearly values his privacy and who had it compromised by his own overly talkative family and by questionable actions on the part of Newsweek (note that they carefully omit how they acquired his email from the model train website). Your response encapsulates everything that is wrong with celebrity voyeurism in America.
I would argue that there is in fact a public interest in learning more about the inventor of what is "arguably the largest financial innovation of the century". Learning more about his life and others involved in bitcoin can help us understand the motivations of the individuals that led to its creation. The fact that a man who worked in classified government projects for a long period of time went on to create bitcoin is certainly interesting.
My impression from the article was that all other interviews were given very freely. There's nothing unethical about asking Satoshi's family or those he worked with in creating bitcoin about him. I don't think there's anything wrong with posting his picture either.
Granted, the article could have done with a less-revealing picture of his house. But given the prevalence of things like Google street view etc., I'm not sure you can reasonably expect to keep that stuff secret.
They could also simply be decent human beings and not post his address or a picture of his house at all, much less what kind of car he drives and its license plate.
Right now there is nothing stopping any crook smart enough to set up a bitcoin wallet from breaking into his house and demanding Nakamoto transfer some or all of his bitcoins to it. Most wealthy people keep their wealth in banks, but the keys to Nakamoto's wealth are probably on a hard drive in that house.
The transaction would be on the public blockchain, but it would be irreversible and difficult to follow after enough mixing.
I agree the picture of the house with the car's license plate is pretty slimy, but I think we're just going to have to disagree about whether or not mentioning the city he lives in and the make of his car is unethical.
I agree with you there. If that was all they included, it would offer the reader a meaningful context of his life without compromising his privacy and possibly safety.
Like you, I'm a little amazed at the notion that we should collectively work assiduously to preserve the anonymity of people who have set out to have a substantial effect on the public sphere.
I think average citizens have a substantial right to privacy. But it sounds crazy to me that we shouldn't be able to ask questions about the people behind major news items, people changing the world we live in.
That's especially true in this case given that the guy used his own freaking name. Presumably somebody with a security clearance working on a cryptocurrency knows the implications of that. Yes, as a nerd I too am uncomfortable when I become the center of attention. But the whole world is not obligated to tip-toe around my personal discomforts.
The press has a lot of knowledge of high interest to the public that they never publish for various reasons.
Sometimes they can't prove a relation, other times they don't feel the public can deal with the information and finally sometimes they are simply asked not to post it.
the primary kind of stories where this is normal is with politicians.
In other words. You argument would have some more weight if it was used everywhere else too.
The press always have a choice and they also did here. It's not in the public interest to figure out who the creator of bitcoin is. It serves no purpose. It ads no value to bitcoin.
You don't live in a libertarian society so that means very little.
The fact is that the press often hold back from releasing information often hold back from using Bill of rights. They should have been more careful here.
Well, who enforces tort law? The guys with the guns stealing the money from all of us. A government strong enough to suppress the free press is strong enough to oppress the liberties of us all. Etc. etc.
Calling Newsweek 'trash journalism' to shred it of press protections won't do either, as otherwise that would put Wikileaks at risk.
Even if the conclusion of the article is wrong I don't see how you introduce legal liability in the face of the Peter Zenger trial, as long as the facts presented were true (or reasonably believed to be true).
Talking to one's relatives and co-workers is not a crime, after all (and how could it be otherwise; should the government regulate who we can speak to?).
> Journalists always have a choice and they constantly keep stuff out of the public.
Sure. And while I disagree with giving away the guy's address (or information that would lead directly to that), I don't see any other reason why Newsweek shouldn't have tried to track down Bitcoin's creator.
Certainly that's a more compelling story than the normal drivel that hits the media nowadays, so it's hard to argue that Newsweek was filled with higher-value stories that they had to shove aside for this one.
This is an actual attempt at investigative journalism, even if the person they decided to investigate wasn't to your personal liking. Any other news story and people would be claiming "the people have a right to know".
If you take away revealing his personal location (though even that would hardly be difficult to find) I don't see the problem here. The enigmatic Sakamoto was a figure of wide publicity before this story, which is why Newsweek spent money to track to track down his location. And as the creator of a market now worth probably a billion+ (if not more) it's hard to argue that the public has no moral right to investigate more.
Did I do anything of note that would make any of this information interesting to the public? I think I did not. If you want to put the work in and find all that out you are free to.
I never once said that everyone should actually provide journalists with that information just like that. They still have to put the work in. Do that if you want to, but I don’t think you will find anything interesting.
So a person loses their right to privacy when enough strangers take an interest in them?
Nakamoto barely provided Newsweek with any information at all. The rest was obtained (possibly illegally?) by snatching his email from a website he had done business with. After that, she pretended to have an interest in trains to spark a conversation and get initial information. She then stalked him and interviewed his family.
You don't have a right to privacy. Perhaps you should, and I've argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to that effect, but in the meantime privacy is just a polite social fiction.
It's more than a polite social fiction. It's a moral requirement for many of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to have any meaning. E.g. try exercising your right to an attorney when the prosecution logs all your communications. Or try exercising your right of assembly to discussion union membership while your employer monitors the meeting. If Americans give up on privacy and decide it's not worth fighting for, they will eventually cede the rest of their rights as well. There are simply too many powerful interests with strong incentives to create a world without a right to privacy.
And the legal scope of those situations is correspondingly narrow. I'm not against a right to privacy, which is why I said I'm in favor of a constitutional amendment to make it explicit. I'm saying that you don't have a comprehensive right to privacy now. Moral rights are what you want, legal rights are what you actually have.
I don't thinkt eh right to privacy is entirely unilateral; if it were, journalism could not exist, and the Constitution also forbids the government from abridging the freedom of the press - which includes the freedom to inquire as well as to publish. I personally would narrow the scope of press freedom if I were drafting constitution 2.0, because I believe publishers often exploit the economic asymmetry between themselves and their subjects to the detriment of ordinary people in a manner that the framers of the constitution were unable to envision, but there you go.
> " Moral rights are what you want, legal rights are what you actually have."
This sounds like a purely philosophical disagreement, so I won't pursue it much. From a practical perspective, I partially agree with you. A right without any teeth to back it up isn't much use in practice. In constitutional forms of government, it's the law that provides the teeth (as law ultimately devolves into a question of how and when force can be used, and against whom). But a more cynical perspective is that the teeth are all that really matter, and the moral arguments are all justifications for getting teeth in the first place. It's that latter, more cynical perspective that I am opposed to.
> So a person loses their right to privacy when enough strangers take an interest in them?
Depends on why strangers take an interest in them. I think it is reasonable to say that Nakamoto has made himself a public figure [1], so journalists should be able to research them within the confines of the law.
If I understand your comment, you believe you are ok with sounds posting that list of sensitive private information, but only if he "put the work in" to find it. I guess thats the only reason you don't post all of that information publically yourself. Your information is clearly interesting to the public, look a member of the public specifically asked for it.
How about if I compensate you, is that a reasonable substitute? How much would you charge in exchange for publishing every item on that list?
I suspect you will find that there is some information that you'd rather not divulge on the open internet, where there is no shortage of crazies. Some of that info would be useful for identity fraud as well.
A. You have to put in the work and actually find stuff out. That’s what journalists do.
B. You have to report on something relevant and interesting to the public. Some random person who didn’t do anything of any note is not relevant. Publishing identifying information on them is unethical. Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical.
> Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical.
How can you even say that? It's easy to say that if (assumption) you haven't done anything "hugely influential", but I think the feeling would be different if this article was about you.
It's plain disrespectful. The guy obviously wants to be left alone or he wouldn't have stopped emailing, stopped answering the phone or called police when the reporter showed up.
That's basically what keeps the paparazzi in business, yes. There's a reason the First Amendment rights were listed first, as well, which is the same reason the Guardian has been doing much of their Snowden coverage out of their New York office; press freedom is a big deal, even when that's inconvenient for you...
Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?
> Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?
I don't think it's ethically sound to post his address, license plate information, city, etc. Especially since it leads to crazy media car chases and other sorts of paparazzi-style insanity that I wouldn't wish on anyone, let alone a guy who just wants to be left alone.
I'm also partial to arguments based on safety. It was one of the many reasons I was opposed to what Bradley Manning did, for instance.
However the risk to those affected by Manning was much larger than the risk to Dorian, and in any event I can't remember many people on HN saying before not to post stories about rich people since the unwashed thugs might stick a shiv in them and rob them.
Thanks for your honest answer. I'm of the opinion that it's legal (first amendment, etc), but rather unethical, especially since the evidence isn't conclusive.
Regarding safety, currency stored in banks tends to be less susceptible to theft via coercion. If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check. On the other hand, you could easily do that with bitcoins, assuming that the private key hasn't been locked up in a vault, or the transaction secured with multiple keys.
I still feel it's an unlikely scenario, but it seems that claiming someone has $400 million in untraceable digital currency is going to impact their safety more than claiming they have $400 million in a bank, or in shares.
> If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check.
While that's true I suppose, whose fault is it for designing a system that is so much more susceptible to "rubber-hose theft"? It seems to me that this threat model would apply equally to anyone who gets rich via Bitcoin, not just Nakamoto, and it's an inherent side effect of refusing to allow banks to act as a trusted third party.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Should investigative journalism be forbidden from here on to anyone who has enough Bitcoin? Because if it's true that being rich will get you physically robbed then how many Bitcoin startups have founders and officers that are in mortal peril based on their Bitcoin holdings? Surely we can't apply a blanket "no investigate" order across them all.
Rather I believe that, if this is a viable threat, that it's an unintended consequence which is essentially inherent to the new marketplace Nakamoto created, which is something that anyone publically known with Bitcoin riches will have to cope with in the future.
It's not too difficult to protect Bitcoins from "rubber-hose theft". The simplest solution is to keep the private key to the majority of the wealth in a bank vault, or several.
If Newsweek got it right, then Satoshi has a number of options for securing his wealth, assuming he still has the private keys. But if Newsweek got it wrong, there's nothing Dorian Nakamoto can really say, other than to deny the story.
Consider if Newsweek ran a story about a secretive millionaire who supposedly has millions in gold stored in his basement. If the subject of the investigation does have millions, but they are stored more sensibly, he could release a statement saying that, yes, he has gold, but its stored in banks, not in his basement. But if Newsweek are wrong, they've compromised the security of an innocent individual.
Society? People have always wanted to know who Nakamoto was in real life and would consider creating Bitcoin something of note. Any news story about Bitcoin in the past couple years have included something about the mystique of Nakamoto.
The number of page hits the article gets? Come on - Bitcoin is news, and it's been made news by people like us. Don't be too surprised or appalled when the general media tries to latch on to the publicity train.
Most of that information is already available on the open Internet, given someone's full name, which many people use (or don't go to great effort to hide) on the Internet.
Given my full name, you can figure out, in about ten minutes, where I live, pictures of my house and my car (thanks, Google), the amount of property taxes I pay and the value of my house, my approximate net worth, my family, my academic history, partial work history, and many other details I would personally prefer the Internet to not know. All this is easily available on open public Internet sites.
And that's me. I make a concerted effort to remain pseudonymous on the Internet. I don't have a Facebook. I think you'd be surprised what people can easily find out about you if they want to.
What I do find interesting is the dichotomy between what I perceived to be the HN majority opinion in the story about license plate tracking and this story. In the former, it seemed to me that most people declared that privacy was basically dead and we should get over it; it was perfectly legitimate to collect public data regardless of whether the aggregation of that data led to information that many people would consider an invasion of privacy. Indeed, many commenters justified this point of view by saying that, essentially, data collection didn't really introduce any new problems, it just made it easier to get caught lying (e.g. having an affair) which is your fault since you shouldn't be doing it anyway.
But here many people (perhaps it is entirely a different set of people) clearly feel that the opposite is true: individuals, even those who may be involved in very public projects, have a powerful right to privacy. Or is it just that we feel its OK for companies and individuals to buy and sell information but less OK for the media to publish the same information wholesale? If so, why? At least when the media publishes my information, I know what you know. If people are buying and selling my information, I don't know what they know about me, I don't know what they're doing with that information, I don't know if its accurate, and I don't know how that affects decisions that companies and governments make about me.
I especially find the argument that we shouldn't publish the information about Satoshi because it puts him at risk interesting. I think most of us dismissed the same arguments when it came to informants identified in the Wikileaks documents.
I don't buy the "seeking attention" argument: many celebrities and people in positions of power aren't seeking attention and fame - it's a side effect of the job, or something they have done. The case is no different for them than it is for Satoshi.
Well let's hope that everyone else in the world becomes as uninteresting and uncontroversial as you, so they enjoy the comfort of de facto privacy. So what if all human progress grinds to a halt?
Journalism exists in part to put the powerful under the microscope. They have many more resources to hide their activities and to defend their interests than average folks, and don't need to be protected from public scrutiny.
Maybe he doesn't have access to his million dollar fortune. Maybe he lost the keys. Maybe someone else used his name and he is the Satoshi but not the creator. He is certainly not living as someone with hundreds of millions in the bank. In what way did he lose any right to be protected from public scrutiny (assuming anyone does have that right - I'm not sure they do)?
By making something that's used by vast numbers of people to channel huge amounts of money.
Journalists need to be able to go after stories like this because otherwise our society will be much worse. They have editors. They have review boards. We're not talking about 4chan or reddit lynch mobs here.
Maybe he is the wrong guy. How is he going to prove he didn't invent Bitcoin? Especially if he has done classified work. He clearly doesn't want attention. He couldn't have made that more clear. And he still has a right to a private life. I don't agree with your suggestion that creators don't have rights.
I am not suggesting to stop journalists investigating who people are. But this is clearly someone who does not want attention. This could easily turn into a 4chan or reddit lynch mob. You only need a few Mtgox victims who want to enact revenge. Or criminals hoping of forcing him to pay hundreds of millions in blackmail. To a possibly innocent person.
To be clear, this story could have been done without printing his whole address, car number plate, unblurred pictures of himself and his family etc.
> He is certainly not living as someone with hundreds of millions in the bank.
Thats because he doesn't have hundreds of millions in the bank. He has it in a random internet conceived currency. I'd seriously like to see him (or anyone for that matter) try and realize $1MM in Bitcoin in actual USD.
Good luck with getting your 1000 payouts of $1000 at a time spread over the course of 2 weeks per payout.
The whole point is that it paints a huge target on his back. And he isn't even using that 400m to do anything deserving of vigilante/criminal attacks, and no one knows if he even really has it
I did a quick Google search and found plenty of information about Bill Gates, including pictures of his house.
In fact you can do this with just about anybody. How and why is he at more risk than any other multimillionaire for whom all this information is public?
Bill Gates uses his money. That means that he can use some of his money on security.
He would be in much more danger if he neither used his money nor kept his money in institutions that would raise alarms to authorities if you tried to force him to withdraw all of it.
You assume he could. He may not actually still have access to it.
This situation isn't really comparable to the general public learning that somebody may or may not have a few million in investments and savings accounts. It is closer to the general public (excluding the police) learning that somebody may or may not have a few kilos of coke stashed somewhere in their home.
This hypothetical bitcoin wealth, and the hypothetical coke wealth differs from hypothetical 'traditional' wealth in that they can be burglarized or extracted via torture without attracting outside attention.
The blockchain is visible to all... of course it would attract outside attention.
But only if Nakamoto were actually able to spend it! If he's not able to spend it then he can't hire security I guess, but that would also put him at much lower risk of being burglarized for goods he can't give up. The important thing would seem to be making it clear he doesn't have access (that is, if he doesn't).
Taking the wallet would not attract attention. Only transferring the coins would, and that could be done hours, days, weeks, hell even years after you've finished beating Satoshi with a wrench in his basement. You could be on step "Getaway" before the rest of the world was notified that something was going on.
Stealing the fortunes of conventional multi-millionaires however necessarily involves interacting with the outside world at the time of the theft. Unless they are drug dealers anyway... there is a reason that drug dealers get hit by thieves so often, and it isn't only because the thieves know they will hesitate to contact police.
If he can no longer access the coins (either because he intentionally destroyed the keys, or because he neglected backups), then proving that to be the case would be damn near impossible. In this hypothetical case, Satoshi may very well believe that he has a better chance of making it unclear that he is actually Satoshi.
What makes you say that? It seems wildly speculative (at least, far more than the opposite opinion of believing he likely still has the coins he's believed to own).
When you develop software based on your own novel framework, wouldn't you need to do several test-runs, performance runs, sanity runs in the process? Do you keep all the intermediate debug data? I know I don't. In this case bitcoins would be part of the intermediate data.
I'm all for the "fuck celebrities and their privacy wishes" attitude, but only when it's those who actively choose to become famous. Satoshi didn't ask for any of this, so I highly respect his right to privacy. Furthermore, he's not famous, he's infamous. I wouldn't wish his current position upon my enemies.
Yo, demo9898, that was hilarious. I sadly can’t respond directly to you since your haphazard summary of what I said in the past on this site is marked dead.
Most of the stuff you list that I explicitly said about myself is spot-on (mostly because I explicitly said it) or at most slightly out of date, but all the inferred stuff is garbage. I’m pretty sure I could be identified with what I said here. Maybe. Probably. You, however, were running down all the wrong paths. Doing it properly would require some more amount of work.
