Virgil is a friend of mine. I don't believe he's capable of lying.
He went to the FBI on his own and without a lawyer (not smart) and shared everything with them. The story of someone at the conference wanting him to talk about evading sanctions *came from him* and there's no indication that he added that to his talk. He didn't try to hide his visit and any comments that appear to praise DPRK are obviously in jest (which perhaps you wouldn't know without knowing him).
Renouncing citizenship? Please. Every intelligent person I know has thought about getting dual citizenship if they could in the last couple of years and his entertaining the notion isn't at all unusual and is completely irrelevant to this.
Traveling to DPRK wasn't a problem before Trump & probably won't be after, so let's not assume a mere violation of that decree means someone is an enemy of the state. He admitted what he did and has been completely forthright and honest throughout.
It's frankly quite chilling to see how many people are going so much further and treating these absurd allegations as gospel.
3
I question whether Mr. Griffith actually revealed anything that the North Koreans don't already know, given they're already active players in the cryptocurrency market. The core concern, of course, is how rogue states like North Korea utilize cryptocurrencies to advance their interests. One would think any ethical hacker would have such a concern. How does Mr. Griffith explain this?
14
This is so stupid. Any presentation about cryptocurrency will discuss its potential as a global currency that will replace our current financial system. This is just the basic value proposition for cryptocurrency, there’s nothing conspiratorial about it. And the people designing nuclear weapons are probably smart enough to google "bitcoin" and read how it works. The fact that he's facing 20 years in prison for this is retarded. But honestly, he's pretty stupid for not asking for a lawyer because look at how bad they made him look in this article
2
Dr Griffith deserves prison, and, given what he was up to, one wonders why authorities in Singapore did not arrest him even before he made this trip to the DPRK.
1
And how did NBA hoops great Dennis Rodman, the late much lamented student Otto Warmbler, and other American visitors get a free State Dept. permit to visit North Korea on their American passports?
3
@Bayou Houma The U.S. ban on tourism to North Korea went into effect in 2017, probably in response to Warmbier’s death.
4
He is lucky the North Koreans did not arrest him.
4
And any country scientifically sophisticated enough to make
nuclear armed inter-continental missiles ought to have no problem developing a crpyptocurrency. starting with the simplest kind of it, Bartering.
2
This time I fully support the FBI. Interesting that on the spectrum of intelligence we have one fool who can barely speak in choeherent sentences in the white house duped by North Korea and another fool with a Cal Tech PhD duped by his own arrogance into working with the murderous regime in North Korea.
9
"He also said an official at the conference had urged him to talk about using digital currencies to launder money because “such topics were likely to resonate” with the audience, the complaint said" .... Poor guy, he was just trying to appeal to his audience. Now he'll have a different audience in jail that might find him appealing. What an arrogant, self-centered idiot. These are serious issues and North Korea is not our friend.
8
"Hacker magazine, 2600, where Mr. Griffith was a contributing writer, issued a statement on Twitter on Friday saying that his arrest was 'an attack on all of us...' "
That's rich! Another traitor in our midst looking to buy his way out of his Federal legal problems who ought to know as such a techie-expert that timing is everything. Perhaps the citizenship-shopping tour should have commenced prior to making the trip?
But most telling is the photo. Check out that smirk. Now *that* is the attack on all of us that should resonate with everyone who still believes in playing my the rules.
And not to wax too coarse, but he will *not* do well in prison. Moreover, despite his "skills", he does not appear to have the visual edge needed to shake other prisoners down for their commissary. Time to hire the expert who prepares a delicate looking guy like him for the realities of the joint.
9
Uh, serves him right?
Some priceless quotes in this piece too:
- Mr. Goldstein said Mr. Griffith was incapable of doing what federal investigators have accused him of. “He would not help a murderous dictator,” he said. [end quote]
"Would not help a murderous dictator" - yet that's precisely what he did. Even if he personally didn't transfer any secret, cutting-edge technology to NK - just setting foot in NK helps and assists the regime. Which is indeed, unironically a murderous dictatorship! And it does look like he's done more than that.
