Last I checked, not everything federal prosecutors say turns out to be true.
I thought this as well for a while, until I had some (thankfully limited) contact with the federal machine during weev’s trial.
What happens and what is said as truth in federal criminal court has very little to do with objectively measured reality.
Except of course that these are normative arguments; you clearly feel that, fundamentally, someone speaking at Pyongyang blockchain conference deserves to be prosecuted and possibly convicted, and you feel that this would be just regardless of what a court might ultimately decide on the matter (since you ultimately don't know the outcome).
Some people apparently feel that the guy should not be prosecuted or convicted based on the actions he has been accused of; if there is a law that says otherwise, then maybe the law is wrong.
Others might fear that what they feel can be an inhumanely cruel system will come down on a person in a way that will not serve justice. And who can blame them. Frankly, those people are the ones with a functioning moral compass.
How many millions of people have they "come down on in a way that did not serve justice". Aiding such a brutally repressive regime should absolutely be a crime.
And yes, the world is not perfect, and many nations get away with similar sorts of crimes (although almost universally on a smaller scale), that doesn't make him some sort of good guy.
Perhaps Griffith just did it to make a point. I don't know what his point might have been. Maybe just that the laws are unjust, contravene freedom, etc, etc.
Sort of like refusing to register vehicles and display plates. Or dealing in "ghost guns" or whatever.
I'm certainly sympathetic. But I can't imagine doing that stuff using my meatspace identity. For Snowden, having worked for the NSA lent credibility to his actions. But I don't see the point for Griffith.
Maybe it's as simple as Griffith looking to make a name for himself and jumpstart a criminal enterprise that he knew would inherently involve doing blackmarket deals with bad actors. He certainly knew who he was helping out, re North Korea. Having the North Korean effort on your new criminal resume would be a large resume booster. It also explains why he would be looking to leave the US, where he'd be guaranteed to get nailed by the feds for anything in that arena eventually (and sooner than later). There has certainly been enough of that action in the crypto era and money is a prime motivator for most people.
Can math be classified as a weapon? Can talking about algorithms be made illegal? If talking about an algorithm in one place legal and in another place illegal? What if you video present where the speaker is in a jurisdiction where it is legal, and the audience is in a jurisdiction where it is illegal?
Back in crypto-wars I on the coderpunks mailing list there was an interesting thread about the hypothetical question of getting a tattoo with the diffie-hellman and RSA algorihms written out, and then driving to Mexico in an effort to get arrested for exporting crypto code outside the US in violation of ITARS laws at the time.
Calculating equations isn’t itself illegal, but for example calculating the ballistic profile of a missile aimed at a city and passing those results to an enemy state might be a crime. Similarly teaching their people to calculate such profiles, knowing what they intend to use that information for, could reasonably be criminal.
As a huge disclaimer, the charges may simplify to "we told you you couldn't go, and you went, so we get to put you in prison." And if that were true then the only question that would be answered here is whether or not the government has the right to lock you up for attending a conference without their permission. The complaint reads like their going for a more "material assistance to the enemy" kind of theory but I don't know and I'm not a lawyer.
That said, hopefully you don't mind me using your two statements as the foundation for questions they bring up.
"This isn’t about the legality of math. It’s about what you are doing, or helping others do."
I agree with that statement and I recognize that things I sometimes think should be true, turn out not to be as clear cut as I would like.
So lets say his paper was "Comparing different proof-of-work algorithms for the foundation of a crypto-currency."
That would be pretty much pure math. Algorithms where you couldn't "cheat" and get to the answer sooner than anyone else running the same algorithm. So should 'doing' that, or helping someone else 'do' that rise to the level of illegality? If so case law helps define tests for when something should be considered "bad" and when it is "ok." Let's step to your next point.
"Goals and intended outcomes matter. Knives aren’t generally illegal, we all have them in our houses, but stabbing someone with one generally is."
There is the "thing" and there is the "intent" to use the thing to do something bad. There are three "persons" in the above statement, the person that made the knife, the person that owned the knife, and the person that used the knife to do harm to another person or property. And yes, they could all be the same person) but which of those three persons are the criminal? In the USA we tend to lean toward the third example, the person using the tool to do harm. After all, you can do property damage with a baseball bat, and it isn't the bat makers fault right?
So if you talk about blockchain to someone does that make you a criminal? Or are they a criminal when they try to use it to do some illegal act? Now if you knew that was what they were going to do, again in the USA, you could be charged with conspiracy. But if you didn't know, you were just talking in a hypothetical way like "I bet that bat would totally smash those 'unbreakable' windows on that cybertruck." Are you conspiring really?