I guess that shows there is more to investigative journalism than reading a bunch of stuff someone wrote somewhere pseudonymously. And I’m still not sure why anyone would actually be interested in me and would want to publish anything about me. It’s not like I invented Bitcoin.
(Also, man did I say some aggressive bullshit in the past. Sorry about that. People change, you know, or at least recognise that their past opinions were bullshit. I think that would be about the worst thing: Pointing out dumb things I said in the past. That really stings. But it’s all public anyway, so I don’t care too much. Humans aren’t perfect.)
This dude lives in this town and has $400M of untraceable currency?
It isn't untraceable, and by consensus the Bitcoin community could de-list all of the origin block mining outputs. Alternately the creator could simply say that he deleted the private keys, which it seems likely that he probably did. They have always hung like a stench over the currency, people wary that one person holds so much of the reserves, with the ability to collapse the market completely at any time.
I don't quite get the outrage about this article. He used his real name on the original paper, and he did something famous. That makes people look for him.
The article sounds like it makes some leaps, however. He worked in shadowy areas, so that is proof that he is the original author? Where is the actual proof beyond innuendo? Someone tacitly saying "it is me" can as likely be someone looking for a little excitement and attention. It's also weird that he refuses to talk, but then his children are gregarious about it.
Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups.
> A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge."
> What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff. His life was a complete blank for a while. You're not going to be able to get to him.
Growing up and living in the D.C. area, I'm constantly surprised at the paradox of the deeply conservative anti-federal government types who work for the government - directly or as a fed contractor. Who'll rattle off about privacy issues before hopping on the bus to their job working on an NSA contract at a Fed contractor...that sort of thing.
I've even pointed out point-blank that their salaries are paid for by the same taxes they rail against incessantly and are met with blank stares or wry grimaces before they launch into an extended soliloquy about "values" or personal responsibility or some such. I've even had folks in the military swear up and down that some military benefit program isn't a result of tax payer dollars but mysteriously appears out of some kind of pay differential sacrifice they've made instead of working in the private sector.
It's rather bizarre and I guess to Nakamoto's credit, he actually did something about it in a sense.
edit meta-response to the replies indicating that perhaps his close contact with the government is what motivated him to develop bitcoin, I think that's plausible. What we don't know is if he developed this philosophy before or after working with the government.
I'm curious though, in the general sense about people who have a fundamentally anti-government philosophy, then take roles supporting and building up the same government they clog their facebook feeds rallying against.
I'm currently a relatively junior flunky in the Marine Corps, and the GS civilians who work here are hilarious. "We need to cut the fat!" We work at a minor airbase in the middle of nowhere... oh. Oops. Whatever we are, it sure as hell ain't muscle.
"Government spending is out of control" while talking about how they exploit the DTS system to get as much per diem as possible.
"Those lazy people who expect everything to be handed to them, and that Muslim in charge is just giving it all away" while sitting in their chair bitching whenever a Marine disrupts their Freecell session to ask about equipment repair.
I don't even talk to them about it, mostly because the fact that they are capable of this caliber of doublethink indicates that they're beyond saving.
I live in a military town, 20k people work directly for the base (there are only 120k people in the county, 250k in the counties most of the employees live in). They rail against the fat, then when furloughs happened last year railed against that. No shit, you want the government to spend less, you've got to take a pay cut or a program has to get cut. You're consistently late on delivering equipment and completing jobs, you're the ones that'll get cut. And the safety record, the morons think it's government interference (damn OSHA!) to insist on PPE [edit: personal protective equipment], and don't wear it so their kids end up with heavy metal poisoning when they carry the crap home on their clothes.
Taking advantage of the existing situation for maximum personal gain doesn't indicate doublethink. It only indicates that they care more about themselves than they care about "the greater good" - which, in my opinion is how it should be.
Somebody's going to be getting paid for doing nothing - it might as well be me.
JTSummers: I don't think it's doublethink to complain about a situation you personally benefit from. (Actually, it gives you more credibility, because you have a personal stake in the problem: You yourself would be hurt by the change you propose.)
But it is doublethink if you hold other people in contempt for getting benefits from tax revenue, or if you think they are immoral for doing so.
For example, I think Ayn Rand's position was not just that "looting" is bad for the country, but that it is immoral and that doing it makes you a bad person. A Randite who made special efforts to get any kind of money from the government would either have to think of themselves as a looter, or make a special exception for themselves.
When you claim Social Security money, you aren't "getting back" what you put in/was "taken" from you. Your contribution is already gone, disbursed to current recipients. When you ultimately collect, that money is similarly coming out of someone else's pocket.
That is true, but it is not how it is marketed. SS is marketed as "insurance" (official name is Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) - so you pay the premium and then get the benefits. The fact that it is not actually insurance but a combination of tax and welfare program is true, but it's hardly the fault of the person who has no choice in paying the tax. If you already are forced to pay the admission price, you may as well enjoy the benefit of what is being sold, even if you are forced to buy it and prefer not to. E.g. many places force people to buy car insurance. Would it be hypocritical for somebody to object to the fact that it is mandatory and still buy it and use it when accident happens? I think only person not understanding the difference between voluntary and coerced transactions would claim such thing.
No, in fact, it's not the same with bank deposits. Of course you don't get back the same dollar bills; frankly, that's an offensively specious false analogy. But when you deposit money into a bank account, you still own that money; if you were to close your bank account tomorrow, you'd get a cheque for the balance.
Social Security, on the other hand, is a "pay as you go" program. When you contribute money into the Social Security trust fund, it is used to satisfy payments to current recipients. If it's still solvent and operating when you retire or become disabled, then you can expect to receive benefits similarly (though, technically, retirement/"old age" and disability benefits come from different funds).
Moreover, if the fund were to go insolvent — or Congress were to shut the program down — tomorrow, you would have no recourse. (Whereas with bank deposits, you have recourse at least up to the FDIC insured maximum.) If you renounce your US citizenship, or decide to fund your retirement yourself, you don't somehow magically get back the money you contributed, and you're still subject to payroll taxes in the latter case.
> If it's still solvent and operating when you retire or become disabled, then you can expect to receive benefits similarly
That's now how it works. The reason you get those annual pamphlets from Social Security Administration is to know exactly what you're entitled to. It's highly dependent on your rate and consistency of contributions.
> or decide to fund your retirement yourself, you don't somehow magically get back the money you contributed
Not sure what you're saying. When you reach proper age, you're entitled to Social Security payouts as long as you've contributed into the system the way that was intended. A lot of people fund their own retirements through 401(k), annuities or personal savings, that does not disqualify them from Social Security.
I hope you enjoyed the irony of invoking the FDIC to justify why people "own" money that they've deposited in checking accounts as much as I enjoyed reading it. Banks used to shut down all the mfing time without making their depositors whole. The reason that's more or less stopped (in the US) is not because of some moral awakening that somehow missed the social security administration. It's because we regulate banks better.
PS: congress is just as capable of shutting down the FDIC as the SSA
You never get your money back out of a bank; you get somebody else's money, if there ever even was physical money involved. And you never step in the same river twice. I think that's all splitting metaphysical hairs.
In this case, it's actually not hair-splitting; see my reply to your comment's sibling. You both demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how Social Security works.
I may well misunderstand how Social Security works. However, the point of my comment is that it's hardly the only system to which one might contribute funds, incurring some future obligation of (re)payment on the part of that system, which is later discharged using funds that were most recently in "someone else's pocket".
Either it's a trivial point that applies pretty broadly outside of SS, or you meant something more significant and I'm interested in knowing what that is.
Your misunderstanding is, at least in part, in thinking that contributing to SS incurs an obligation to you on the part of the program. Technically, it doesn't even have an obligation to current recipients, let alone future ones.
It doesn't matter though. If social security were made of your actual money the end result would still be the same -- your money would go towards investments in the past, and you'd get paid back by people benefiting from those investments.
Yes, but this is not really related to what I said.
Ayn Rand, and any other person who has become independently wealthy in a way that has nothing to do with the government, can despise looters and be consistent. Government workers in particular cannot.
Given the enormous benefits of taxpayer funded defence/political stability/regulatory frameworks/crime prevention/an educated wokforce etc, 'independently wealthy' is perhaps an impossibility.
What if they're highly employable in private industry anyways, and choose a government job not out of fear of dying of hunger, but for better paycheck, closer commute, or work environment?
Or someone like John Kerry - both independently wealthy and a government worker?
If someone is going to get paid it might as well be me. People that support positions only because they personally benefit or who can't change their minds because it would cost them, are far more worrying. As another comment pointed out, those people have a personal stake in the issue. Accepting they are wrong has an actual cost to them.
Not necessarily. If I worked for the TSA or something, because that was the best paying job that was available, I wouldn't see it as remotely hypocritical to be concerned with politicians, who swore an oath to the Constitution, specifically passing bills to line their pockets.
It's easy to say that a truly just person would not work in an industry that benefitted from tax dollars they would rather not have paid, but considering that the government tends to overpay, it is often the best position for one to be in.
> Not necessarily. If I worked for the TSA or something, because that was the best paying job that was available, I wouldn't see it as remotely hypocritical to be concerned with politicians, who swore an oath to the Constitution, specifically passing bills to line their pockets.
If you worked for the TSA, you would also have sworn an oath to the Constitution.
> It's easy to say that a truly just person would not work in an industry that benefitted from tax dollars they would rather not have paid, but considering that the government tends to overpay, it is often the best position for one to be in.
So, some people who have sworn an oath to the Constitution should optimize their personal income even when that means benefitting from things they see as a contrary to the Constitution, while others shouldn't?
Bad example on my part, perhaps. I did not believe that TSA contractors swore such an oath. I agree that in the example I gave, that would be hypocritical.
I believe my point still stands for all those federal contractors who have not sworn such an oath, but are similarly suckling off of the federal teat.
> I did not believe that TSA contractors swore such an oath.
Contractors don't.
> I believe my point still stands for all those federal contractors who have not sworn such an oath, but are similarly suckling off of the federal teat.
Its not necessarily incoherent (but, still, IMO, somewhat odd) to argue that it is immoral to choose to benefit from violations of the Constitution only if you have sworn a special oath. That argument isn't about the Constitution, just the binding nature of oaths.
It's just on the topic of hypocrisy. Feeling one way and doing another is kind of a default in the human condition, and is often required for success.
The oath of office is perhaps a thinner line than I'm making it out to be, but there's a larger point to be made there about the role of the federal government, the incentives of office, etc.
That said, I'm high (low?) on Valium at the moment, so I'm in no shape to argue it at the moment.
How does one gain a first-hand knowledge of a corrupt system unless one has experienced it himself?
It's quite possible to be the user of the system due to the lack of other alternatives and oppose it in principle. People with mortgages or shares do not necessarily support corrupt Wall Street practices and financial institutions getting "too big to fail", yet benefit from low mortgage rates or bullish runs in the stock market.
The complaint is about the system that allows to do that. While the system is in place, somebody's going to be the beneficiary. If the system were to be destroyed, then nobody - including the people complaining - would get fat off it. It's like if you just took your money out of your wallet and threw it on the street, I'd tell you it's not a sound financial behavior. Would then it be hypocritical for me to take some of that money laying in the street? I personally would be reluctant to work for government unless having no other option, but I understand people who do while still thinking government should be less invasive.
Not at all, that's only loosely comparable. To really make it a fair comparison: You'd be a bad person if you thought that obesity was a sign of moral failings, and looked down on those people. All while stuffing your face with your third cake of the day, washing it down with your second liter of coke. If, in that situation, you couldn't recognize yourself as obese and consequently suffering from the same "moral failings" as those you denounce, then you'd be a hypocrite or engaged in doublethink.
Ok, so exercise and diet generally isn't a moral issue these days (sloth and gluttony aside). So what about things that are widely considered virtuous, like keeping promises and appointments, being honest/genuine, not being selfish, not being a dick, etc.? I fail at those things a lot as well, but still consider violations to not be virtuous. Perhaps I don't actually look down on people (at least until they make those violations their norm), but I would still advocate these virtues despite failing at them myself.
Do you acknowledge that it's a personal failing of yours even when you also find it undesirable in others? Then you're being at least somewhat fair and reasonable.
Do you shun others when they fail at it? Do you respond poorly when someone calls you out for having the same problems? Then you're somewhere in that hypocrisy/doublethink territory. (from what you've written it sounds like you're in the first group, not the second.)
It's really a lot about the degree and self-awareness of the individual. A federal employee is not a hypocrite for wanting smaller government. A federal employee is a hypocrite/doublethinker for failing to acknowledge that they want a smaller government, their program is too large or wasteful (F-35!) and that they should be affected by cuts.
One of the things I find curious is the dichotomy between rhetoric and intent.
"We need to shrink the government!"
Sequestration happens
"Well not those specific things I like!"
Doesn't that imply then that those bits that shouldn't have been shrunk are therefore not part of what they think is "the government"?
Considering that the list of things that usually people who want to shrink the government think should be exempted usually includes the military, I find that particularly troublesome.
> Doesn't that imply then that those bits that shouldn't have been shrunk are therefore not part of what they think is "the government"?
No, what you are doing is demonstrating the fallacy of division. The proposition "we should shrink government" is not equivalent to, and does not imply, the proposition "we should shrink every individual component of government".
There is a legitimate case to be made that many people who would assert the need to shrink government in aggregate haven't actually considered things sufficiently and would not maintain that position if they considered things program by program, by it is quite wrong to argue that not wanting some particular programs to be cut, by itself, contradicts wanting the government cut in aggregate.
Yeah, you are right. My thinking is a fallacy. Rationally, shrinking even a single program is "shrinking government".
But practically "shrinking government" is used to mean "shrinking the civilian parts of government".
> There is a legitimate case to be made that many people who would assert the need to shrink government in aggregate haven't actually considered things sufficiently and would not maintain that position if they considered things program by program,
This reminds me of an extended conversation I had with a local county politician who ran on a "shrink federal government" platform. I asked him what we should shrink. There are certainly parts of the federal government I'd be in favor of shrinking or cutting. He resisted, he wouldn't answer. I found a high level list of agencies and programs and asked him to run down the list and specify what his platform was.
He refused.
He'd get up and give a speech about the excesses of government and the deficit and all that. So I put together a list of what I'd like to see cut or what I thought would be okay to cut. I was able to provided a rough budget that cut the deficit in half and calculated out a small tax increase that would end the deficit and provide a small surplus that would simply be used to pay down the debt and then simply be returned as tax returns every year.
He refused.
Finally somebody pulled me aside and explained that he needed the support of the national party to help fund his campaign, and they hadn't publicly specified their platform for cuts yet. So he couldn't specify his support for specific cuts. Which meant the conversation never got beyond "shrink government" as a principle, but not any specifics.
A while later, the same national party put in place an across the board, every department gets the same cut, policy that for a while drove our news reporters to the brink of madness and was deeply deeply unpopular among much of the political spectrum.
So in terms of how the rhetoric "shrink government" gets transformed into specific policy actions, it seems that yes, cutting it across the board is not what's intended, but the hard work of establishing a specific platform hasn't been done yet...probably because intra-party politics means there's no consensus of what that should actually look like.
This is standard political bull. Everyone is convinced the government wastes huge amounts of money, and therefore the solution to the problem is to cut this waste. Hence this "cut the fat" rhetoric goes over well.
However as soon as you actually identify a specific programme or department to be cut, you energize a constituency to oppose you. If you identify a couple of dozen things to cut you have a couple of dozen constituencies opposing you. Now they will hire consultants, do soundbites and pay for attack ads to try to take you down. So you don't do it.
Well, the Republicans did their homework: railing against spending in the abstract is very popular, railing against specific sending is not. So they do as much as they can of the former, none of the latter.
That the people who listen to their media outlets parrot the talking points shows how effective the strategy is.
People rail against things they don't see, be it identified as anything. "I don't like immigrants, except you, you're one of the 'good ones' " etc. Maybe the fact that there are so many "good ones" in that classification you hate would make you realize that you're hating on the wrong thing. But it seems like that's not always the realization.
My anecdotes differ from yours. Most of the people I have met that are living that dichotomy are very aware of it, and just think "well this is the system we live in, so I have to play along until it changes". Many of them are really bummed about it. Sometimes being the change you want to see in the world is impractical, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to change your mind about it.
the paradox of the deeply conservative anti-federal government types who work for the government - directly or as a fed contractor
Those are the people who have a realistic, first hand understanding of the government innerworkings.
Also, a contradiction between believing that allocation of capital would be more efficient under a less centrally-influenced system, and being willing to accept higher pay and benefits from one of the central institutions only exists if you believe that individuals should strive for public good even at great personal expense. Which strikes me more as a moral view taken by nationalists than libertarians.
I think what your proposed cognitive model of anti-government government workers is missing is something Upton Sinclair pointed at:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
I've worked for financial trading companies and for advertisers before, but I can't do that work anymore because I think those industries mainly make the world worse. Not won't do it, but can't. The daily conflict between my principles and my actions would be too painful.
Cognitive dissonance is really uncomfortable. I don't think most people can live with the cognitive dissonance of being an anti-government government worker. Not without falling into what user omegaham correctly identifies as doublethink.
And I think that would be especially true of the libertarians I have known. If I were to generalize about them, I'd say that on average they're unusually thoughtful and unusually principled. Most people don't even try for a coherent political philosophy. I just don't know a lot of people who will think that deeply and then be totally ok not living by those principles.