The fact that Mr. Griffith appears to be an honest-to-god idiot does not absolve him of responsibility for his acts!
15
Who in their right mind would go to North Korea?
10
Every university that pumps out IT majors needs to enact mandatory ethics classes. Hopefully it will make some people think twice before doing something stupid.
12
@Sean: please! A study of ethics, a philosophical attempt to achieve codes of humane behavior between and among people, has little to do with any political leader’s legalized sanction weapons to cripple the economy of another society. The United States and North Korea remain in a state of war. Ethics has nothing to do with war, except the right of self-defense. But Trump’s starvation policy against North Koreans is an indiscriminate weapon, a weapon of mass destruction against the alleged evil regime, but also against innocent civilians, including women and children, its only aim being to force the North Korean regime to relinquish the only military deterrence they have against our unprovoked aggression. Starvation of civilians has been our form of mass destruction, a legal preliminary to overthrowing dictatorial governments in Iraq and Libya. On the face of it, our military bases around North Korea to enforce sanctions to starve North Koreans amounts to a military siege.
By ethical standards of the Golden Rule, our political isolation of North Korea may not be unethical, but just as the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction are unethical, our military starvation policy certainly is just as indiscriminate and destructive as well.
We would go to war if another nation did to us what we do to starve North Korea, a policy not even the governments of South Korea, China, and Japan publicly approve.
1
@Bayou Houma
The North Koreans are not starving because of the US. They are starving because of their government.
8
@Maureen But then why do we have a blockade of ships monitoring how many shiploads of food can get into North Korean ports, or try to force China not to sell them winter fuel for cooking foods, and heating homes, transportation and farming? If the North Korean government is starving its people, then problem solved. Why do we need to embargo food trade to them? Soon, by your logic, there will be no more people to farm enough food to feed the Kim Jong-Il government that is starving them.
2
Good riddance to "peak woke" Mr Griffith. I hope one day he realizes how foolish he was. He was probably reading hard left wing screeds and started believing them.
2
@mainliner - hacker culture and the far left are two different things - if anything, the hacker culture is often more of a libertarian ideology, rather than a right-left thing.
But if you look at the so-called Hacker Ethic, the idea of providing help with understanding crypto-currency might have been sensible if he'd been aiding the average North Korean gain access, but instead, his acting at the invite of an oppressive government doesn't really seem to fit what he claims to stand for.
8
Reading these comments really shows how low American society has declined. All of these haters lining up to attack a man for simply sharing human knowledge and promoting academic intercourse, and not one soul brave enough to condemn the American government from passing laws barring people from exercising their right to free speech.
If "sanctions" forbid a man from even giving talk, then it is the sanctions which are the crime, and not the talk. It is the US government which should suffer the outrage, and not the man.
3
@Jeffrey Goldstein -- I think people are upset because the sharing isn't the idealistic person-to-person thing you pretend, it's a "person-to-official-invite-from-extremely-repressive-government" thing.
Human, physical people were unimpressed when Mitt said "corporations are people, friend" and this smells the same.
6
@Jeffrey Goldstein
He admitted to violating sanctions by trying to send money into the DPRK.
From the article:
Federal investigators obtained text messages that Mr. Griffith had sent to a colleague in which he said he needed to send cryptocurrency between North and South Korea, the complaint said. When the person asked if that was a violation of United States sanctions, Mr. Griffith said: “It is.”
10
@b fagan
Stop pretending that this guy is a spy. Your sense of smell doesn't work. No one made the United States the arbiter of who gets to participate in academic exchange. Freedom, if you can understand the word, means that people decide for themselves who they want to talk to. Last I checked, North Korea didn't kill half a million people in Iraq.
