I'm trying to figure this out and failing: How was the DOJ able to recover these funds?
The article just says
> a magistrate judge in the Northern District of California had granted a warrant to seize funds from the wallet earlier in the day.
But my understanding is that a judge can't just seize the wallet -- you'd need their private key. Anyone know what happened from a technical standpoint?
> But my understanding is that a judge can't just seize the wallet -- you'd need their private key. Anyone know what happened from a technical standpoint?
The affidavit [0] supporting the warrant details the flow of Bitcoin between various addresses and notes that the FBI has the private key of the address targeted for seizure, but doesn’t explain how they got the private key.
That's an interesting theory and would make sense as a defusing move (whether or not they had an ongoing relationship with DarkSide), but is there any support for this or is it speculation?
(1) It asks the question “why would they need a warrant if they had the private key”. The answer is obvious: the same reason they’d need a warrant to seize cash from your house even if they had your front door key. Legally, the FBI needs a warrant to seize property in your possession, outside of very narrow exceptions, and “well, we have the technical capability to take it” doesn’t itself qualify for any exception.
(2) It concludes from a warrant and supporting affidavit that explicitly ask the court to permit the FBI to seize BTC to which thet have the private key that...the FBI did not have the private key, but instead was serving the warrant on a “custodial wallet provider” like Coinbase. It it possible the wallet seized was custodial, but there is literally nothing supporting this interpretation of the FBI not actually having the private key ut serving the warrant on a third party rather than seizing it by use of the key in their possession. In fact, every element of that narrative is directly contradicted by the documents pointed to to support it.
> This is a common LEO practice called "parallel construction" that is used when they don't want to tell you how they actually acquired evidence.
Aside from “if it was parallel cobstruction, the documents obviously wouldn’t reflect it” (which is true but not evidence), what os the evidence of parallel cobstruction here?
> There are three ways they have the key:
There are a lot more than your three:
> 1. A non-FBI intelligence agency hacked a computer containing the private key.
> 2. A US intelligence agency physically beat it out of an American.
> 3. A non-US intelligence agency physically beat it out of a non-American.
1a. remove non- before FBI in 1.
2a/3a. Swap US and non-US in 2/3 (US intelligence agencies operate abroad and vice versa).
4. An agent of US intelligence infiltrated DarkSide and got access to the key without beating it out of anyone.
5. #4, but An agent of non-US intelligence did the same. The sponsoring nation provided the info to the US for foreign relations reasons.
6. A foreign intelligence service had contact with DarkSide and, for reasons, requested (likely with additional threat or inducement, express or implied) the information and that the funds be left there, and provided it to the FBI.
That's not what insider trading is. Insider trading is specifically using non-public information about a company to make investment decisions.
Technical analysis generally uses only publicly available information; it's finding patterns in those publicly available data that can help you make investment decisions.
I'm not saying it's socially useful; just that it is distinct from insider trading.
I really hope the republicans can clean up their act and become a reasonable choice again.
That being said, I think they will need to prove their commitment to reasonable governance as the minority for the better part of a decade before I am willing to seriously consider them again.
Personally, I don't think that these bannings will lead to something as extreme as what you're describing. Specifically, I don't see this leading to a ban of reasonable people.
If I'm reading your thoughts correctly, your main concern seems to stem from the fact that you're assuming the goal is to stop these people from communicating with each other.
However, I don't think that's the point of these bannings. I think the goal is to stop them from reaching a new audience and expanding (however, as I am not a CEO of a major social media company, I can only guess what the motivations are).
In that sense, if everyone switches to using code words, or to using non-broadcast media (eg, Signal), it's significantly less concerning, and there will not be a strong push to ban people from those sites. By only de-platforming clear violators, I bet they can still have a big impact.
That's actually a good point. Idk how many otherwise unbiased people would be convinced that the election was a major fraud, but moving that to other platforms wouldn't hurt.
I think that a big difference to people is whether or not the event was violent.
Many protests involve civil disobedience; I think very few people here would condemn all illegal protests.
However, violence is where I (and I think many others) draw the line.
As another data point I heard: Wednesday was the first time since 9/11/2001 that the Capitol was evacuated. Clearly, this demonstration was exceptional in a way that disturbe
The word “or” separates the qualifying conditions in the definition linked. Disorder or a disturbance of the peace is enough to qualify an incident as a “riot”. Given the quoted incidents were illegal acts that required authorities to spend time and money to respond to, they were of course a disturbance of the peace, disorderly, and therefore were indeed riots.
And you don't think it's ridiculous to equivocate between events where a police officer is grievously beaten and a woman is trampled and events where people sit quietly and get arrested because some sergeant decides it is disorderly for them to sit there without a permit.
You can see the fear in Duckworth's eyes when she comes up with her baby strapped to her chest and waves at the crowd.
I agree with you. It's a word that means different things to so many people.
It frustrates me when the media tries to make a big distinction between protests and riots. Those words have become emotionally charged.
Rather, if we're going to have discussions about this, we should be sure to be extra clear about what we're trying to say.
I think it's fairly pointless to debate what the precise definition of a riot is. Rather, I was trying express why people see this as different from the "sit-ins" (another wishy washy word) the the poster above you talked about.
The reason that I find Wednesday's acts worse is because of the violence. And I think that there could be a much more productive conversation off of that pretense, than over what is a riot vs a sit-in.
The article just says
> a magistrate judge in the Northern District of California had granted a warrant to seize funds from the wallet earlier in the day.
But my understanding is that a judge can't just seize the wallet -- you'd need their private key. Anyone know what happened from a technical standpoint?