>>And I think that would be especially true of the libertarians I have known. If I were to generalize about them, I'd say that on average they're unusually thoughtful and unusually principled. Most people don't even try for a coherent political philosophy.
Libertarianism will look like a "coherent political philosophy" only if you're a young white kid from an affluent family.
Yeah, I certainly think people in the libertarian end of the pool tend to value coherence more than completeness. But the conflict between coherence and completeness is much smaller for people who have led very comfortable lives. So that would fit.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but it's about as original and convincing as saying that "liberalism is a 'coherent political philosophy' only if you are a poor inner-city black kid whose parents are on welfare".
They make for witty-sounding quips, but both are ad-hominems[0] that do little to actually address and argue against the tenets of either philosophy.
[0] (In before someone points out that this is not a true ad-hominem because it attacks a stereotype (and a straw man at that) rather than a specific individual).
This definitely isn't an ad hominem, and it isn't even analogous to one. Enraged_camel is implying that libertarianism is missing something that is easy to miss if you have led a relatively comfortable and unchallenging life. The criticism is oblique rather than explicit, but that doesn't make it anything like an ad hominem, because ad hominems are essentially distracting with irrelevancy.
I think a lot of people seem to be confusing Libertarianism with Anarchism. Libertarians typically do see roles for SOME government, and those roles are typically the military, judges, roads, police, and the like.
Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")
So with that world view, working at a defense contractor isn't a conflict at all, instead, it is the one "true and legitimate" reason for government in their eyes.
My understanding from my Libertarian Ron/Rand Paul friends is that they believe the Federal government should not have a single program that's not explicitly specified in the U.S. Constitution.
It's not really a viewpoint I totally agree with, but people who are really deep students of the philosophy come across as pretty internally consistent in their viewpoint.
I think their's a good place for this type of politic. But I'm afraid far too many people who self-identify with it, don't understand it deeply enough or the implications of the ideas.
> My understanding from my Libertarian Ron/Rand Paul friends is that they believe the Federal government should not have a single program that's not explicitly specified in the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitutionalist argument is mostly an outer limit on their support for government programs. They also believe that the federal government shouldn't do many things that it is expressly empowered to do in the Constitution.
Libertarians view of government is, 'I want to be allowed to do whatever I want while everyone else is restricted to doing what I want them to do.' It's a dumb ideology that falls apart with literally any amount of thought.
Where on earth did you find the "while everyone else is restricted to doing what I want them to do" part?
Libertarians who don't themselves do any drugs (eg, Penn Jillette) still want drugs to be legal for other people. Libertarians who are themselves pacifists still want gun ownership and self-defense to be legal. And so on. It seems to me that this view you think "falls apart" with so little thought doesn't have much to do with libertarianism.
"It's a dumb ideology that falls apart with literally any amount of thought", except that it is not libertarianism. Before putting any amount of thought into demolishing a "dumb ideology" you should probably put some amount of thought into correctly defining and characterizing what that ideology is. In your terms, libertarian's view of government is more along the lines of 'Everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as what they do doesn't violate the rights of others'.
Apparently for you it still didn't fall apart as you failed to apply any amount of thought to it. If you did you would know there are basic principles in libertarianism from which it is deduced what government can and can not do, and it's not "whatever I want them to do" at all. But that, of course, requires educating oneself about it instead of dismissing it as "dumb ideology", which is obviously much more than many are willing to do.
I don't think he's confused, its just that online you tend to get more of the anarchist type who oppose the government's monopoly on violence. I think there has been a trend away from "statist" libertarianism because that ideology puts you in the awkward position of arguing that we should have military and police to keep people in line, but shouldn't subject that government to democratic control (because otherwise people would vote themselves universal healthcare and social security).
It's true that most self-identifying libertarians would not self-identify as anarchists. But it's also true that the origins of a lot of libertarian thought comes from anarchism.
Libertarians strongly believe in both human rights and property rights. This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights.
> This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights.
Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.
They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as anarchy.
Ultimately most of us end up voting republican because they are seen as a "lesser of two evils".
I'm well aware of anarcho-capitalists, as I consider myself one.
> AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.
There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds.
> They are an extreme minority.
Perhaps, but they are an extremely powerful influence in libertarian ethical and economic thought. Murray Rothbard and Benjamin Tucker are (in my view) the fathers of the modern American libertarian movement, and they happen to have been anarchists. Even some popular conservative constitutionalist limited-government libertarians like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are anarchists who essentially lie about their views in order to deliver libertarian principles to a wider audience (I don't really approve of that technique, by the way).
I'm saying that AnCaps and RMS are both ideological extremes and do not represent the vast majority of their respective movements.
But I suppose I did paint with too broad a brush. My statement about law enforcement is the equivalent of someone saying "Democrats don't believe in a totalitarian communist regime where we are all forced to have vegan diets", By and large it's true and for the sake of brevity it makes sense to say it, because those views are not a good example of what the Democratic party as a whole is actually about. This also helps some of the more naive people in this thread get a more realistic perspective on what most self identifying libertarians actually believe.
And you'd be wrong for a good number of representatives. I suppose I should have also added "Small Government" and "less taxes" which is what the republicans are at least ostensibly for.
> Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")
NASA for most of its existence was pretty much was a platform for military research and demonstration of military capacity with a civilian/exploration PR veneer.
If the public was more less interested in non-military functions of government, we'd still probably have had something doing most of what NASA did, it just would have been more overtly military.
And Elon Musk just testified to Congress to propose having SpaceX put military satellites in orbit at much lower cost (and with more American-built parts...) than Boeing/Lockheed Martin's "United Space Alliance".
I'm just noting nothing in libertarianism opposes space exploration per se, unlike National Endowment for Arts which is a direct antithesis to libertarianism.
As a federal/state contractor myself. That's what happened to me. My job has driven me to a libertarian viewpoint over a period of years after seeing inefficiency and wastefulness of the organizations I deal with. This is across many state and federal departments.
And I do make an effort to push them toward more cost effective technologies and processes but the sad truth is they don't want to hear it because they prefer to waste money on oracle licenses and aligning text on reports nobody will ever read, than have their budget reduced.
There really ought to be incentives/bonuses built in for employees in govt who can successfully cut their budget and perform the same job at the same level of quality. We would instantly see a drastic reduction in the cost of our government.
The thing is... you'd likely see inefficiency and wastefulness in most private sector jobs as well. Almost guaranteed.
There are some types of services, like crucial infrastructure, where failure is not an option, hence government, hence sacrificing efficiency in favor of dependability.
Except that I also work in the private sector as well. I have both private and public clients. It's MUCH MUCH worse in government. Also if you're seen as wasteful at a large company you're more likely to be shown the door.
The larger the organization the more room there is for waste within its ranks. No organizations are larger than the government.
Speaking as a government employee, not a contractor, we are actually more efficient than my previous private sector jobs. But then again, we have a "build it don't buy it" culture here with a lot of love for open source throughout our services and really only use consultants on ultra specific jobs, due to head count caps from our legislature. Sure there's some union cruft here and there but I've seen similar dead weight in the private sector.
Perhaps you should consider consulting for less well-funded segments of the Government? The constraints make for ingenious solutions.
your department sounds pretty awesome. I've never seen anything like that. Unfortunately I don't have the option of choosing our clients. I am but a humble developer for an 8a contractor.
If you don't mind me asking. What state/department do you work for?
Minnesota education. There is obviously years of cruft to deal with, but there is a desire here to constantly do things better. Honestly, the tech attracted me to the job. They're using some cool stuff. I was pretty surprised when I interviewed. Went from seeing the interview as practice to really wanting the job.
> Nationalist and libertarian are not orthogonal in practice. Try talking to any self professed libertarian about free movement of labor.
Okay, I give up: What are you expecting to find upon doing that? Most libertarians I know are in favor of free movement of labor and open immigration in general. The current Libertarian Party Platform includes this bit:
"Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders."
>"Try talking to any self professed libertarian about free movement of labor."
Are you trying to imply that libertarians are inconsistent? There are plenty of libertarians who believe in open borders, Bryan Caplan being one prime example.[1][2] On the other hand, it is also perfectly self-consistent to believe that citizens of a country are entitled to liberties which are not guaranteed to foreigners.
> Try talking to any self professed libertarian about free movement of labor.
I self-identify as a libertarian (with qualifications, if you want details). If you try talking to me about free movement of labor, I think you'll find that I advocate it fully.
Try talking to any self professed libertarian about free movement of labor.
Just about every self-professed libertarian I know (and I know a lot) support total freedom of movement of labor. Many of them actually oppose the very idea of nation-states and national borders in general.
First, "deeply conservative" and "libertarian" aren't freely interchangeable.
Second, it's a quite small branch of libertarianism that doesn't recognise any role for the state (and thus, taxation) at all - and the one they do recognise is mostly concerned with security.
Something I've learned over the years is that there are a tremendous number of highly different personal philosophies that call themselves "conservative" or "libertarian" that share only the loosest similarities, but the people who self-identify these ways also seem to comfortably self-group and display similar behavior and thought patterns. This is regardless of the textbook definitions of what these philosophies should, in the normative sense, be.
For example, if you ask somebody of any of these various personal philosophies, regardless of what the textbook definition is, to self identify, they'll say "conservative" or "libertarian" and often they'll self-identify as both...and their Facebook feeds will be clogged with endless anti-Obama anti-Government pro-gun patriotic religious posts sprinkled with quotes from the Constitution and reposts from Libertarian Girl, Fox, the NRA their favorite ultra-conservative or libertarian congressperson and then their occupation will be listed as "Department of..." or "<insert Fed Contractor>".
So folks definitely self-group and self-select and self-identify with these labels even if by some strict definition it doesn't make any sense.
And I guess that's what my point is, I run into people like this who've fundamentally constructed an anti-government world view that simply doesn't make any sense internally or externally...and here, in this area, it's shockingly common among civil servants and federal contractors and I find this pattern curious.
I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious.
I think you're seeing hypocrisy here when there is really a lot less in reality.
People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass. This is why I don't give liberals a hard time because they are in favor of higher taxes but don't voluntarily pay higher taxes themselves.
First of all, most conservatives/libertarians are in favor of a smaller government, but smaller doesn't mean nonexistent. There are often large swaths of the government that they are in fact in favor of, and defense is one of them. I would be more surprised if these type of people that you're observing worked in places like the EPA, the Department of Education, and other things that the worldview opposes.
But even if… One can't just concede the playing field to the other side. If there is to be an EPA or Department of Education, been all things being equal it's better to have some conservative/libertarian people working there to keep things from getting out of control.
> I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious.
I actually do find it curious, but frustrating. I have a great many friends, who I quite like in normal face-to-face interaction, who I've FB friended, and found I had to unfollow their feeds because in private they turn into rabid ideologues...from every part of the political spectrum. In this case I'm isolating conservative/libertarian folks, but I see similar kinds of things from people in various liberal parts of the spectrum as well...endless huffington post, MSNBC and planned parenthood links or whatever.
> People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass.
Yeah that's true in theory. But it can get out of control. It's like attending a rally about having too many strip clubs in your neighborhood, then chilling out after the rally in your local neighborhood strip club.
It's not like there isn't a large, thriving, private, non-government sector in the U.S. that they could be employing their skills at.
> all things being equal it's better to have some conservative/libertarian people working there to keep things from getting out of control
What would concern me is people who fundamentally don't believe their job should exist because it's a waste of resources, simply not doing a good job.
> Yeah that's true in theory. But it can get out of control. It's like attending a rally about having too many strip clubs in your neighborhood, then chilling out after the rally in your local neighborhood strip club.
It's a strained analogy, as strip clubs are fundamentally about the thing people who are opposed to them find objectionable - the stripping. Most things government is about these days isn't the thing libertarians or conservatives oppose.
They generally don't oppose that education or the environment is being studied or recommendations are being created - they oppose that the government coerces people to pay for the study and follow the recommendation.
If you're a passionate researcher of things environmental, you probably won't be able to pursue your passion if you cut out government employment - and if you live near DC, most jobs will be "contaminated" by government. Nothing about libertarianism compels you to move to a less government-y place just so you can work a more ideologically pure job.
Yeah it's a strained analogy, but aren't they all?
>Nothing about libertarianism compels you to move to a less government-y place just so you can work a more ideologically pure job.
True, but it does compel you to work in a non-governmental job as much as possible. Or at least be honest about the situation:
"I hate working for the government and all the waste, but I applied to 100 jobs and this is that only one I could get. I'm looking to get out as soon as possible into the private sector."
I'm not fighting for ideological purity, but for ideological honesty. To me at least, it's okay to be a hypocrite or inconsistent, just so long as you are aware of the situation and can acknowledge it. Sometimes shit just happens and you end up in places, doing things you'd rather not be.
The specific thing I'm curious about are the all-too-common cases of people who do not possess the meta-cognitive awareness that they are engaged in hypocritical behavior.
> True, but it does compel you to work in a non-governmental job as much as possible.
Not really. Libertarians want government limited to certain essential functions (exactly which those are varies a bit between individual libertarians.)
There's nothing inconsistent about being Libertarian and working for the government in one of those essential functions.
Do you see that as rabid ideology? I ask because I'm always interested in what is becoming the norm (or how far the goalposts of reality move). For instance, while a lot of FB relatives might believe Obama is coming for their guns tomorrow, the last clinic serving the entire Rio Grande Valley in Texas is closing tomorrow.
It doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is that for some of my FB friends, every 3rd post is a planned parenthood story because that's what they've decided to hyper-focus on. Since I know that everything they post will be a PP press release or new story, their feed is now entirely information free and I can unfollow it without missing anything. Got it, Planned Parenthood did or stood for something that's important to them.
I also have people who non-stop, 20-30 times a day, post patriotic pro-gun items or a few that pretty much only post pictures of Obama Photoshoped to look like the Devil or Stalin or whatever that I've had to unfollow as well.
My own mother is on the unfollow list because all she posts are heart warming pictures of lakes and natural settings with religious quotes and ghostly pictures of Jesus or whatever on them.
It's endless. I honestly don't know how they never just get bored or tired of it.
In an effort to find more signal in the noise of my feed I just simply turn those people off and if I need to I tell them to just message me if they need me to know something. (Of course now I get religious quotes emailed to me a few times a week...)
Let me look at one of my unfollowed: last 10 posts
1. Picture of soldiers firing guns with a patriotic slogan
2. Picture of a Navy Anchor
3. Some kind of rambling statement about God and country and service.
4. A picture of a congressional hearing with the following text "Facebook wants to delete all pro-gun rights pages: Share this if you think that's a bad idea"
5. Picture of his new indoor gun range
6. Picture of some war memorial statues
7. Picture of guys in Colonial costume reenacting the revolutionary war.
8. Picture of a handgun with the following text "GUNS My right to own one is what protects your right to tell me I can't: like and share"
9. Picture of a handgun, a combat knife and some money
10. Picture of an outdoor shooting range next to a Lincoln style lodge
And I'm not even back into Feb yet.
Here's another one...this goes back to Jan.
1. Picture of a black woman with an inspirational quote
2. image of text supporting gay rights
3. image of a guy holding out his hand, text reads "Just let the lesbian and gay people get married and calm the fuck down"
4. Image of the MLK diner sit ins with inspirational quote
5. Picture of a football player coming out as gay with inspirational quote
6. Statement being upset about some legal issue surrounding gay people.
7. Picture of the pope with link to Dailykos about Rush Limbaugh being a bad person
8. Link to thinkprogress about how Racism caused the shutdown
9. dailykos link about a right-wing truckers beltway blockade
10. link to thenewcivilrightsmovement.com concerning a gay rights issue
These aren't even the worst of the lot. I'm just picking at random. But it goes on.
I worked in the defense industry for a while, and the number of small government conservatives I worked with who were essentially living off the largesse of the bloated defense industry...was really really big.
Reminds me of the time, years ago, when I was berated by some chap sitting across from me at a wedding reception for "living off the taxpayer" as I hold him I was a researcher doing a PhD.
It was much later I realized that he had said he was a criminal laywer and therefore here in the UK his main source of income would have been Legal Aid - paid for by the tax payer.
[NB He was really quite staggeringly rude - probably one of the few times I have considered punching someone. Fortunately, even here in Scotland, thumping someone during a wedding lunch is frowned on, you do that at the dance later, where it is practically a tradition].
Your interpretation of "anti-government" is misapplied & misguided. Conservatives and libertarians will, when duly prompted and given time to elaborate, give you a detailed description of how government should exist and function - not the absence of government, but a positive review of how it should be (including a robust military). They're not anarchists by any means.
The government they're "anti" is one which confiscates enormous fractions of productive citizen's incomes, spends far beyond that revenue stream incurring impossible-to-repay debt, twists & breaks the guiding verbiage of the constitution granting it powers, and generally is so far from the aforementioned ideal that the temptation is to scrap it all and start over.
One can also learn the necessity of functioning within a disliked system, sometimes living off & taking advantage of it, because the dominant system makes preferable alternatives unworkable. Working within that system may also make one painfully aware of what's wrong with it, with circumstantial realities making it impractical to do much other than take the money and bitch about it on Facebook.