4
I am usually very sympathetic to rebels, and find the tight grasp conservative institutions want to keep on information concerning. In this case however I have a hard time finding any sympathy. For someone so smart he is either shockingly naive, or one if those "tech geniuses " that think laws and rules don't apply to them. Either way he'll have to face the consequences of what he did, which is trying to circumvent the one working tool the civilized world still has to restrain murderous dictatorships like North Korea
7
MK: North Korea's government isn't the only "murderous regime," and as President Donald J.Trump himself pointed out, "we kill people, too," in fact, Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama authorized military strikes killing hundreds of Afghani civilians, including children, among them Osama Bin Laden's children, and Trump has authorized kills of many other innocent ones, like the wives and children of terrorist Al-Baghdadi, busloads of innocent schoolchildren by bombing and attacks on Taliban-controlled villages, etc. From all reports North Korea's leaders seem evil, killing just to inspire terror. unlike our soldiers and our Presidents. But we know we have had leaders who were corrupt, cruel, racists and homicidal (Pres. Andrew Jackson actually killed people, not only in a duel, but he killed some of his slaves, tearing families apart in auctions and cruelly beating them to death with hickory sticks -hence his nickname "ole hickory"and he also killed Native American Tribesmen defending their people and lands from subjugation, expulsion and confiscation.)
2
This man should be tried for treason, not for violating international sanctions. To give NK this kind of knowledge is more than dangerous. Frankly, I don't believe that crypto-currency should have ever been allowed. It is used to launder money and to enable hackers to hijack city government computers for ransom. Without crypto-currency, these ransoms would likely not occur. Those 2 reason alone should be enough for a global ban.
2
@Ma No, treason is ONLY applicable if a state of war has been declared. Read the Constitution!
3
The symbolism of a 'laundry' seems to be a common thread running through this article. Perhaps this is a way to identify the member of a social group who believes that duplicity of thought is a way to justify (or repress) their unethical or illegal behavior.
Mr. Griffith seems to have 'laundered' his visa to North Korea. According to the article: "But then, in April, Virgil Griffith traveled to North Korea with a visa he had obtained from a diplomatic mission in New York City, going through China to circumvent an American travel ban."
The Ethereum Foundation seems to have 'laundered' its association with Mr. Griffith. According to the article: "In a statement, Ethereum said Mr. Griffith acted on his own. 'We can confirm that the foundation was not represented in any capacity at the events outlined in the Justice Department’s filing, and that the foundation neither approved nor supported any such travel, which was a personal matter,' the company said."
The editor of Hacker Magazine seems to have 'laundered' his identity, by employing the pseudonym 'Emmanuel Goldstein', a character in George Orwell's novel '1984' who was the leader of an underground resistance movement. According to the article: "The magazine’s editor, who uses the pen name Emmanuel Goldstein, said on Twitter that what Mr. Griffith had done — explaining the concept of cryptocurrency — was not a crime."
3
Knowledge is power. Programming and systems implementation and knowledge of same falls could fall into computer engineering, engineering or financial systems classifications.
All of these professions, considering the power they wield, have codes of ethics. Maybe the readers of Hacker might want to review some of them.
http://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/
"The Ethics Codes Collection (ECC) is the largest database of codes of ethics and guidelines in the world. It contains over 2,500 individual codes from around 1,500 different organizations, and collects both current and historical versions of these documents. The ECC seeks to provide practitioners, students, scholars and the public access to codes of ethics and guidelines and in this way inform ethical decision making in professional, entrepreneurial, scientific, and technological fields."
1
@b fagan
The NSA deliberately inserted backdoors into cryptographical standards, with the intent of spying on anyone who uses them. So go present your bill of ethics to the US government.
3
@Jeffrey Goldstein - "somebody did something so I can toss my profession's code of ethics".
Great justification there.
1
It sounds like he was manipulated into doing a few illegal activities and will suffer a great deal as a result.
1
The arrogance and vanity of super-smart people often cloud their intelligence. I doubt he'll get 20 years. I doubt N Koreans learned anything from him they could not obtain over public channels. But his willingness to aid an adversary with a technology the US does not want them to have requires prosecution.
22
Griffith did something which is very damaging to our country and allies, helping a dangerous regime, and his circumvention of our sanctions shows he knew how wrong it was.
But numerous other Americans have done as much wrong, including many in our current administration; money laundering, sharing classified info, violating our laws and selling arms to supporters of terrorists.