"Calculating equations isn’t itself illegal, but for example calculating the ballistic profile of a missile aimed at a city and passing those results to an enemy state might be a crime."
The challenge here is that in the US there is a presumption of innocence. So calculating a ballistic missile profile of a missile that launches from some place and then impacts some place else, is something you can easily do in the Kerbal Space Program. As far as I can tell its pretty dang accurate. So if someone shares with the news network the game files to show where a purported ballistic missile could hit if fired from the DPRK, are they doing something illegal? Even if knowing how Kerbal works, you could play with that file to figure out what parameters your rocket would have to meet if you wanted to hit a specific target?
"Similarly teaching their people to calculate such profiles, knowing what they intend to use that information for, could reasonably be criminal."
Agreed, it is all in the "knowing" part. It is clearly conspiracy if someone asks you to tell them how much peanut is needed to kill someone with a peanut allergy because their enemy is allergic to peanuts and it seems like a good way to get rid of them. But if they just ask out of the blue with no context and you answer, are you conspiring?
The original question was "What could possibly be his motivation for doing this?"
It is an important question because motivation is required for there to be a crime. Understanding and proving that motivation is going to be key to getting a conviction. From the coverage so far it does not seem like it was money (I haven't read anywhere that the guy was paid some outrageous speakers fee or anything.) I also haven't seen anything to suggest it was a treasonous thing.
I struggle to think like a criminal mastermind, so I rely on thinking like an engineer; knowing that in politics, relational, and legal questions my thinking will be flawed :-).
So the interesting questions here for me are the ones that define what is, and what isn't, a criminal act with respect to algorithms.
The legal terminology for that is “mens rea” literally “guilty mind” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
What you're referring to is the "mental state" requirement for criminal liability. Mental state requirements vary with the statutes, and fall generally into buckets like "knowingly" or "recklessly" or "willfully" or "intentionally".
For 50 USC 1705, the standard implicated is "willfully". You can read all sorts of things about what the "willfully" standard requires, but here's a good trick when you want to use Google to quickly parse a criminal law question: Google your search term along with [model jury instructions]. These are the templates used as a starting point for the "rules" given to juries to reach verdicts.†
For "willfullness" in federal court, you'll find something like this:
The offense(s) of (state offense or offenses that include willfully)
charged in the indictment require(s) the government to prove that
(name) acted “willfully” with respect to an (certain) element(s) of
the offense(s). This means the government must prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that (name) knew (his) (her) conduct was unlawful and
intended to do something that the law forbids. That is, to find that
(name) acted “willfully,” you must find that the evidence proved
beyond a reasonable doubt that (name) acted with a purpose to disobey
or disregard the law. “Willfully” does not, however, require proof
that (name) had any evil motive or bad purpose other than the purpose
to disobey or disregard the law. [“Willfully” (does) (does not)
require proof that the actor knew of the existence and meaning of the
statute making his conduct criminal.]
This standard is presumably why the complaint takes the time to point out multiple instances at which Griffith makes it clear that he's ignoring the sanction rules.
† I have no legal training at all, but it's my understanding that jury instructions are one of the fronts that a criminal trial is fought on, and so the template model jury instructions might not ultimately be the ones given to the jury; with that said, it seems unlikely that basic matters of law, like what a statute means when it refers to someone committing an offense "willfully", are really likely to budge much.
But what did Griffith see when he asked for permission from the State department, though? Did he know violating sanctions was criminal, or something potentially that'd be an infraction? Couldn't it be a civil penalty?
Is there an official form for what asking to visit a country under embargo (e.g. North Korea or Iran) looks like?
Is there a template/example for what a denial to visit an embargoed country looks like?
For instance if there's something involving classified information, I'm to understand there is SF-312 (https://fas.org/sgp/isoo/new_sf312.pdf). It's all about explaining who / what / where / why and that there are criminal penalties for mishandling info / leaking / etc.
So, do we know how much Griffith knew of the implications of what he was doing?
The fact he was told “no”, then did it anyways puts him in a very difficult position.
How about don't do it at all?
From a brief read through of the government's case, it seems their case rests on the accused doing the presentation despite having privately admitted to his friend that North Korea is likely interested in cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions.
See this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKkbzzYWwAAdAqa?format=jpg&name=...
tl;dr: In a response to a question about why he thought NK was interested in cryptocurrency, he is alleged to have said "probably to avoid sanctions ... who knows".
So it was his alleged belief that they would probably utilize the general information on the blockchain that he would be presenting for illegal purposes that made his giving of the presentation illegal, according to the government.
Since technically the Korean War never ended, yes, there is a war.