Hey, there's plenty of people who hate their jobs, employers, industry, etc. - regardless of sociopolitical persuasion of both employee and employer.
Not Objectivists. Others call us "libertarians," but we generally reject that. Because we don't agree with the people you're talking about on anything except politics, and where we agree, it's for different reasons.
tl;dr stupid arguments make good causes look stupid.
These kinds of discussions highlight an annoying defect in the human condition. We adore taxonomies. From Music to Painting to Architecture to Biology to Software Engineering to Mathematics. Every single discipline depends taxonomies. It's even part of our social foundation.
Conversationally, it is critical for many people to map their peers, friends & families to these taxonomies. They seem to need to be able to define you as a conservative, liberal or whatever. Along the way, any sense of true, genuine compassion goes out the window until they interact with you more and find where their modeling isn't correct. Then they redefine their cubbyhole for you, unless you entertain or arouse them. Then you're Truly Unique.
So for what it's worth, I appreciate that you're trying to defend a more independent view point, but I argue that doing so on a message board (and in this thread in particular) is utterly futile.
As a side point, that fundamental urge to taxonomize is a large part of what zen seeks to overcome. Satori (enlightenment) can be seen as the ultimate discarding of categories: where all distinctions are removed, between the self and others, between the self and the universe, etc. Thus, the self is in fact annihilated altogether.
This is one interpretation of the oft-used phrase "one with the universe."
Doubtless I've mangled some of the concepts as bit, for which I apologise, but it's unavoidable when discussing zen.
If anti-government and inexperienced then: 'These libertarians are just backwards and don't understand government'
If anti-government and experienced then: 'Hypocrites!'
else: more government
It's a stronger position to oppose something you are experienced with and benefit from. Imagine a nuclear engineer who's advocating that the new plant she's working on is being built dangerously by the people in charge. Would you refuse to listen to her because she works there?
You've sidestepped the primary point. If anyone experienced in the field is classified as a hypocrite. Then where should the detractors legitimately come from?
A libertarian government worker would be more like a nuclear engineer who thinks nuclear energy plants are intrinsically dangerous. So dangerous that they should be avoided if at all possible.
You are confusing libertarians and anarchists. Libertarian would be a nuclear engineer that thinks nuclear energy plants are dangerous, so they should be strictly controlled and confined within the strictest safety procedures, and while the usability of their nuclear reaction can be harnessed to perform some functions that are hard to achieve otherwise, the said nuclear reaction should be strictly confined to these functions and not to be allowed to be spread outside of them.
Would you really want a nuclear engineer that thinks otherwise to be in charge of a nuclear plant near you? Maybe some type that his first solution to any problem is sprinkling some uranium on it and seeing if the radiation solves it? And when it doesn't work saying maybe it's because it's not radioactive enough, so we need more uranium there?
That's still not hypocrite, because the power plant would be built anyway. Her/His action is not causing the power plant to happen, unless somehow s/he's the only nuclear engineer available.
No, performing actions that are different than your beliefs is literally the definition of hypocrisy. The fact that somebody else might take the actions anyways is irrelevant.
Working for the government does not grow the government. The government has decided to grow by hiring a new employee. Your action to take or reject the job doesn't change that.
However, believing the government should be smaller and then voting for politicians who want to grow your sector of the government does seem hypocritical.
> Working for the government does not grow the government.
Working productively for the government, specifically when non-government alternatives exist, does.
Let's say you work in transportation, should you work for the DoT or the company that owns all the toll roads in the region?
Let's say you do a damn good job for the DoT and because of your work you drive the the cost per traveled mile per person (or whatever the applicable measure is) to a fraction of the same for the private toll roads. You've just justified that government is in fact better than the private sector. The local general assembly passes a law that the toll road should become public property and a forced takeover is instituted. Government is grown.
But you could work for the toll road company, drive their costs down while expanding their owned network, demonstrate that private road ownership, a pay-for-what-you-use system is the best. It beats paying taxes on roads you won't even drive on! Private road companies start taking over all the roads and the DoT becomes nothing more than a small regulatory body. Government is shrunk.
You have a choice, participate in government or not. If you believe the government cannot be effective, and you still take the government job, you become part of the problem and that's hypocrisy full stop. If you do a good job, you defeat your own argument. If you do a bad job, willfully (to try and prove government can't work) or not (just laziness and incompetence), then I question the need to retain you either way.
The U.S. at least has such a large private sector, it dwarfs the public sector, that there's very little excuse in going government vs. finding a commercial job somewhere.
Interesting point. I see how that applies in your DoT / toll road example but that works because they are in a sense two competing entities. That's not the case with a big chunk of the government. For example, a highly productive patent office employee really doesn't do anything to justify the office's existence unlike your DoT worker example. In some ways, issuing a lot of patents might actually prove the patent office should not exist.
Well, to specifically look at your patent example. Patents are one of the few things most types of Constitutionally focused Libertarian movements explicitly allow (U.S.C. Article 1, Sec 8, Clause 8).
But more generally, there are lots of things that only governments can do, that no free-market alternative can provide comparably, or can provide structure to where the non-government solution provides inefficient chaos.
People often use government mandated standards as the example. "Drinking water must have no more than x parts per million of y" and then provides testing and enforcement of those standards to ensure some minimal level of safety. And if some act of God means local drinking water becomes undrinkable regardless of efforts to clean, the government also carries out public awareness and warning campaigns and offers remediation guidelines.
Nothing stops private industry from providing better than those standards of water, but private industry generally doesn't. Given a set of minimal standards, private industry almost always targets those standards (but not better and of course there are exceptions). Now imagine what gets targeted when there are no standards and no enforcement of the standards? Is the water safe? or does it just not taste bad? I've been in countries where there was effectively no government oversight and the water tasted fine, but would land you in a hospital.
And there are many cases where private industry gets caught not providing that minimal standard and enforcement actions occur. Or industry that has nothing to do with water provisioning ends up contaminating water so badly that people's tap water lights on fire or whatever.
Industry self-regulation sometimes works, but just as often has been shown to not work well at all.
Your analogy works only in the particular case of industries where there's public and private competition; it doesn't apply to many cases. For example, my country doesn't have any private toll roads. How would working for the State prove that it's more effective than toll roads?
And believing that the State cannot be effective is just one of the reasons to oppose its growth. There's more opposition to the State besides the Tea Party, you know?
Maybe he developed those views after working for the government. Maybe he saw something while working for the government (that we don't see) which helped shape those views. Maybe for him, given the chance to do things he found to be interesting and challenging was greater than his views of the government.
This story obviously leaves a lot out from a guy who has had a long secretive life. Also, he isn't on a soapbox. He didn't share these opinions and I imagine, not thrilled that any information about his has got out.
Those things are all possible--but unlikely, in my experience. I've worked for the government and for government contractors. I did not ever come across even one single self-proclaimed conservative or libertarian individual who fell into any of the "maybe" hypotheses you describe. To a person there is one word to describe them: hypocrite. They did exactly what the parent wrote: railed against government while earning a decent (in some cases extremely nice) living that is 100% the result of government activity.
In the Bitcoin conversations, it seemed he wasn't interested in talking about much outside the code. Even though Bitcoin was created for X reasons, the discussions were about code. Then he disappeared. Bitcoin has since exploded and he still hasn't come out.
From the description of the guy, it seems to wouldn't be self proclaimed anything except in passing down advice to his children.
Who knows if these are even his actual views. I doubt we will be seeing any interviews. Just short comments from family who apparently aren't close to him. This includes his brother who thinks he is an asshole.
Did you continue working for the government after forming said beliefs? If so, then I suggest that either your beliefs aren't that strong, or else you're a hypocrite. In either case, "unlikely" is not "impossible."
Watching the inner workings of a three letter agency in action formed beliefs that caused me to seek employment elsewhere. That said, going elsewhere required some degree of financial sacrifice, and I don't fault others for not necessarily being willing to go as far as I did with stable, good-paying jobs as dear and precious as they are.
We should also consider that its improbable if not impossible that he has not since been visited by contacts from the Government. They knew exactly where he was. So any change of mind he has had since the explosion of Bitcoin should take that into account.
I've read this sort of sentiment before. Here is what is confusing you.
You are trying to over-simplify the complex political philosophy and worldview of a person.
To say that someone is a libertarian, for example, tells you almost nothing about that person.
I am one of those "all models are wrong" kinds of people, but if you were trying to model the beliefs of a person, I would say the minimum questions are:
1. In the ideal state of the universe, how is humanity organized?
2. In the ideal state of the universe, how are the humans close to you organized?
3. How should one act to aid the transition towards the ideal state?
To explain the individual you are describing who is anti-federal government but works for the federal government, there are a number of hypothetical people we can imagine.
For example, one could believe that in the ideal state there is no organization of power at the global or federal government level (#1). But they could also believe that (#3) there is nothing an individual can do to speed up that transition in any meaningful way. They may be waiting for some cultural evolution of humanity or a game-changing shift in technology (e.g. unlimited free access to power).
Or they could believe that the way to transition is by participating to ensure that it does as little evil as possible- or they could even be actively undermining the system from within. There are countless possibilities that could explain what you are describing.
On the other hand, they could just be big fat hypocrites. ;)
Why disregard the topic of the way Newsweek handled this? Here's a private citizen. He has $400mm in an anonymous currency. Here's the city he lives in. Here's what his house looks like. I recognize they are just trying to prove that he isn't living some ostentatious lifestyle but for someone who appears to have no personal security, they could just say "he lives in a modest home" and that is really enough.
Focusing on the article itself - I'm glad it was not a pseudonym. Takes a lot of the mystery and shadiness away from the origins of the coin. Just an individual who believed in what he put together and didn't want a lot of attention or celebrity. I think that's a positive. I'd buy him a beer for sure.
As far as anti-government libertarians being hypocrites - who isn't? Silicon valley heavily favors the democratic party, a party that generally favor higher tax policy, and also has the largest tax avoiding corporations in the world. At a certain point, it's hard to rationally engage with what people claim to believe. Just watch what they do, focus on the outputs.
Rhetoric aside, I've met almost no libertarians of the anarchist persuasive in D.C., the kind who reject the existence of government. There are a lot of small government conservatives, though, but I think they object more to the 60% of the budget that is comprised of transfer payments and aid to states than the 5-10% of the budget is comprised of federal payroll. More generally, compartmentalization isn't hypocrisy. Everyone has the programs that they like and the ones they don't. People deeply opposed to defense spending or the drug war still justify working for e.g. the EPA.
> I've met almost no libertarians of the anarchist persuasive in D.C.
Anecdotal I know, but quite a few of my friends are former military of some type and their facebook feeds are jam pack full of libertarian group reposts.
> Everyone has the programs that they like and the ones they don't.
It's too bad that the rhetoric is "shrink government" not "I don't like this specific program". Because the former statement creates hypocrisy when a program they like is shrunk, but of course picking and choosing individual programs to shrink/cut requires actually knowing what's going on above and beyond catchy political slogans and reposting a repost from a Fox news article who's headline ended in a question mark.
Have you ever considered the fact that former military personnel harbor some anti-government sentiments because of the experience with military? They have lived a fairly authoritarian lifestyle for an extended period of time, it's understandable that they develop a distaste for govenrment.
I dunno. My parents have been living in the D.C. area for about 25 years and my dad loves government, at least as long as there's a Democrat in the White House. I mean, he thinks we spend too much on defense, but doesn't everyone dislike some of the "other side's" policies? I think you meet a lot more "true believers in government" in D.C. than anywhere else in the country.
Well bane let me, a libertarian, explain to you why I worked for the government while I was a libertarian.
Sometimes the solutions that are government mandated or subsidized would appear in a different form if the government didn't run them. So, for example, mass transit, like subways would still exist if the government didn't use coercion to fund and run it, it would just be owned by private individuals. Just because the government decides that they should be the ones that run the subways and I disagree with that, doesn't mean that I should be exempt from working for the TTC's construction engineering department.
These are two different things. When you live in a system that coerces you into giving up half of your income it doesn't mean that you are in the wrong for working for it or even taking things like subsidies.
> When you live in a system that coerces you into giving up half of your income it doesn't mean that you are in the wrong for working for it or even taking things like subsidies.
I'm positing that it does.
In fact, there's only one case where I can find working for the government while thinking it shouldn't exist is workable, and that's working for the government in a capacity where you can dismantle the government. Which is often what happens right?
Privatization of previously government run programs is one of the example methods for doing that. I'm not interested in discussing the politics of this method, or if it is good or bad. I'm interested in cases where somebody specifically holds a viewpoint, then does everything in their power to work against that very viewpoint.
You were perfectly capable of finding a job that wasn't with the government, yet you specifically chose to apply, interview, get hired and maintain employment with an entity that you didn't agree with. I bet you signed paperwork and everything and happily collected your taxpayer provided paycheck.
It's actually the very definition of hypocrisy to the letter. In fact you put effort into ensuring that you behaved as a hypocrite.
It sucks, and sometimes people do hypocritical things. I'm not condemning you for it. But I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.
If you say "I'm a hyprocrite, it sucks and I know it but...meh." I'm actually fine with that.
But saying you aren't when you explicitly, textbook definition, are, is silliness and no amount of explanation or word bending can change that.
It's this exact behavior, this lack of meta-cognition and self-awareness that I find explicitly curious. You haven't explained why you engaged in hypocritical activities at all. You simply said that you did it and that what you did isn't hypocritical and you should be free and clear from behavior inconsistent with your beliefs because...?
>sometimes people do hypocritical things. I'm not condemning you for it.
Thank you for understanding.
>I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.
It's welfare, okay? It's all a giant welfare program. Gravy train. Uncle Sugar. Call it what you will. It's all very contradicting on paper, but it's not so bad when you're in it.
What's curious to me is the meta-cognition and self-awareness that goes on as a change-the-world startup like Google metamorphoses into Big Evil. It's usually a very gradual decline, like a glacier slide. Is it like the frog-in-water, where nobody notices? Does everybody know, and rationalize it? Or are people honest?
It isn't hypocritical because I find myself in a system that accepts coercion. If I disagree with communism should I refuse work and perish from starvation? No! I'm already within the system that make unethical demands. It isn't a choice between living free and working within an unethical system, it is a choice between working within an unethical system or working within an unethical system in a different manner. With your logic, if one sees the state as an actor of evil should he not cease all action? The state can only function with revenue, so would it not be better to live in the wilderness away from the state?
This is false. The state has it's own violence that one can constantly object to, but it does not stop one from selling labor on the market. Put another way: The state uses violence to coerce resources from individuals and to coerce other individuals not to compete in certain industries (like mass transit). That is where the sin is. To be an engineer at a public transit system or to be a income earner that pays taxes, both prop up the state in their own ways, but neither of them necessarily willingly works for a state run enterprise, but they both do.
It is not inconsistent with my beliefs because my beliefs do not hold those that work for or contribute towards the state through taxes as liable for the ethical misconduct of the state procuring taxation through force. It sounds like a tautology, but it is not.
Wrong, full stop. It's actually the literal dictionary definition of hypocrisy.
The problem I have is not being a hypocrite, it's not being cognitively able to acknowledge it.
> If I disagree with communism should I refuse work and perish from starvation?
No, of course not. But you can recognize that you are helping perpetuate the system you disagree with. You may be empowered to resolve that conflict or not, but not the conflict exists at all? Now that's a problem. It fundamentally delegitimizes all of your arguments.
> That is where the sin is.
Definitely not interested in arguing where the sin is. Or how lamentable and pathetic a coerced situation you've found yourself in that you have no choice but to hypocrize yourself while insisting you aren't. You can also be coerced into hypocrisy.
Redefining words or insisting that you really truly dearly hold the set of beliefs you hold, yet are working against, doesn't modify the nature of the universe.
The truth is, it doesn't matter if you are a hypocrite. Everybody commits a little hypocrisy all the time. I don't like sweat shops, but man if cheap shirts made in unregulated developing countries don't fill my closet.
I don't have a particular problem with your beliefs, you've selected your chosen set of ideological axioms and have chosen to work off of those. I'm not even remotely interested in debating those.
What I'm interested in what happens when you violate your beliefs, do you acknowledge that violation, or do you try to fold space-time around your beliefs and act as if nothing at all ever happened.
No, the definition of hypocrisy (from Wikipdeia) is:
> Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.
I'm claiming a set of beliefs, you may judge those beliefs to be inconsistent, but you don't define what those beliefs are, by definition I do. It is not hypocritical because I argue that despite the fact that society should be in a libertarian state a realistic assessment of the situation shows that my impact in supporting the governmental apparatus is inconsequential to its continued existence. The difference I make changing people's opinion on HN during the day is what will lead to the reduction of the state, not the acceptance of grants or employment.
Hypocrisy is behaving in a manner inconsistent with one's principles. One can have a principle that people shouldn't do anything that could assist something they consider evil, but if they have a less strict standard, doing so is not "the literal dictionary definition of hypocrisy".
> In fact, there's only one case where I can find working for the government while thinking it shouldn't exist is workable, and that's working for the government in a capacity where you can dismantle the government. Which is often what happens right?
Where do you draw the line? What about using tax-funded roads, or regulated industries like air travel?
It doesn't mean I agree with that method. But it's at least internally consistent and I can respect the ideology and politics from it.