All who have done such should be charged and imprisoned, including Trump, Giuliani, Kushner and a hose of others, the very minute he's out of office and can't pardon anyone.
3
“He’s a typical hacker who loves technology and adventure.”
And, he's certainly on the path to an adventure now. Technology, not so much. Unless, he makes a deal to help out the F.B.I.
10
Perhaps 20 or so years in prison, with no access to the internet, will give him time to reflect on his choice.
2
His explanation sounds like that of a defiant child caught doing something naughty and trying to weasel his way out of accountability.
"Later, Mr. Griffith told investigators that the information he shared with North Korean officials included basic concepts that could be found on the internet, the complaint said."
As if we don't understand that "included basic concepts that could be found on the internet" does not mean LIMITED TO basic concepts that can be found on the internet.
Does he really think we're all foolish enough to think that he traveled to the DPRK, and they hosted him, to tell them basic concepts that could be found on the internet?
10
“[Griffith] would not help a murderous dictator.” Yet, there he was, helping a murderous dictator to evade international banking regulations. Told he couldn't do it, Griffith evaded his own government's regulations to do it anyway. Twenty years isn't s bad. He'll be out in five.
6
I'm amused that the hacker magazine editor calls himself "Emmanuel Goldstein" — after the leader of the resistance to Big Brother in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." He seems to have forgotten (assuming he's actually read the book in the first place) that Goldstein and the Brotherhood he supposedly leads are inventions of the Party, which needs a straw-man enemy that can be defeated again and again.
It's a telling combination of mixed metaphors, delusions of grandeur, and plain old ignorance.
17
Imagine a world where people used their intelligence to help people instead of using it to con, bribe, and hurt others. Imagine if Mr. Griffith used his knowledge for the good of humankind instead of for the greed of humankind.
9
We were invited to friends for dinner last evening. Also attending were a couple, he American, she Chinese - older and a young couple, new Computer Science professors at Middlebury College with newly-minted Ph. Ds from MIT. do you think the conversation was lively? It was. The Chinese woman survived the Cultural Revolution and on and on and on and on. The young couple? Added nothing to the conversation. As I have been feeling for a long time now, technology will be our downfall.
6
(In best Forrest Gump voice) "For a doctah, I'm not a smahht man."
1
Does cryptocurrency work in the prison commissary? Mr. Griffith is in for a truly "woke" experience.
4
It is difficult to understand the crime here.
The Court has held that limits to free speech involve a"clear and present danger" -- classically shouting fire in a crowded theater. What is the issue here? He could hardly have even provided information that was not in the public domain.
Perhaps the issue is that he traveled to North Korea? Even there, the Supreme Court has held that Americans have a right to travel. There may be restriction on ho a passport may be used, but it would seem difficult to justify given Mr. Trump's discussions about North Korea.
5
Perhaps Virgil Griffith should have talked to Otto Warmbier's parents about the "peak woke-ness" of North Korea.
Sometimes, very sharp people are so naive and ignorant outside their area of speciality that they end up cutting themselves.
Some years in prison should sober him up.
70
@Feminist
Just to be clear, prisoners in the USA have been beaten and killed by prison guards who will never see justice.
Liking anything about North Korea is inane but we're not in a moral position to lecture North Korea on treatment of prisoners.
8
@Feminist Really, scoring points of their dead son. Represent.
1
Mr Griffith is an arrogant fool who thinks he is conning the DPRK to make money for himself.
There is no "force for good" involved once one is involved with the DPRK. Literally anything you do with or for them is by implication evil.
20
Anyone ever head of Samsung? Does anyone really think Korea, south or north, needed a technology boost from this guy? What a fool.
19
@Brooklyn
If Mr. Griffith is discussing things that NK or SK already knows, then the fools appear to be the Feds who are having a tizzy about this guy telling NK and SK what they already know. As far as I can tell, the only laws broken here were laws restricting travel (and you thought this was a free country).
3
Poor Libertarian. Your anarchist proclivity is about to land you in jail where someone will be telling you what to do every day.
18
@exmilpilot Seems likely to confirm to them the truth of their worldview.
1
Apparently common sense is not a requirement to obtain a Ph.D.
26
Since Donald Trump (US president) has stated that Kim Jong-un (North Korean supreme leader) is a great man with whom he is in love, then how could North Korea be an adversary of the US?
12
"Hacker magazine, 2600, where Mr. Griffith was a contributing writer, issued a statement on Twitter on Friday saying that his arrest was “an attack on all of us.”"
Well, all who are supposed to follow American laws, at least. The analog, real world still works that way. Kind of getting tiresome how the disruptive folks think violating laws is cool. Uber, Airbnb, the recent article I read about venture capital flowing to India developers building loan apps that include collections technologies that openly violate Indian and US law.
19
@b fagan
Given that Mr. Griffith discussed topics that are already in the public domain, it appears that the only laws he violated were those restricting travel. I thought this was a free country.
3
@Dan - it is a free country of laws and he appears to have deliberately violated one.
I've read enough of some of the ideals of hacker culture and some of the statements of the silicon valley types and some of their "we can do it because" self-justification very much veers into self-indulgent irresponsibility.
Think about this: hacker-boy violated law to facilitate crypto-currency knowledge transfer, which is a much-loved tool of ransomware makers, smugglers and others who don't like laws, to a regime that regularly threatens us and our allies.
Same regime is working on missiles that could drop a nuke over Silicon Valley, smuggling would benefit the regime, and they already hacked Sony a few years ago over a movie that insulted fearless leader.
Think about hacker culture's carelessness about rules and think about the tools becoming available for biohacking.
4
This is a dangerous, overwrought and disgusting selective prosecution. Apparently Donald Trump is the only American who can provide aid and comfort to our so-called "enemies" without facing criminal penalties.
5
@Radical Normal -- Trump is the only American who can do lots of things--illegal and unconstitutional, and there is no one to stop him. That's what life is like in an autocracy.
4
Yes, and common criminals and vandals get a thrill and like to show what they can do too. These hackers live in a delusional fantasy world all their own. Where stealing is not stealing. Where invasion of privacy is not invasion of privacy. Where aiding a foreign adversary is not aiding a foreign adversary.
I think that some of these people may have personality disorders that don't allow them to fundamentally understand that they live in a real world.
Maybe the psychologist in the federal pen can help him with this.
32
Sounds like Prison will be a character building experience for him.
14
Was it really necessary for this Bro to step foot in PRK? Hasn't he heard of WhatsApp?
2
@totoro
Was it really necessary for the US to arrest someone for going to a place ruled by someone who is having a bromance with Trump?
2
This is ridiculous...let him go. There is no offense here. Just the USA attempting to control the movements and thoughts of its citizens.
5
May Mr. Griffith enjoy the next 20 years doing paper crossword puzzles. If he's lucky enough to be allowed to have them.
19
Nihilists have been around for a long time. But perhaps they have never had the means to be as powerful as they are today, thanks to the internet and Right Wing Radical publications. Nihilism is not what we need when democracy is on the ropes, climate change will disrupt everyone's life and the world's over population is about to consume what's left of the world's natural resources.
29
@KF2
And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable - and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.
Joseph Conrad, "The Secret Agent", 1907
4
Mr. Griffith sound as if he would fit right in one of the Trump Organizations.
36
@Jean Too capable.
13
Not that it matters that much, but nowhere in the article was there infromation as to how much this man was paid. He didn't go to all that time and trouble just to sit in a conferance room 'to talk' for free. How much he was paid by this 'cash strapped dictatorship', and in what form the payment was, is, I think, of interest to us. Hopefully, the amount will be forefited in total.
39
I think 20yrs in prison is pretty good payment for a traitor. In other times it would have been a firing squad.
6
@Upstate Ny
So a pardon then, like Col. North?
1
@Upstate Ny
You do see the irony of calling Mr. Griffith a traitor in a world where our President sells out our national security to Kim, right?