I happily think that my taxes help buy the civilization I enjoy. I actually believe the concept that government is not some impersonal monolithic bureaucracy, but is what Lincoln enshrined as "by the people, of the people and for the people".
When the IRS makes a mistake and gives me a hard time I don't think "GODDAMN IMPERSONAL IRS SCREW THE GOVERNMENT", I think "some poor schlep looking at tax returns all day screwed up." I think this might come from the area I grew up and live in, where practically every 4th or 5th person I know is employed in some capacity by the Federal government. So I personalize what it is and understand that it's not a mechanized black box.
> I actually believe the concept that government is not some impersonal monolithic bureaucracy, but is what Lincoln enshrined as "by the people, of the people and for the people".
In my view, that is either an untestable (and therefore essentially meaningless) hypothesis, or it's a testable hypothesis that fails nearly every test.
So, for example, mass transit, like subways would still exist if the government didn't use coercion to fund and run it, it would just be owned by private individuals.
Given the dearth of private subway companies, I question this claim. There are lots of places where a subway would be highly desirable but doesn't exist, why hasn't some entrepreneurial soul built one already?
The London Underground, the earliest subway system, was initially built as a patchwork of private railway systems that were later brought under government control.
Most of the subsequent systems (e.g. Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg) used the London system as a reference.
So, mass transit did in fact arise as a result of private entrepreneurship. The reason subways don't exist in places where it would be 'desirable' is because of government interference, or simply poor economics.
Not true. The Corporation of the City of London put up most of the money with the goal of alleviating congestion. The chief visionary, charles Pierson, was the solicitor (a sort of lawyer) for the City.
Same deal with new York's subway - therre were private companies involved but they were set up within the frameworks of a public works project and were basically financial vehicles designed to limit financial liability and attract some matching capital from the private sector for an initial large public sector investment or monopoly grant.
I'm sympathetic to libertarianism but this notion that all this stuff would happen by itself if it weren't for evil government interference is just bollocks, it's just as stupid as communists claiming that all private capital is wicked.
Are you aware of the history of the City of London Corporation? And its voting structure? If so, to try to equate it with any other government anywhere, seems rather disingenuous. If not, I suggest you have a look on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
Yes, I worked in the City for years and considered living there as a resident too, when I was living in London. Just because it has an unusual structure doesn't alter the fact that it's a governmental body, and to claim otherwise because of its commercial roots is absurd.
It's the same in local government. I know a firebrand Tea party fellow who not only works for the city of San Francisco as a legal administrator, he's a member of the AFSCME (white-collar public sector union) and brags about clocking out on the dot of 5pm. I think the attitude is that other people are getting this great deal, so why shouldn't he?
Mind you, I'm not exactly consistent either. I'm quite liberal but I far prefer working in the private sector or even freelance and have never joined a union. Perhaps our political views are an expression of frustration with the negative aspects of our life choices.
I think you should go read my comment again. I'm not talking about my beliefs, I'm talking about the claims of those experiencing it.
If you want to tell my friend who was terribly pleased with his heart surgery courtesy of the military that he's worthy of buying a bridge, go for it, but I don't think he's going to be pleased.
If the government did a good job of feeding its soldiers such that every time you get a government meal you're talking about how great it is, it would be inconsistent to say that government-provided meals are a disaster and that nationalizing meals would make everything related to it terrible.
These quotes are not just Orwellian, but straight out of Animal Farm:
>He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen.
"Four legs good, two legs bad."
>Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond measure. "I made a small investment in Bitcoin and it is actually enough that I could now retire if I wanted to," Andresen says. "Overall, I've made about $800 per penny I've invested. It's insane."
"Four legs good, two legs better!"
Apparently, early adopters are "more equal than others" -- the Gini coefficient of bitcoin is near .9.
The analogy to holding bankers' keys in bitcoin is holding 51% of mining power, and not a percentage less. Just having a lot of bitcoin gives you the ability to affect the price of the currency, but again this is directly proportional to how much you hold, not because of an artificial power like legal authority to take advantage of fractional reserve, or being a member of the Fed.
> not because of an artificial power like legal authority
This is like saying "natural" foods are inherently better (or alternately, that processed foods are inherently worse).
There's nothing inherently wrong with "artificial" power as it may very well be superior to the idea that shit will just "naturally happen" and whatever will be, will be.
Militaries since the dawn of history adopted artificial power early, not because warriors around the world somehow converged on the same artificial Kool-Aid, but because organized armies were much more effective in combat.
This is not to say that "command & control" is always inherently better (and indeed modern armies tend to practice German-style "centralized planning, decentralized execution"). Likewise the free market is a fairly widely-acknowledged success story as opposed to a planned economy.
The point is rather that "no artificial power" is not a selling point or way of winning an argument on its own. On its own, it's nothing more than a suggested policy option, like saying Ethernet is better than Wifi or that CLI arguments should start with / instead of -.
The effectiveness of such policies can only be determined in light of all the evidence of each case in question.
Well yeah, I am just saying that "bankers keys" are like having administrator access. It's built into the system, it's not hacking. But you can still abuse it. "bankers keys" don't have an analogy in bitcoin because there's no defined administrator role, your power is proportional to your holdings. Well, there is a soft administrator power, which is, being a primary developer on it.
He didn't get rich by just holding the keys, he got rich by getting involved in new tech early. In fact, he helped build something he believes will change the world.
He (the banker) didn't get rich by just holding the keys, he got rich by getting involved in new tech early (credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities, stated income loans, MERS, etc.). In fact, he helped build something he believes will change the world (easy credit for borrowers, safe high yield investments for teacher's pension funds). Never mind that these innovations lead to a housing bubble, a global financial crisis, the borrowers bankrupt and the teachers eating cat food in their retirements, the banker and all his accomplices think he is a cross between George Bailey and Albert Einstein.
The banker blows a housing bubble, Satoshi blows a bitcoin bubble. I would concede that so far the housing bubble has done far more damage, but if bitcoin "succeeds", that could change.
My government job is cool, because I do work and stuff.
Other people, of course, suck at the government teat, and drive welfare Cadillacs to the welfare office to pick up their food stamps and welfare check to pay for their 15 kids by different fathers.
In other words, if you do it, it's wrong and you need to change. If I do it, it's because you just don't understand.
(Edit: Do we need an irony tag? This is a humorous comment meant to illustrate one kind of mindset that exists with some of the people who hold 'eliminate all the government' kind of views.)
This is called the fundamental attribution error: If I do it, I know the circumstances so it's understandable, whereas if you do it, the circumstances are unclear so I blame your (assumed to be unpleasant) personality.
Story time: I knew a guy who was in to network security and was smart and experienced enough that the only employers who could fully take advantage of his talents were government departments or banks. He worked in different roles for both for a while, but it ate him up the whole time.
The cognitive dissonance became too much, he took some time off and last I heard he was working for a small start-up, probably taking a huge pay cut in the process.
I guess the other path is to develop an internal logic that somehow justifies you working for what you despise so that you can get through the day. "I'm surrounded by idiots, sheeple and corporate whores! I'm not one of them! I'm smarter than that!"
Intentionally not taking a job with the Federal Government would not cause the Gov to shrink. There's no inconsistency, just an acknowledgement that, ideally, you would need to find a new job.
It's absolutely not bizarre, hypocritical, paradoxical or even ironic.
By your logic, every libertarian who disagrees with taxes (or the level of taxation) should break the law and face the consequences (of a miserable, tortuous life in prison).
It's one thing to have a political view, and argue for it. Democracies (and republics) wouldn't have a chance of working if citizens didn't take this much upon themselves.
At the same time, you also have one life to live. Some people want to be politicians or activists, others may want to be engineers, scientists or artists.
The latter don't want to spend their entire being on an idealistic crusade, but they still deserve the right to a political opinion like everyone else.
Oh please. Do we have to drag everything to its extreme? The consequences of not paying your taxes are not anywhere near the same as the consequences of not accepting a job in a government position. One lands you in jail. The other lands you in a private sector job, maybe with a pay cut.
For one, if you are paying taxes (and otherwise accepting that you live in a republic where you don't get the exact set of laws that you want), most people would feel somewhat entitled to benefit from the use of those taxes, which includes government jobs (or state funded research).
What would be hypocritical is arguing specifically that your own entitlement is more worthy of government support.
I see no hypocrisy in partaking in benefits, while arguing that no one (including yourself) should have to pay for them and no one should benefit either.
Hypocrites are everywhere even in the private sector, nothing particularly strange that they exist in the public one.
>I've even pointed out point-blank that their salaries are paid for by the same taxes they rail against incessantly and are met with blank stares or wry grimaces before they launch into an extended soliloquy about "values" or personal responsibility or some such.
There's this kind of sick expectation of consistency. I think it's fine if someone directly benefits from taxes and calls for their decrease. You make a villain out of them, but when someone like Warren Buffet says 'the rich can contribute more' you applaud him even when he directly benefits from less contribution. Anytime anyone espouses some belief and doesn't reflect adequate action to demonstrate that belief you could fault them for it. If you're going to fault the deeply conservative anti-federal government types for being inconsistent, you may as well fault everyone who doesn't meet your standard, less you yourself become the inconsistent one.
> You make a villain out of them, but when someone like Warren Buffet says 'the rich can contribute more' you applaud him ...
Good point on Buffet. Claiming the rich should pay more taxes but having an army of accountants and lawyers on staff to minimize your tax burden seems very hypocritical.
It's not at all hypocritical, as long as he pays that new higher (but minimized-by-army) tax burden, should it actually go through. That's like saying an NFL cornerback who liked the old "push out" rules shouldn't try to push receivers out of bounds before making a catch, as is permitted with the newer rules. You can argue for different rules while playing the game with the rules that are actually on the books.
Warren Buffet's personal income tax rate is not a competitive sport. It only affects his take home pay. I could kind of see your analogy holding for the taxes his company pays because they have to compete with other companies. But I believe Buffet is arguing for a higher personal income/capital gains tax rate. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-...
Or they could just adopt rhetoric consistent with their behavior. There's some kind of strange and pervasive social fear of just being honest about ourselves that I find very troubling.
> There's this kind of sick expectation of consistency.
Is it sick to live in a constant state of dishonesty and conflict between your words, thoughts and actions or is it sick to try to live a life free of hypocrisy?
I don't think anybody would disagree that it's perfectly fine for people to have normative desires that aren't reflected in current reality. People who desire less or more taxes still pay the taxes at the current rate.
But it's an entirely different animal to rail against something that you are 100% participatory and complicit in.
Honestly, I think it's just as hypocritical to be working for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or anyone who works at a company that analyzes email or any amount of user data and still be up in arms about privacy issues.
Alternatively, if you're partial to pg's theory that Bitcoin was produced by a government, you might find enough support in the article to keep that idea alive, seeing Nakamoto as an agent of influence for people still inside the US government. Some things that seem to suggest otherwise could be explained away (so he wrote the implementation all himself? All the better to hide external influences on the high-level design. He disappears at the mention of a CIA connection? Just what you'd expect of someone trying to obscure his connection with the US "intelligence community"). That said, I don't really feel it's likely. (Partly because my hunch is that if US agencies really did want to run such an agent of influence they'd be more likely to choose someone who was a bit more subtly "mobbed up" (spooked up?) than Nakamoto.) I haven't studied the Bitcoin timeline or this latest article really closely, though.
If you have never worked in the government sector or in the military-industrial complex, you may suspect that it is a giant dungpile of inefficiency, good-ol'-boy networks, and outright fraud.
Speaking for myself, I used to be sort of libertarian when I was young. Getting a job that paid well and living on it convinced me that paying taxes really wasn't that bad and made me more liberal. Then I worked for the government for a while and found that a lot of what people complain about with regards to how the government spends money weren't just true. Nowadays I'm ok with taxes, but I'd rather the government get things done by just mailing checks to people, which is simple and hard to mess up.
"Play" implies actively taking part and therefore positively consenting to the system, as opposed to just doing the bare minimum to avoid and not run afoul of it. So yes, they have become a direct supporter and thus have lost the right to criticize it.
> Growing up and living in the D.C. area, I'm constantly surprised at the paradox of the deeply conservative anti-federal government types who work for the government - directly or as a fed contractor.
Couldn't this also be seen as principled? Arguing for a concept such as smaller government even when it hurts your own career seems courageous in a sense.
Yes, most of my in-laws are people whose entire life was funded by work done for the Federal government. And they all think the government sucks. They'll bitch about welfare and then they'll bitch about, like, a pool being shut down that they used to be able to use because they're related to a service member. It's dumb.
I think it's more nuanced than that, maybe not always - but usually.
A person can dislike some things an organization does while finding value in others, government systems are complex. You can ignore the government and work outside of it or you can work within it to try and push things in a certain direction.
I tend to lean libertarian and did some GIS and tax programming for some county governments. I never saw issues with it. There are some government functions that really only government can do. In this case figuring out exactly who owns what piece of property where. 90% of the people I worked with in government were stand up people and fairly good at their jobs. It was the remaining 10% that is why government accountability becomes extremely important. One government IT director went to jail for fraud. Another IT director cost his city thousands of dollars because he refused to upgrade an old AS400 platform and the county had to employ us to wrangle the data so they could read it.
The more I work with government and see more examples of waste and out right fraud the more I think it should only have limited powers (and the whole issue with the NSA seems to support that point). Just because I want a very limited government doesn't mean I can't support the government in things it should be doing well.
> their salaries are paid for by the same taxes they rail against incessantly
1) It's possible to be employed by an institution and maintain an independent opinion about its value. Many employees in the private industry are critical of their employers, smart companies encourage that. You can also be part of a herd, which is a reasonable option as well.
2) It might not be as much of an opposition to taxes per se, as per specifics of such taxation. Watching personal income tax rise as highly-connected corporations carve out new loopholes to keep their rates at a minimum is probably discouraging. If United States personal income tax rate dropped to 0% across all brackets, we'd return to Clinton-era budget spending, and a lot of government institutions were funded back then.
It's an ideology. Ideologies are sort of intellectual trinkets that people keep for various reasons such as aesthetics or social acceptance, but they often bear no connection whatsoever to actual behavior.
Don't you think he might just have built this opinion while working for the government ? Sometimes having an insider look might makes you more knowledgeable.
And even if this opinion is widespread and stupid, working for the government doesn't make your opinion more or less valid, because every voter is the same. Anyways it's just an opinion, and I don't think it has a lot to do with bitcoin anyways.
It's not like anyone is seeking political advice and opinion from this guy, that's not why he's famous, so why bother ?
> I've even pointed out point-blank that their salaries are paid for by the same taxes they rail against incessantly
In fact, this very idea is a matter of intense discussion about libertarian types. What exactly can/should you do that makes you benefit from the government? It may seem obvious that working for the NSA would be a no-no, but where do we draw the line? What about working as a public school teacher? What about using public roads?
> I'm curious though, in the general sense about people who have a fundamentally anti-government philosophy, then take roles supporting and building up the same government they clog their facebook feeds rallying against.
Snowden did the same thing. Sometimes people feel that you need to understand the beast before fighting against it.
We can point at ANY part of the sociopolitical spectrum and find hypocrites. I could spew the same sort of such outrageous examples about liberals/leftists/progressives/socialists but won't because it has nothing to do with the topic.
Suffice to say Nakamoto did have a change of mind and did do something world-changing about it. And, golly, he is a libertarian who made a herculean effort to live up to his own ideals.
And as to your "curiosity": catchphrase-labeling usually grossly overstates the POV/philosophy. People labeled "anti-government" are rarely true anarchists; they understand government has its proper place but are (as the label is currently applied) dismayed at how this government is exceeding its granted powers and abusing that which is proper. Ex: Making weapons for government use is a legitimate industry; that those weapons are used to violently invade the home of the terminally ill solely for the purpose of seizing a few plants is worth railing against on Facebook.
> Suffice to say Nakamoto did have a change of mind
We actually don't know that. On the surface sure look like it, but he could have had a similar personal philosophy before during and after his time working for the government.
> We can point at ANY part of the sociopolitical spectrum and find hypocrites.
Absolutely agree. I could add also the large number of pacifist liberal vegan types I know who work for the DoD or whatever.
>Non-fing-sequitur straw-man
It's obviously not, if by your own theory his philosophy is what drove him to develop bitcoin, then it is sequitur to examine that philosophy and how it's expressed.
> I could spew the same sort of such outrageous examples about liberals/leftists/progressives/socialists
What example did I provide that was outrageous? You either don't work in or near the Fed-space and haven't come across this kind of person daily or you're living in a state of denial.
Just because you live/work in close & frequent proximity with people exemplifying such outrageous cognitive dissonance does not negate the outrageousness thereof.
And just because you don't know whether Nakamoto suffered & acted on such cognitive dissonance doesn't justify posting outrageous examples of what you're imputing.
Your claim is that my examples are "outrageous", which implies they are unusual or uncommon. But they aren't uncommon and therefore can't be outrageous. If my examples of common behavior is outrageous, then every behavior, from common to rare must be outrageous by the definition of the word.
In fact my original post is questioning why examples like this are so common.
If really pressed, I suppose I could go through my FB friend's walls anonymize and take screenshots of the thousands upon thousands of posts by Government workers and contractors I know who endlessly post things similar to my example. But I'm not sure I should spend my time trying to make you aware of a phenomenon that's plainly obvious for anybody to see.
they aren't uncommon and therefore can't be outrageous.