3
I don't know why some people who are really good at something, in this case digital tech, come to believe they're omniscient.
The North Koreans are experts at brainwashing -- for them, this was like taking candy from a baby.
43
@Jon B
You are giving too much credit. This is just good old unvarnished greed.
4
Why risk talking about crypto when we have major banks in Australia who will launder money for you. If things slow down just visit a casino. The net worth of cryptocurrency is dwarfed by the fiat money floating internationally, in one night.
9
It strikes me that he may have mental health issues that affect his judgment. This is probably his best defense.
6
@Saint Leslie Ann of Geddes Good point. And this supports that theory: "Mr. Goldstein said he had socialized with Mr. Griffith the night before he met with the F.B.I., and Mr. Griffith had insisted on telling federal authorities “the truth” without a lawyer."
You'd have to be crazy to do that.
2
The Whitehouse and Congress should be held
Accountable to the same standards of helping our adversaries. If not let him go. One rule of law applied equally. If not what are we?
20
@Harris silver
plausible deniability- plausible deniability is the ability of people (typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command) to deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by others in an organizational hierarchy because of a lack of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved in or at least willfully ignorant of the actions. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such acts to insulate themselves and shift blame onto the agents who carried out the acts, as they are confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise. The lack of evidence to the contrary ostensibly makes the denial plausible; that is, credible, although sometimes it merely makes it unactionable. The term typically implies forethought, such as intentionally setting up the conditions to plausibly avoid responsibility for one's (future) actions or knowledge. In some organizations, legal doctrines such as command responsibility exist to hold major parties responsible for the actions of subordinates involved in heinous acts and nullify any legal protection that their denial of involvement would carry.
1
"egregious that a U.S. citizen allegedly chose to aid our adversary" said the FBI
his arrest was “an attack on all of us” said Hacker Magazine
his travel "was a personal matter" Said Ethereum
What do you say Senator Kennedy?
11
@EC I imagine Kenedy says "where's my cut?"
3
'Steal a little and they'll throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they'll make you a king.'
11
@Tee
I don't think cryptocurrency can be classified as stealing a little. The implications are enormous. And the goal is to be the untouchable kings of the flyover lands.
8
“It’s even more egregious that a U.S. citizen allegedly chose to aid our adversary.” the obliteration of norms trickles down from the very top way more effectively than tax cuts, it seems.
63
He went from aspiring "to create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike" to facing 20 years in federal prison. I guess the kicks just keep getting harder to find.
73
He appears to live in a fantasy world — much like the currency he touts — in which governments have no authority. Reading his behavior, he sounds like a guy violating the norms of a video game, where there are no consequences. He clearly knew what was legally expected of him, then intentionally "shook things up." Arrest and prosecution may not delay the inevitable rise and abuse of cryptocurrencies, but it might wake up some other "disruptive technologists" to the fact that the rest of society gets a say on issues like money laundering and technology exchange.
112
@Don
If he had simply published his remarks in a magazine, there would be no violation of law. It’s that he went to a place that only the President can visit.
4
@Don
Reading these comments really shows how low American society has declined. All of these haters lining up to attack a man for simply sharing human knowledge and promoting academic intercourse, and not one soul brave enough to condemn the American government from passing laws barring people from exercising their right to free speech.
If "sanctions" forbid a man from even giving a talk, then it is the sanctions which are the crime, and not the talk. It is the US government which should suffer the punishment, and not the man.
4
He was arrested for telling how to use cryptocurrency to launder money. Gosh! In the meantime some big banks and Wall Street types who actually use that technique go merrily on without fear of running afoul of the regulators.
Yep! Lock up the kid for 20 years for giving a lecture about information that’s available online anyway! Let the bankers and Wall Street who actually do this stuff off scott free!
Everything is about “the money” and who can be controlled by it!! I’ll retire to Bedlam!
24
@SAH Banks and corporations hide their crimes, they don't flaunt it in the face of law enforcement. When I speed, I do it when I think law enforcement isn't around, I don't lay rubber after a cop gives me a warning and is walking back to the patrol car. Unless, of course, I do it deliberately for the attention.