Our definitions differ. I'm going with "very bad or wrong in a way that causes anger; too bad to be accepted or allowed; going beyond all standards of what is right or decent; deficient in propriety or good taste".
I'm aware of the phenomenon, and noted that it is plainly in abundance throughout the sociopolitical spectrum.
> Suffice to say Nakamoto did have a change of mind and did do something world-changing about it.
It's not clear he actually changed his mind though, at least not since young adulthood. His daughter grew up being told to imagine a government agencies, with the correct reaction being to hide in a closet from there. Nakamoto's views certainly appear to be long-held and consistent.
The "change" that occurred was related more toward having to experience inter-bank transfer fees while buying model trains from the U.K. After all as late as 2001 he was working for the FAA.
A term exists for such self serving and convenient thinking: cognitive dissonance.
The religious are no different, they rail against how wrong science is, and yet at the same time have no problem using the fruits of scientific labor like air travel, the Internet or clean water.
People just do what's most convenient for them at the time.
Cognitive dissonance actually refers to the excessive mental stress and discomfort suffered by holding two opposing ideas in one's mind at the same time. Since these people don't seem to be particularly discomforted by this, the term 'hypocrisy' might apply better.
I think it's legitimate to talk about cognitive dissonance here because it explains the behavior patterns.
When I was a kid I hung around a farm; on the inside of the wooden fence was a wire that regularly got an electric pulse. After the first time it bit me, I spend a couple of weeks being very careful not to touch it again.
Hypocrisy can happen in a variety of ways. But there's a particular sort of doublethink and denial that comes from avoiding cognitive dissonance.
Ah, you're actually really close to understanding the correct principle here! You've just confused a couple of different ideas.
First off, cognitive dissonance does not explain any behavior patterns other than those prompted by feeling distressed. If these people were exhibiting symptoms of depression, distress, confusion, etc, or were making their decisions under duress of emotion, you could classify it as cognitive dissonance. But the examples given don't paint the people as particularly distressed.
Doublethink is actually almost the opposite of cognitive dissonance, and is the more correct term for the behavior mentioned. Doublethink is when there is absolutely no conflict in the mind about the two conflicting ideas being held at the same time.
Denial is also a different idea, and probably not completely out of context for the individual's reasoning, but does not describe the behavior. Denial is when someone finds an idea so difficult to accept that they reject it in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In this case the person's opinion might actually be weighed on various information that seems credible, and so denial might not be a factor at all.
The reason I chose 'hypocrisy' to define this behavior is because it requires an act that is in direct opposition to the values one espouses. In this sense the major difference is that you don't have to hold two opposing views in your head (whether under distress - cognitive dissonance - or not - doublethink). You simply have to say you believe one thing, and do an act which is directly in opposition to that belief.
You seem to be conflating all these different concepts into one giant over-reaching idea. This is probably not a good thing to do throughout life, not only because you're failing to communicate properly by misusing words, but you're actually simplifying a set of complex behaviors into one single idea to make it easier to comprehend. This leads to all kinds of cognitive bias and illogical conclusions.
> The religious are no different, they rail against how wrong science is, and yet at the same time have no problem using the fruits of scientific labor like air travel, the Internet or clean water.
Tone it down or be more specific. You are making a very sweeping generalization. And do not worry, I am not going to get into an extended conversation on this.
That is specific. You cannot believe in imaginary beings and so simultaneously claim that you also believe in science. Doing so just indicates that one is a complete hypocrite.
The "science-hating religious person" is just a straw man for Dawkins and the like. Most religious people have no problem with science, and see no contradiction between the two. Many of them even are engineers, scientists, and doctors, often some of the most renowned of their fields.
The groups who actually do see a contradiction typically aren't hypocritical at all about it, to the point of not getting blood transfusions even if it means their death, to use the example of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Religious thinking and science are contradictory thought models. Believe in both and you are a hypocrite. The fact that someone sees no problem doesn't mean there isn't one.
Obviously, a lot of people are caught up in the bubble without being racist or even being aware of the implicit racism of those around them, but much of the motivation behind the right's demonizing rhetoric against the freeloaders seems rooted in race.
Couldn't the argument be made that the other side is rooted in racism too since it appears their goal is to keep a large percentage of African Americans completely dependent on the government fixed-income for their whole lives?
That's clever, but it's silly to dispute that the Right in the USA has relied on racism as a tool of political power for, well, decades. Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. all relied on heavily on racist tropes (see the wiki entry on the Southern Strategy for a basic introduction to this, which has been admitted by the principals of the time), and you can see very distinct racial patterns and reflections of Confederate heritage in voting records (that is, Obama underperformed Kerry in white demographics, despite doing better overall, and doing even worse among whites in onetime Confederate states).
None of this is to say that welfare dependency isn't an issue, or things like affirmative action aren't harmful to minorities (in fact, Nixon majorly expanded affirmative action programs in order to tame and integrate blacks into subservience to a racist society).
So the argument is that by creating (e.g.) a fixed-income, everyone that makes use of it will by definition become hopelessly dependent on it?
I think that the parent post was arguing that cutting social programs disproportionately affects African-Americans.
I see it this way. Taking away assistance that people are currently relying on is guaranteed to hurt them. Giving someone assistance with the goal of keeping them dependent on it forever seems less likely to have the intended affect. How do you guarantee that people don't use the assistance to better themselves? If the goal is to keep a group of people down, as a whole, this doesn't seem like a very effective strategy.
This is what I mean - your baseline assumption here is that African Americans as a whole are dependent on government help and expanding social safety net is about keeping African Americans dependent on government help. This exact attitude you have - association of black with dependence on government help - is what has been used in American politics to mobilize those who benefit from government programs to vote for politicians who oppose those programs. They feel that they are not "freeloaders" or relying on government help because they don't fit the stereotype. This is one answer to GP's question as to how freeloaders and government workers can spew such vehement rhetoric against freeloaders and government workers.
And this isn't some theoretical thing - this has been a conscious strategy
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
Add this to the fact that we have a black president named Barrack Hussein Obama, you can see why and how the very people who had no problem with their own government jobs and Bush's profligate spending are suddenly upset with freeloaders and government spending problems.
Excellent deflection from the person's point. In a way, you didn't just deflect it but reflected it back onto the person who made the statement.
You make an accusation, person reverses accusation to see if it still holds true, you double down on accusation while ignoring the point of the reversal.
So Newsweek outed a guy who allegedly owns half a billion dollars in pseudo-untraceable, digital cash? I hope they're also going to chip in for a permanent security detail...
More seriously, I think they could have done a better job reporting on the identity without giving so much away:
* A picture of his house is posted, identical to the one in Google Street View
* The license plate is relatively clear in the high-resolution image
* His exact address has more or less already been discovered using only the information in the article
* Full names of family members were used
It's a legitimate story -- understanding Nakomoto's motivations for creating Bitcoin as discovered from his past is a worthwhile topic. (For example, would your feelings about cryptocurrency change if it turned out Nakomoto was a high-level NSA operative?) But, again, it could have been reported in a way that didn't compromise his identity so thoroughly.
It's a joke, really. It's like she didn't even think about what she was doing... I encourage people to send her an email voicing whatever opinion you have, it's readily available (I don't know if it's against HN rules, so I won't post it myself just yet).
Well, I can't see how its against HN rules to post it. Her email is lmcgrathgoodman (at) gmail (dot) com. Thats the email she posts on the contact section of her own website (http://leahmcgrathgoodman.com/).
To be clear, I am not encouraging anyone send her abusive emails, or anything that might be illegal. I am simply posting her contact details in the context of people wanting to tell her what they felt about this article. She is an investigative journalist who is no stranger to courting trouble. She managed to get herself thrown out of the UK apparently for asking too many questions.
I very much doubt that will do anything though. If you really felt that this article needed to be pulled/modified, you're probably better off contacting someone from Newsweek. http://mediakit.newsweekdailybeast.com/contact.html
But this seems to be their lead story. And they are getting all this extra publicity and page views because of it. So unless Satoshi or his family brings a court case I don't see why they would.
Using any of his Bitcoin would attract far more attention than any dubiously sourced article though, and could risk proving both that he is Satoshi and still has access to an enormous amount of money. (For all we know right now he could have lost/destroyed all of his private keys).
Still though, if you're even somewhat worried about protecting your anonymity, why would you use your full name?
It might seem that being one "Alice Smith" amongst thousands is pretty good anonymity, but cross-reference that against people with the expertise and ability required to implement something like Bitcoin, and I bet that list gets really short really fast.
For the record, I do still think it was sleazy and unnecessary to publish his car's license plate and a photo of his house, (even though they would have been easy enough for people to figure out based on the other personal information unearthed in the article).
I don't know if that's your case, but I can't help finding it hilarious to see so many anarcho-capitalists here criticizing Newsweek for following their own interest...
Why wouldn't anarcho-capitalists be entitled to criticize someone who follows their own interest? Are anarcho-capitalists not entitled to criticize thieves either?
Because they always say that following your own interest is the best way to assure the greater good. AFAIK thieves are excluded because they don't respect private property.
A determined attacker (the kind that needs worrying about) would find Satoshi even if Newsweek hadn't posted a photo of the house or license plate in their article.
Right, but this lowers the bar to any random yahoo who's capable of a Google search, rather than just "determined attackers". That's part of the issue.
Given that San Bernardino county and its neighbor, Riverside county, have a reputation as a "meth capitol" of California, my guess is that a substantially higher number than average of people within easy driving distance of this man might fit into that category. Perhaps not "dumb", but "desperate" enough.
"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."
That quote smells totally fake to me. There's just no way some random office would know what Bitcoin is, and even if he did, that's not something a police officer would say. I don't know what that says about the rest of the article, but that quote doesn't read very factual to me.
The quote does sound odd, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were an embellishment or paraphrase.
But you know, the New York Times has been running stories on Bitcoin for a couple of years now. It's been all over CNN and other mainstream news sources. The New Yorker printed a feature about Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2011 [1]. Popular TV shows like The Daily Show have talked about Bitcoin [2]. Newspapers are printing political cartoons about it [3]. The Washington Post has three Bitcoin headlines on the front page of its web site this morning! (One about MtGOX, one on Nakamoto, and one on Autumn Radtke.)
Anyone who has read, watched, or listened to news in the past year has a good chance of knowing some stuff about Bitcoin, just like they know that Steve Jobs died and what Google Glass is. The name Satoshi Nakamoto is reasonably memorable and distinctive. And law enforcement officers in particular might have some professional curiosity about the Bitcoin economy.
Bitcoin is all over mainstream media. Its ups and downs are covered in the finance section of even the most old school and conservative of newspapers. Hell my father-in-law knows what bitcoin is, and he is about as far behind on the technology curve as you can get.
This. My mother can barely use her computer and yet she knows what bitcoin is too. My parents even brought it up in conversation the last time they visited.
Why couldn't a random officer know what Bitcoin is? My father heard of it and knows nothing about technology. It's no longer a secretive online currency, it's everywhere.
If you read the article, it suggests that the police officer is told that the person is Satoshi Nakamoto and the officer exclaims:
"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin?"
I can accept that the man on the street would have heard about bitcoin, but to know the name of the person who did the original work on the currency? That just seems a bit unlikely.
Obviously the conversation has been heavily edited. Nobody really speaks so clearly and succinctly.
To me, it looks probable that she really said something like "I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto. I think he's the man who created Bitcoin"
So she prepped the police officer to deliver the quote that she wanted "This is the guy who created Bitcoin?", by planting the suggestion first.
It's not a stretch to imagine the conversation went something along the lines of ""I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto, he created Bitcoin." and a little bit of creative license was taken with the reporting.
It still colours the article, but perhaps not so strongly.
Supposing there is some truth to the quote, I have to assume she skipped over the part where she told the police officer "He is the guy who created Bitcoin."
Forget Dangerous... it's down right irresponsible They list the guys entire family including kids and where they work etc.
Beside that the article has very little content other than "he's a little bit weird" an observation that is not exactly original, it's almost a stereotype that really smart people are often a "little bit weird" .
Are you missing the part where his family happily talked to the reporter?
Brother: "My brother is an asshole. What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff. His life was a complete blank for a while. You're not going to be able to get to him. He'll deny everything. He'll never admit to starting Bitcoin."
Daughter: "He would keep his office locked and we would get into trouble if we touched his computer," she recalls. "He was always expounding on politics and current events. He loved new and old technology. He built his own computers and was very proud of them."
That's exactly my point. It's dangerous because she's made his address, car registration and all his family's details public. I'm saying we should raise it with the people responsible if we think it's a problem.
edit: now you've edited for clarity, it's clear we're saying the same thing.
I don't think it's petty at all to link to publicly available information, when others have requested that information. Google-fu differs between individuals.
I do find it particularly petty that someone would go to great lengths to expose the private details of the life of a man who just wants to be left in peace.
So it's OK for you to use your Google-fu, but not for her to do the same thing?
I, for one, am quite interested to know more about Satoshi Nakamoto and this article is responsive to my curiosity about him. As someone else has pointed out, a great deal of information is public anyway in the form of property tax records and what not. If this were not the case I would get much less direct mail.
Well that line of reasoning is exactly what I was referring to. The reporter doing due diligence and fact gathering is in ill taste, but responding in kind and releasing personal information about her is justified? That doesn't hold water, logically. I don't think anyone is that naive. It's alright if you're upset about divulging Nakamoto's personal details, it's the tit-for-tat mentality that comes across as childish.
Well there seems to be some misunderstanding about who released what. I have not released anything because I didn't have to.
All I have done is link to some items that she released into the public domain on a previous occasion.
Sharing the stupidity of others is a long-lived internet tradition. It's almost adage status; be careful what you post, it may come back to haunt you later. The same is true of this, I suppose.
I really don't think this is appropriate material in the comments of an article about Satoshi Nakamoto. If you want to write an article about the Author's important contribution to the history of Bitcoin which includes her home address, you might have a leg to stand on.
> If you think this article is a dangerous invasion of privacy, tell her and her employers (Newsweek).
How adorable! You think Newsweek is going to give Leah a talking to, because of the piece constituting a 'dangerous invasion of privacy'? That's just really too cute.
We live in the age of the Facebook. We live in a place where dollar rules, and folks like Zuck and Jobs, and other actors of questionable ethics excel. No, Newsweek is not going to punish Leah, Newsweek has actually just recognized an employee who's able to expertly stir the pot, attract attention, and sell a lot more rags. She's getting a nice raise.
And how is this relevant, does this Satoshi has a facebook profile? Did the journalist send a fried request and article's Satoshi accepted? If none of this happened then I see no connections.
> We live in a place where dollar rules, and folks like Zuck > and Jobs, and other actors of questionable ethics excel.
Agreed. Mandela and Ghandi excelled too, in areas more important than business... Of course being rogue helps you excel in some areas, but it's not the only or main characteristic.
> No, Newsweek is not going to punish Leah, Newsweek has actually just recognized an employee who's able to expertly stir the pot, attract attention, and sell a lot more rags. She's getting a nice raise.
Given the fact that NW is a failed magazine, both financially and morally, I believe they probably give her a raise cut. But I don't think this is going to revamp their sales... Their articles, in all areas, are of very poor quality. If the magazine doesn't upgrade the content quality swiftly, it will face extinction soon enough.
Total agreement, Newsweek is so tenuously even a magazine at this point, but in the recent past I emailed the editors of a very large newspaper that did something similarly irresponsible to someone living in an arguably more dangerous place - and heard back nothing.
The photo of the house and the car is extraneous, I agree. However, there is he, apparently posing for a photo. This is a man who decided to use his own family name in the Bitcoin papers, and the journalist simply searched people with the family name to find a decent match and did a lot of leg work.
I'm not sure it's a photo she or Newsweek took. If this was a print article there would be a photo credit. Maybe she found it somewhere?
In the article she says she only saw him once with the cops, and then had a very very short discussion with her when cops were present.
If the photo implies (as it did to me and apparently you) that he consented to an interview he didn't actually consent to, that's misleading journalism.
If the article is correct, Nakamoto only spoke to her in person at his house and with the police present. The photo would have to have been taken by a family member or some other person, and acquired by the author through someone else (probably family).
They basically published not only his full name and home address, but that of his whole family. What journalistic purpose does that serve?
They could have written exactly the same story, but without giving away exactly where he and his family lives, and it wouldn't have suffered in any way.
We already knew his full name. You can find the family names of the Wal-Mart family also. Could Newsweek done it better? Yes, but his address would have become public within days of this story being published. Posted on reddit maybe with in hours.
Wait, it was just a single smart dude whose actual real name is Satoshi Nakamoto, and here we've been theorizing shadowy pseudonymous cabals of libertarian cryptographers?
I always assumed it was a real dude, since only a certain type of westerner would use a Japanese pseudonym, and that type of westerner would have chosen "Kenichi Kusanagi" or something similarly ridiculous.
[To be clear, I had also assumed that a Japanese crypto person who wanted privacy would have used a western pseudonym.]
But yeah, it almost seems like the crypto community didn't really want to dox Nakamoto, even if many of them could have.
Quite an odd article for such an important (if true) expose. The only reason I think its possibly true is Gavin's vague tweet.