14
@SAH -- Which big banks? What Wall Street types? Don't hold back. Tell us what you know. Name names.
24
@Ms. Pea
Well, here’s just one for starters.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/hsbc-holdings-plc-and-hsbc-bank-usa-na-admit-anti-money-laundering-and-sanctions-violations
Just do a search and you’ll find plenty more! And those are only the ones the government has decided to do something about!
Griffith obviously disagrees but, given his current predicament, he's doggone lucky he is still an American citizen. What would North Korea, Russia, China or any other autocratic power throughout human history do with Griffith?
51
@traveling wilbury He seemed to make it out of NK just fine. Don't forget to say your daily pledge of allegiance to the magical freedom cloth and thank your local police officer for driving the homeless off Main Street. Land of the Free!!
3
Tech-world rebel seems to think the rules don’t apply to him. 6-7 years in a Federal Penitentiary should give him some time to reflect on his views.
67
You can be a disruptive techie all you want, but you can’t decide which federal laws you’re going to follow and which to ignore like sanctions against NK.
92
It sounds like another case of a technology-gifted individual wanting to show others what he could do, fine with causing mischief, and with a limited sense of the larger responsibility, of which he was not self-aware.
It's unfortunate there were not better ways for him to apply his gifts, while seeing the larger social and political picture of what he was getting into. He could have tried to find a better way--and maybe there still could be one if the prosecutor is open to constructing a creative deal.
There's also the argument that he's not exactly the only one being played by North Korea, or not seeing the responsibility to pay taxes.
"Disruption" and the desire to "shake things up" are starting to get a bad name, and possibly this was an unavoidable swing of the pendulum. But we still badly need these things, and the spirit behind them, in technology, social, and political areas where solutions to urgent problems are stuck. They just have to be better integrated and in well-thought out ways.
Like in a lot of other areas I follow, let's try to co-invent creative hybrids that stop far short of going to the other extreme and wasting opportunities.
Unless something else damaging comes out, it would be a shame if there is no better alternative for such a talented individual, and others like him, than pursuing paths that lead to jail.
Perhaps the Times' new "Visionaries" or older "Fixes" column, could look for individuals or institutions that are trying to work out such ideas.
5
A desperate and futile gesture by the feds. The threat of cryptocurrency to the established order can hardly be overstated. It now derives most of its value from its potential for anonymous illicit transactions. But if used more widely, it threatens the ability of governments to boost their economies and finance their ever-increasing debts through central banks. Arresting a few cryptocurrency evangelists isn't going to stop anything. The only really effective defense would be to ban US citizens from buying, selling or owning cryptocurrency, yet doing so poses another risk - sending yet another profitable industry offshore, leaving US banks in the dust.
4
He broke the law and, by entering North Korea the way he did, he knew it. Does not matter about what he spoke. Though, it does matter.
25
@Larry -- You said it--cryptocurrency derives its value from anonymous illicit transactions. Therefore, government definitely has an interest in controlling it. It doesn't seem desperate or futile to me--in fact, Griffith should have expected it. He might be smart, but he also seems pretty clueless to me.
22
@Larry "But if used more widely, it threatens the ability of governments to boost their economies and finance their ever-increasing debts through central banks."
How? And if you answer is "be enabling massive tax evasion" note that I'll ask you to pay for our roads, safety nets, food safety, etc....
1
Mr. Griffith was denied approval to go and went anyway which is against the law. The solution to his problem was to ask for citizenship in another country and renounce his US citizenship. Assuming his new country allows it then his problem is solved. Maybe he can defend himself by noting that Dennis Rodman went and did not get into any trouble.
Cryptocurrency itself is shady and I’ve never seen an explanation of it that does not make it seem like some type of financial fraud. The extreme swings in value should scare anyone who is thinking of buying in.
71
@Jim----------------------Why are we fussing about Mr. Griffith while not truly raging about Trump? Perhaps Griffith eases our minds off the true disaster now dismantling our country.
1