50% of the article deals with material about bitcoin that is redundant to anyone whose been following it for more than a day (like most here).
45% deals with "Dorian S. Nakamoto"'s family, personal background and that he's a libertarian oddball, with a penchant for math (but no other significant accomplishment within it or CS) who (other than possible being the Satoshi) has led a fairly normal, middle class southern california lifestyle.
The remaining 5% or so details a brief encounter with the man, in which he neither confirms or denies it.
To be honest I agree with you that there quite a few red flags about this article. However, short of Newsweek outright making everything up, isn't the lack of a denial in this instance tantamount to an admission? I mean, if it were me, and I valued my privacy that much, I would a) have used an actual pseudonym, b) responded to questions about Bitcoin with "bit-what-now"?
isn't the lack of a denial in this instance tantamount to
an admission? I mean, if it were me, [...] responded to
questions about Bitcoin with "bit-what-now"?
If all his friends and family know he shares his name with the creator of bitcoin, he might have already heard all the jokes and think "not this shit again" as well as not being able to credibly deny knowing about it.
There's a british general who goes by Mike Jackson when his real name is Michael Jackson [1]. If someone asked him to moonwalk I'd expect the resigned frustration of someone who has heard that lame joke a thousand times before - rather than him denying having heard of the pop singer of the same name.
As someone with the name Paul Brown in the Cincinnati area (where the Paul Brown stadium is) I deal with this almost daily. I'm sick of meeting someone and about 75% of the time they go "oh, do you own the stadium?". I'm seriously starting to think about moving far away so I don't have to hear it anymore. I don't even like football!
I also went to high school with a guy named John Conner and everyone use to thank him for some day saving the human race from the machines.
Hearing jokes about it and having a reporter turn up from a well-known national news publication seeking an interview are two entirely different things. Really, these are the sort of arguments I'd expect from a surly 13-year old.
If he was some coincicentally named private individual, the obvious thing to do would be to deny being the celebrity Nakamoto, and possibly to advise the reporter to discuss the matter with his lawyer.
In which case he has no reason not to say 'why yes I am that international man of mystery!' and milk it for all the gains its worth, eg TV interviews and speaking invitations and so on. Lots of other people have done this sort of thing, and there's nothing illegal about it, just a social cost if you're caught out. It doesn't make sense to argue that he's shunning the media and seduced by fame at the same time.
If he did that, he'd quickly be found out as a fraud. Being demure is the only way to be a "plausible" Satoshi.
I'm not saying he is or he isn't. I don't know, obviously, but I do know that people do things for many strange and contradictory reasons.
Here's a real world example: Hundreds of people have claimed that their father, brother, friend, odd uncle, strange neighbor etc were the Zodiac killer.
Many such claims came along with a lot more "evidence" than has yet been presented about "Dorian S. Nakamoto". Clearly, most of those claims (or all) are false.
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
or false confirmation. He might not have invented bitcoin but know all about it (because of his name). He would know that acting all shadowy and evasive would make him seem more like the real Satoshi.
tl;dr - Give me proof, not vague "seems like he confirmed it."
What about good old Occam's Razor? Seems pretty obvious to me that if the details in this article are true (and they likely are) this is indeed "the" Satoshi.
Occam's Razor tells us to go to the simplest of arguments. Given that the details of the article are circumstantial, it's pretty simple that the journalist is wrong and this Satoshi is acting vague for personal gain.
However, I give you Hanlon's Razor on this. It's more likely that this Satoshi flubbed his words when speaking about bitcoin rather than intentionally mislead the journalist.
Satoshi's response wasn't vague though. It was detailed.
* I'm not working on this
* Anymore (i.e., I was before)
* It's been turned over to other people (i.e. there were other parties involved in this work)
* They are in charge of it now (i.e. there was a project to be in charge of, and Satoshi had been the one in charge)
* I no longer have any connection (i.e. he did used to have a connection).
That's not a vague set of facts about something which this libertarian, privacy-minded genius just happened to be mistaken with. It's a detailed accounting, one which is "the exception that proves the rule". By listing what is not true he is definitely implying what is true.
If it was "detailed", you wouldn't need to (put everything that you think in parentheses).
Let me re-paranthesize your quote:
* I'm not working on this * Anymore (he never worked on it) * It's been turned over to other people (this is a public project with dozens of people involved, publicly) * They are in charge of it now (yes, they (as in the publicly acknowledged open source project) are in charge of it now) * I no longer have any connection (i.e. he never had a connection).
> he is definitely implying what is true
What evidence do you have that any of his "implications" are worthy of truthfulness? (or that he's a "genius")?
What other "genius" level work has he produced? Or something even close to what would normally be considered "genius".
Even the obscure professor (Yitang Zhang) who came up with the first resolution of the twin prime conjecture was an "obscure" university professor.
I'm not saying that credentials are the only valid proof of capability. The Wright brothers had no degree. But they had decades of documentation of their efforts before they succeeded.
Everyone here assumes that there are only negative consequences of being identified (or misidentified) as Satoshi. That may even be true, but Icarus didn't know the Sun (fame in this case) would burn him.
There were really no details in the article besides the man's name and rest of his personal information and interests and that he was technically inclined. Is he even a programmer?
And you should. But nothing about BitCoin ever seems confirmed in anyway so… I'd take that the main benefit is dTal's reaction, remembering all the conspiracies: “I feel a bit silly.” That’s the good stuff.
I'll probably be slammed for this, but I actually think it's a pretty good piece. Maybe it could do without the picture of Satoshi's house, but it probably wouldn't be so hard to find the house anyway if you know you're looking for an actual "Satoshi Nakamoto in Temple City".
If the dude hadn't used his real name, we'd probably still be wondering who he is. So I think the indignation is a bit misplaced. It's not at all uncommon or nefarious for news reports to be written about people who don't particularly want the coverage.
> "Dorian can just be paranoid," says Tokuo. "I cannot get through to him. I don't think he will answer any of these questions to his family truthfully."
What the hell, if many family members are so eager to forward questions from the press to him and spill anything they know, I can totally understand Satoshi doesn't answer them truthfully. I also feel very sorry for Satoshi's position in which he doesn't seem to have anyone to talk to truthfully :/
> Of course, none of this puts to rest the biggest question of all - the one that only Satoshi Nakamoto himself can answer: What has kept him from spending his hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin
Isn't it obvious? It would destabilize the market and begin a huge frenzy to find out who he is, and he knows it. Now the latter is a moot point, but I can totally understand he doesn't want to backstab his brainchild.
Besides, who says he didn't mine other coins early on anonymously for his own use? Wasn't the point of Bitcoin that you can't know who's who? If he did this and got some money, he totally deserved it.
The article says he lives with his mother, and since the article said nothing else about her, I suspect she may be the one person he can talk to truthfully...
> "For anyone who's tried to wire money overseas, you can see how much easier an international Bitcoin transaction is. It's just as easy as sending an email." -- Bitcoin's chief scientist, Gavin Andresen
No actually it's only as easy as Western Union is. You either have to take a huge cut due to localbitcoin or other markups for markets that avoid the normal route of... registering at an exchange, giving them all your details which will take weeks to months, whom will then place major limits on what you can transfer (no more than a $2k-$10k) and potentially crash burn and be robbed while you wait for your FIAT.
So actually it's like transferring money between two Western Union branches that are both in war zones and staffed with employees taken from the DMV.
"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."
- I do not believe this exchange took place. The police would've had his name from his initial call to them, and a random officer from the Sheriff's department would not likely recognize that name as the creator of Bitcoin. Just saying.
Satoshi's punctuation style with the double-space after the dot is a distinctive feature of his writing, used in both the official Bitcoin publication and on forum posts.
Looking at the HTML source of that review, you can notice this exact punctuation style.
Pretty much anyone who learned how to write in the age of typewriters double spaces after a period, this is not a unique trait for anyone in their mid 30's or up. Hell I still do it, it's deeply ingrained.
As far as I know, many public school typing classes still teach double-spaces. It isn't until you get to things like classes in journalism tracks at universities that the concept is dispensed with.
This bit of the article also confused me. Who doesn't double-space after periods? I recognize the historical origin (typewriters), but I was taught this way and I'm "only" 24.
> This bit of the article also confused me. Who doesn't double-space after periods?
I don't. Every style guide I've seen has recommended against it in any medium that is going to be presented in non-fixed-width type, and IME its a lot less distracting to have single-space-after-sentence-ending-punctuation in a fixed-width font than double-space-after in a proportional font, so I've pretty much abandoned the practice entirely except in very narrow circumstances (e.g., I'll usually still do it in source code comments.)
I think I first started adopting this practice around 1990 (about the same time I was finishing high school.)
I use double spaces because it is a harmless habit that typesetting systems correct when it isn't appropriate. In fixed-width code, it looks better imho, so I continue to use it there.
Since typesetting systems remove it anyway though, there isn't any reason to do it when using them.
I don't. Horrible habit. I wrote a good number of macros to strip the superfluous spaces from text I want to read back in the days of fixed-width fonts. However it's so common that I don't think it's useful as an identifier - miuch better to look for SIPs.
I could never imagine the real Satoshi not capitalizing his I's and the first letter of every sentence. At least I've never seen him do that in other writings, even on forums like bitcointalk.org.
I'm going to skirt the ethical questions being asked, assuming everything done to get this information was legal and such and the accuracy of it lives within the bounds of journalistic integrity (of course none of that necessarily makes it ethical, but like I said, circumventing that question for now).
All that said, by the number of reactions I'm reading here I get the impression that in the Bitcoin world someone with a significant amount of wealth has to fear for their life? What is the difference between Satoshi Nakamoto and any other individual of significant wealth, i.e. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdoch, etc. While I don't have any exact addresses or other information about these people on hand, I'm sure I could get it rather easily.
The emphasis I keep seeing is on how he has $400 M of "pseudo-untraceable, digital cash" and assume the concern is something along the lines of it would be more difficult to extract that much from Bill Gates if you attacked/kidnapped him and get away with it vs Bitcoin, which you could theoretically extract the keys guarding the coin from the victim and quickly transfer out to other wallets without much issue.
So, the gist I'm getting, is that in the world of crypto-currency if you get wealthy ... man you better watch out because people are going to be gunning for you to steal your coin by force if they ever find out where you live. Live In Fear. If this is the great future of finance you all envision, then I really wouldn't want any part of it.
*Side note, I really don't believe any of the above but given some of the responses I've seen I think we need to take a step back and examine the conclusions that would result from some of the statements being made.
No. Those laws only make it illegal to release information, or insufficiently protect it, in a legal relationship of trust and guardianship (and to gather such information by pretending to be party to such a relationship). No such relationship exists here, and unless a SSN (or equivalent protected identifier) was released, it's merely ethically questionable, not illegal.
Even if it was, lawsuits are entirely public, and filing and litigating one would result in exponentially more publicity than this article has already given him.
Can this be real? a guy calls the cops, but admits he was involved?
"Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down, staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions."
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
It sounds like he's 'on the spectrum' - very strong commitment to the literal truth goes with the territory. As does desire for privacy, tendency to work alone obsessively on unusual projects, lack of interest in money (or in being rich, rather)...
That's an interesting observation and now that you pointed it out, I think I agree with you. However, I think that more than autistic people lack interest in "being rich". If I had $400m, I'd buy a house and pay off our car. The remaining $399.5m would be invested. I'd take out $40-50k per year for spending. Extravagant lifestyles are overrated, I think.
Speaking as a sometimes paranoid libertarian with a reasonable amount of Bitcoin, myself, I can say the two things preventing me from cashing out of any portion of it is the likelihood I would be identified and the fact that any sales of it I have to pay taxes on. I purchased a house this year that I could have afforded several times over in Bitcoin, but instead took out a loan just like anyone else.
I don't understand this. the amount you'd pay in capital gains is probably less than what you're going to pay out in interest, notwithstanding the mortgage interest deduction to your taxes (in which the government subsidizes you at the expense of other taxpayers).
I mean, perhaps you ran the numbers and it works out better financially, but I get the impression from your post that you don't want to pay any taxes on it on principle, which seems economically irrational.
> [...] the two things preventing me from cashing out of any portion of it is the likelihood I would be identified and the fact that any sales of it I have to pay taxes on.
Do you think this will change?
If not, then your unspent bitcoins are worth exactly $0 (ie. if you don't spend them they might as well be worth nothing). Or are you waiting for something?
Granted, I don't know who you are, and how important it is for you not to be identified (by whom?).
It had better be real, because the entire story hangs around the unprovable observation of that vague admission. Otherwise this is a story about harassing a shut-in and his family.
Would you all just think of the poor superrich for a minute? Clearly they are the ones in our society who need special protections and immunities from journalism.
We have no strong evidence that is he is super-rich, even if it is likely. And outing his personal details would be just as wrong if he had kept none of the coins.
I am not a big fan of the way the article was written, but I can definitely see how some may decry it as being news worthy.
I think the author should be ashamed for posting a picture of this man's house. No need for that and it doesn't add to the story after the description.
I think I can see the thieves lining up to break in to his house to steal his bitcoins already.
Whether he is the Nakamoto behind Bitcoin or not, I think Newsweek have basically made him a target.
Let's put this another way. I see him as a potential target worth $400 million, and I'm not even inclined to partake in breaking and entering. So, what about the uncrupulous people who don't know much about bitcoin. Oh yeah, let's steal the guys computer. It is worth $400 million dollars.
Newsweek just lined this poor guy up as a target for every crook in LA.
A lot of people are calling this "doxxing" which it isn't - identifying someone based on their ACTUAL NAME and profession isn't doxxing. It may be horrible, irresponsible, dangerous, I don't know - still forming an opinion about that, but that's not doxxing as I know it or see it defined anywhere.
* A smart man, according to the article
* Who worked for the government at some point in time (according to the article)
* Who's name is Satoshi Nakamoto
* Who values privacy (so much that he used his real name LOL)
So apart from the stalking and extremely irritating privacy breach this article shows about Newsweek's[1] journalists and chosen course of action, proves or states nothing.
He didn't admit anything, but seriously... Even he did, why do we care at this point?
[1] I was holding NS in low regard anyway. Now it's as low as it gets in my eyes.
I'm torn about the article. On one hand this seems like a horrid breach of privacy and a terribly dangerous thing to do. On the other, even if they just said he lives in his family home in California, people were going to find out all this information.
Half of me thinks it's better everyone knows they were doxed all at once.
Honest question: it seems like Nakamoto wanted to keep his identity secret. If that's true, then why did he reveal so much information (by implying that he was part of Bitcoin) and allow a photo of him to be taken, instead of saying "I have no relation to Bitcoin"? It doesn't add up.
> "He was the kind of person who, if you made an honest mistake, he might call you an idiot and never speak to you again," Andresen says. "Back then, it was not clear that creating Bitcoin might be a legal thing to do. He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity."
Except that he used his full, real name. That is what seems so odd to me.
If it really is him though, I'm very much afraid this article just destroyed his life...
This quote tells you how sloppy the journalism is:
"Even so, Bitcoin is vulnerable to massive theft, fraud and scandal, which has seen the price of Bitcoins whipsaw from more than $1,200 each last year to as little as $130 in late February."
The MtGox price in February was meaningless, a more accurate representation would have been $1,200 to somewhere around $500 that reputable exchanges were selling for (I don't know the actual price, just enough to know that his figures are misleading).
The Mt Gox price divergence actually makes her point stronger. she's highlighting the volatility, and the failure of a major exchange is pretty volatile.
The ~$130 price was on BTC-e. It was very short-lived, and was caused by a very large dump of coins that were bought up by a bunch of bots, which met all the standing buy orders from ~$680 down to (if I remember right) $102.
The price immediately rebounded to the mid-$400's, once that order was consumed.
"I obtained Nakamoto's email through a company he buys model trains from."
In Europe, this would be completely illegal. I'd suspect that in the US this at least breaks the privacy policy of whatever site Nakamoto was using.
"Two weeks before our meeting in Temple City, I struck up an email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, mostly discussing his interest in upgrading and modifying model steam trains with computer-aided design technologies. "
I understand that this is sometimes how journalism is "done" but the sneakiness of it all seems pretty low.
You'd like to be a zombie in North America? You know North Americans don't like zombies - just watch their constant anti-zombie propaganda, it's disgusting. And all for a bunch of folks whose only fault is a high appreciation one's brain.
So Newsweek hires paparazzo's now? The need to disclose everything about the guy and call several family members etc is really wrong. Which I could undo my click...., no need to invade his privacy so much, "fun to know because interesting" is not a good enough reason to write the article...
Call his family, that is what reporters do to confirm a story. The man created a currency that is used world wide, is talked about every day on HN. Can you imagine if facebook was created and we didn't know who did it?
No culture deserves to have its creation myths exposed or destroyed. Ironically, Newsweek's behavior makes a strong case for anonymous communication and payment systems.
Goodman writes: "Two weeks before our meeting in Temple City, I struck up an email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, mostly discussing his interest in upgrading and modifying model steam trains with computer-aided design technologies. I obtained Nakamoto's email through a company he buys model trains from." This is so sneaky and sad.
I see it as good investigative journalism. You don't think the single person that potentially originated a new form of global currency that's dominating headlines, and receiving the attention of world leaders is newsworthy? I'm a firm believer in privacy - but when something one has put into the world stands to have a massively disruptive force, it's worth exploring who that person is, and what their motivations are.
Bitcoin is one of the hottest news stories right now. People want to know more about Bitcoin. A big question about Bitcoin is "who created Bitcoin?" Newsweek answered that question.
This is journalism 101.
Many of you disagree with this premise –– and I sympathize and understand why you're upset –– but this is how the system operates.
Right, but the journalist could have found him and written an article about his background and motivation without putting a picture of his license plates, home, face, and location in a prominent article, all of this after harassing him to the point that he felt it necessary to call the police. That's just dumb.
This brings up an interesting question, too - does writing a prominent piece of software qualify you as a "public figure" and allow the paparazzi to chase you everywhere and stalk your acquaintances and family?
His identity was revealed the moment he put his actual full name to the paper though :/ I would has sympathy if he actually did use a pseudonym, but assuming this is true then what did he really expect would happen?
I agree that it's harder to have sympathy for him as a result. However, nobody deserves to have their rights violated* because they made a simple mistake. If you forget to lock your house or car, you don't deserve to have it broken into. If you drop your wallet for a moment, you don't deserve to have it stolen.
*If you don't believe in a right to privacy, substitute "be harassed by strangers" or "have their and their family's safety compromised". Even outside a framework of rights, some things remain inappropriate and wrong.
How far would you take this? If such a person hid their identity better than Nakamoto and refused all contact (even contact initiated under a false pretense, as in the article), would it be justified to break into their house to learn about them? To follow them to and from work? I'm not trying to be provocative, simply illustrating that the needs of the many (voyeuristic curiosity) do not necessarily outweigh the needs of the few (personal privacy and safety).
Investigative journalism has its place whenever there is information to be revealed. This story is the skeleton of that. All the investigations were done very smartly, but they didn't reveal anything relevant. I'd say the journalist doxed him out of spite.
>Investigative journalism has its place whenever there is information to be revealed. This story is the skeleton of that. All the investigations were done very smartly, but they didn't reveal anything relevant.
Disagree. The mere fact that Satoshi Nakamoto is, in fact, Satoshi Nakamoto is relevant in itself. We had no idea who this guy was, and I've seen countless articles on HN speculating about it. At least having an idea of who we're talking about ends all the speculation and attribution to people that are not Satoshi, which has been happening for years.
As much as I don't like this - at the very least - ridiculously unethical article, I'm pretty sure a lot of papers would be dying to publish this piece.
It's just my personal opinion. If someone is clearly trying to remain undisturbed, I find it very disrespectful to distribute pictures of their face and home without their consent.
Very few people here seem to be discussing the fact that the article offers little real evidence that this is the Satoshi Nakamoto of Bitcoin, and that most likely they just set up an eccentric old man with an unfortunate name collision to end up getting mobbed by the public.
Meta: this submission has 811 point and was posted only 5 hours, yet it is at #11 position. Is this the regular HN algorithm at work or is it weighted down due to its controversial nature? (I'm not trying to imply there is any conspiracy... I actually remember reading that submissions with a high vote to comment ratio are weighted down but I'm not completely sure)
Ironically, the officers didn't know it was _Satoshi_ _Nakamoto_ until she said so.
They're just helping the guy remove a trespasser, which is well within their line of duty. Oh, and the homeowner who called them is named "Satoshi Nakamoto." What do you want to bet they don't really know/care who that is?
Especially if he is cleared for classified work, he will know exactly who to call to get some law enforcement backup. Seriously, don't try to break into a guy's house who is employed by the U.S. Government and has access to that kind of stuff. (I know she didn't break in, but she's definitely invading.)
Sadly, government contract work doesn't usually include your own personal drone army. our the authority to mobilize national law enforcement assets. they're just jobs.
Um... I don't know about the U.S., but I've done some work involving classified information in Sweden, and it's not like you get access to a special hotline or anything. If you are in immediate danger you still call the regular emergency number like everyone else.
Besides, not everyone works with Top Secret information, that's the entire purpose of having different classifications. Even Restricted information is still classified.
Actually, no. Double spaces after periods are an artifact of the formatting limitations of typewriters (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing#Mechanical_typ...). In an age of properly kerned digital type, there's no reason to use more than one space.
As a result of this, you can get a rough sense of a person's age by looking at how they handle sentence spacing. People old enough to have learned how to type on an actual typewriter (like, um, me) will very frequently use two spaces; people younger than that, less so. (Except on the web, of course, where browsers enforce the proper usage for you and collapse multiple spaces after a period into one no matter what you type.)
Exactly. In high school I took a typing class, and there, two spaces after the period was the rule. I switched to one space later on, probably because early word processing and desktop publishing tech produced over-spaced results if you used two spaces.
Until the 20th century, publishing houses and printers in many countries used additional space between sentences. There were exceptions to this traditional spacing method—some printers used spacing between sentences that was no wider than word spacing.[6] This was French spacing—a term synonymous with single-space sentence spacing until the late 20th century.[7] With the introduction of the typewriter in the late 19th century, typists used two spaces between sentences to mimic the style used by traditional typesetters.[8] While wide sentence spacing was phased out in the printing industry in the mid-twentieth century, the practice continued on typewriters[9] and later on computers.[10] Perhaps because of this, many modern sources now incorrectly[5] claim that wide spacing was created for the typewriter.[11]
Many experts now say that additional space is not required or desirable between sentences.[12] Typesetting programs such as TeX[13] can modify kerning values to adjust spaces following terminal punctuation, so there is less need to increase spacing manually between sentences[9] (provided that there is some cue to distinguish the end of a sentence from the end of an abbreviated word). From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in books, magazines and newspapers,[14] though the recommendation of using 1.5 spaces persisted at least to 1996.[15] Regardless, many still believe that double spacing is correct. The debate continues,[5] notably on the World Wide Web—as many people use search engines to try to find what is correct.[16] Many people prefer double sentence spacing for informal use because that was how they were taught to type.[17] There is a debate on which convention is more readable, but the few recent direct studies conducted since 2002 have produced inconclusive results.[18]
Much modern literature on typography says that double spacing is not desirable,[19] but other sources indicate that it could be used on a typewriter or with a monospaced font.[20] The majority of style guides opt for a single space after terminal punctuation for final and published work, with a few permitting double spacing in draft manuscripts and for specific circumstances based on personal preference.[21] Grammar and design guides, including Web design guides, provide similar guidance.[22]
I'm not up-voting this because Leah Goodman has violated even the most simple of journalistic integrity that should be afforded to such a sensitive topic.
Firstly, she very dubiously breached Nakamoto's trust by attempting to get through to him by talking about his passions. Then, when she didn't get the response she wanted, she posted this article that lists multiple family members' full names, most of Nakamoto's (if this is even the real Nakamoto) personal and employment history, and then has the audacity to post a photo of Nakamoto's house that is close enough to a google street view photo, enabling others to pinpoint his location.
If something bad happens to Nakamoto as a result of the personal information disclosed in this report, it will be a great shame for Newsweek.
Completely irresponsible to put a picture of his house in the article. I mean, she didn't even blur out his house number. It took me a single google search to find his full address with that number (matching street view).
It's been taken out of the article now, but the damage has been done.
For a professional journalist to sink to such a level - with zero consideration for others in order to advance their own career - never ceases to amaze me.
With this out of the way, maybe cryptocurrency can focus attention on leveling up protocols and systems to improve utility. When bitcoin becomes the Friendster of cryptocurrency, Satoshi won't matter, just the disruptive ideas around our proxies for value and the new tools and power that can be used in positive ways to help improve the lot for all humans.
People want the confidence that they are able to securely accrue and employ the value of their efforts and wisdom to improve their standard of living. The values of the mainstream of humanity will determine the fate of this stuff. The current level of technical acumen required to handle and secure most any crypto$ is too high for them right now.
There's one thing that doesn't add up: why would such a privacy conscious man use his real name on a project he thought might be illegal? If he was so serious about his privacy, he would not have used his real name in public.
Usually the simplest explanations are the right ones. Who expects to create a new form of exchange, that goes on to become a $10 billion network (and maybe one day far larger)?
It's entirely plausible that Satoshi thought using that name, on his little project, would be enough. There is sometimes a lab mentality among people whose work has mostly been hidden away, they would never expect it to touch every corner of the world economy. It was just an experiment early on, and by the time it was obvious it would be more than that, his name was already attached.
That's easy - bitcoin isn't and never was about "privacy". It was about defeating that supposedly-horrible "fiat money" and the associated inflation. It's always been more about escaping government-backed money. From the very beginning, when selling the idea of bitcoin, the true believers praised the lack of regulation and how your money wouldn't lose its value over time. Privacy was secondary, if mentioned at all.
I suspect the Silk Road connection is what popularized the idea of a public ledger somehow providing privacy.
Being a private person doesn't necessarily mean that you go to great lengths to conceal yourself. It just means you don't offer more for free, like posting your personal life all over Facebook for example.
Was he "put off"? He seems to have consented to the interview, and to have posed for a picture.
Having interacted enough with bad members of the media [NB: there are also good ones], I'm not so naive as to think that there's no way they could have persuaded him to do it with lies or bullshit or empty threats, but without evidence for that he could have just said "I don't want to talk to you" and left it at that.
EDIT: I've re-read and might be changing my position. He didn't actually consent to any in-person interview. It was very very clear he didn't want to talk in person. So where did the picture come from?
I am now unsure of that and backing away from that position.
Is there a print-version of this article? That would show the photo credit in the margin. Too bad photo credits don't seem to be the custom on the web.
the best part of the interview is when she says she used a team of investigators similar to the CIA, and then goes onto thank only 2 people for their work. hilarious.
I like subscriptions, I just don't care enough about Newsweek to subscribe. Can't we have ads, with a payment option to remove ads? Ars Technica does this https://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/
Just block cookies from them, it works on most sites with a similar set-up.. Some sites you have to set to remove when you close the browser instead though.
"Reverse Polish notation" - was this originally Hungarian notation before some layer of "fact checking" ruined it? I have no idea how one would program using RPN.
I wonder if Leah McGrath Goodman would like photos of her home published and members of her family identified against her will? I wonder if she thought about that, or the man and his family's safety, before choosing to publish this information about him?
Reading the description of the man and recognizing the value he placed on privacy and anonymity, I'm genuinely sad for him. I also fear for his personal safety and that of his family for the reasons others have stated.
> I wonder if Leah McGrath Goodman would like photos of her home published
Nobody at Google Street View, which cheerfully publishes pictures of millions of peoples' homes without consent or even notification, appears to have ever wondered that.
The Wikipedia article saved me some time getting to the point:
> Though Nakamato's identity was a source of speculation since the launch of Bitcoin in 2008, an article in the news magazine Newsweek by Leah McGrath Goodman, published March 6, 2014, made the case that his true identity was Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto (born 1949), a Japanese American man living in California.[8]
The article appears to have many "from then on he stopped responding to emails" and "he then dropped off the map" phrases in it. He might not be replying to emails?
The article is cleverly written to make these perfectly ordinary (in)actions sound suspicious. People could write the same about me if I didn't reply to emails or phone calls for a while.
If Nakamoto ever sells his Bitcoin fortune, he would likely have to do so at a legitimate Bitcoin bank or exchange, which would not only give away his identity but alert everyone from the IRS to the FBI of his movements.
I think they just did that.
Amazing that he actually used his real name. This tells me that he didn't realize how far it would go when he started it.
I would be worried if I was the reporter. If anything happens to Satoshi, I suspect there are a moderate to high number of people who will make this reporter's life miserable as retribution. I'm thinking of all the bs that Krebs has to put up with.
Seriously irresponsible reporting. Not brave, not necessary, not helpful, not interesting, just stupid.
On the bright side: if keeping his anonymity was Satoshi's main reason for not touching his BTC fortune, now he and his family will finally be able to use all that money and take benefit from it - well deservedly.
I thought that bitcoin as a whole would be badly shaken at the second Satoshi touched his coins. What if, now that he allegedly has a face, he could have allegedly legitimate needs to spend his coins on?
Doxing as journalism, kind of surreal. Not sure I get the point though. (I understand why irc enemies do it, but I don't get the journalistic value of 'outing' Satoshi)
Oh come on, you're a smart person Chuck. You don't get the journalistic value of tracking down the person who founded a $10 billion cryptocurrency economy that is in the news on a weekly basis? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Oh I get the value of kind of "knowing the guy" but I don't understand the whole 'take down-esque' form the article took.
It would have been perfectly reasonable to use all that data and report that Satoshi is a brilliant, if quirky, guy living in Southern California. But to go through the hunt, the leads, the follow up, identifying his kids, family, and location. It has the feel of papparazzi taking pictures of Kate Middleton's panties on a windy day.
I don't disagree that it's tacky, and have a low opinion of gonzo journalism in general. However, the rise of personal reporting brands is bigger than one person or evne one publication.
As for bringing the guy's identity out into the opne, I am OK with that. If (as posited elsewhere on this thread) he owns or controls some 5-10% of the bitcoin economy,t hen a good number of other people have a legitimate interest in knowing who he is and how he might leverage that. Frankly, one reason I've avoided speculating in bitcoin was precisely because of the lack of information about this; a crypto-currency set up by some International Man of Mystery has a high potential of being a pump-and-dump scheme.
Is anyone else surprised that that police know that Satoshi is the creator of Bitcoin? That seems like an esoteric piece of knowledge for someone not in the tech space.
Well it's too late to get any points for this inference now, but I'm going to claim that there was a strong clue that the author of the PDF was old: the bitcoin paper cites "An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications" by William Feller. This is a classic, from the 1960s, but I don't think it's very well known among people under 40 (correct me if I'm wrong).
It's also a classic, I used it as text in a course back in '98 or so. Also it's more widely used outside of USA, personally I believe that is because it is inexpensively reprinted and because Feller was Croatian. I believe it has been translated to a number of languages including Chinese and notably Japanese.
I'm 27 and I've certainly heard of that book - most people studying probability even for scientific applications will have encountered it. I actually recommended it to a friend about 3 years ago.
The biases of this article aside, he sounds like a very interesting man. It saddens me that the way we found out who he really is was by a very gross invasion of his privacy. A sit down interview (in person or virtually)would have been much more interesting. I would have liked to have known eventually, but not like this
I feel sorry for this guy. The reign of hell newsweek is about to put on him is not going to be fun. Especially since this guy is pretty ecentric and doesnt like being in the public eye.
My hopes are no one tries to rob this guy or kidnap his family to get to his supposed 400m.
So this guy was found using public records as it's his real name or used to be? I would suspect that the authorities therefore would have known about him for far longer than Newsweek.
Now that the article outed him, maybe he will spend some of his Bitcoin on a fortress, security and drones (coded himself of course) to patrol his house.
Well, there are multiple people here, so differing views aren't really inconsistent.
But it's also possible to believe that certain government powers should be very limited while at the same time believing that individuals should strive not to be assholes to each other.
This is a private board, we are guests here. Even boards dedicated to discussing free speech regularly regulate the speech on their board because they need to keep peace. It's a big Internet, and you can make your own space.
Second:
I don't know how the people who run HN have ever claimed to be special free-speech proponents. They probably think, like most Americans can be shamed into thinking, that the government shouldn't punish you for speech, but aside from that I'm not aware of them, say, calling out other message boards for regulating their content as "censorship."
Third:
Unfortunately, once a general-purpose journalism piece lists your information, that's usually where claims of "doxxing" end.
HN may be user-driven, but it's heavily moderated, privately run and those operating it have a long established policy of banning and deleting content (or sometimes entire sources, e.g all of Gawker Media) at will for any reason they see fit. Same applies to discussion and the 'ghosting' of specific users with poor reputations. There's no guidelines for what's 'allowed' and 'disallowed' (at least none they've committed to) so bans are completely arbitrary and usually carried out with no official explanation or notification. This is actually standard operating procedure for any moderated discussion board and HN's particularly aggressive stance has contributed to it's success - higher quality content, higher quality discussion. Slashdot operated under similar rules and enjoyed success for at least a full decade despite the same complaints of 'censorship' coming up constantly. Slashdot eventually fell apart for unrelated reasons (shrinking/aging audience, failed attempts at modernization) but it's still a proven model with plenty of precedence. If you're concerned that you're being intentionally kept from reading about something, get your technology-related news from multiple sources. There's plenty of sites with looser guidelines to choose from.
One thing that annoys me about HN though is that I read it primarily through Feedly, and content often gets pushed to HN's feed prior to deletion, so I end up with a lot of annoying dead links to HN in Feedly.
Flagged as a troll, if you're genuinely suggesting what you write, consider that we can desire dissemination of public information or of government & corporate actions without believing individuals have no right to privacy.
Why not? There is absolutely nothing inconsistent about simultaneously believing "people should not do X" and "the government should not prevent people from doing X".
I knew it was his real name. I'm pretty sure I called it on bitcointalk.org (I'm grondilu there) and I was pretty much the only one who thought it was his real name.
I wouldn't wish this label upon anybody, it's exactly why the community tries to avoid speculating about it. It's extremely irresponsible of the newspaper to publish this — truth or otherwise — especially in such vivid detail.
Article sans paywall — http://archive.is/wbw97
Gavin seems to acknowledge the article — https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/441547758827474946