Misleading headline. This is a public blockchain analytics service that has nothing to do with Coinbase's other services.
Are you familiar with the concept of parallel construction? It's a tactic LEOs use when they don't want to reveal how they actually obtained information. For instance, if they obtain information using method A, but want to conceal method A, they state that they actually obtained the information using method B (because the information actually is, after the fact, obtainable via method B as well, once you know what to look for).
In Coinbase's case the way this would work is Coinbase sources data from their internal databases (method A), and then after the fact they do let's say a Google search or some other public search for the names or whatever they found in their internal databases, and state that all data is sourced from online, publicly available data (method B).
Since the article is already based on a leak (or something that is presented as one), one would expect that if this was the case, there would at least be an anonymous source claiming so.
Given that all the article is mentioning is "they're selling blockchain analysis software", it's very plausible that that's what they're selling. When the feds want specific info on a specific address/account, they're going to get a subpoena and get KYC data and logs anyways.
This is how disinformation is spread; not through some conspiratorial plot to confuse, but from fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
I'm curious, however, why did you not make a similar post to the parent comment...in that the parent comment has presented no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that Coinbase is only using publicly-available information, and therefore by your own reasoning the parent poster should not make the claim.
Because both the parent comment and I have read the article, so we both have evidence to support the claim that Coinbase is only using publicly-available information, as that's how Coinbase Tracer, the license to which was reported as sold to ICE for $29,000, works.
If your standard of proof is “somebody wrote something online,” then GP provided you with proof that it’s possible that Coinbase lied.
I literally cannot parse this sentence, can you rephrase?
The topic of this sentence is “the definition of proof.”
All we have here is evidence, which is fundamentally different.
Those are words online! That’s evidence! You cannot refute that someone wrote those words. I know that those are words online because I wrote them! Now you have evidence and testimony.
The funny part about all this is that nobody is claiming that they know that Coinbase is lying about this contract. It’s all been entirely hypothetical (hence the word “maybe.”)
What evidence or proof have you seen that there exists no possibility of a corporation lying about their relationship with a controversial government agency?
I don't know why we should assume good faith on coinbase's part when the same group of people working on this used to sell spyware to human rights abusers.
Are you referring to Neutrino?
https://decrypt.co/36608/coinbase-ceo-reflects-on-neutrino-a... > Armstrong said that after realizing that Coinbase could’ve hired some “black hats,” he insisted on first speaking to Neutrino staff to find out how much of this was true. After assessing the situation, he sacked some of the ex-Hacking Team members but did not specify who.
> All of the key people who had “some kind of question mark or reputational or values issue” were let go from the company, he said. While some lower-level engineers who “were not the decision-makers and weren’t as culpable” remained with the company
Regardless, I don't trust Brian on this. This is the same guy who shit all over his own staff for being "whistle blowers", claiming that these things have to stay in house. Coinbase failed to do their due diligence, bought a company that made spyware, and then claimed that they fired some people but never clarified who. He also explicitly said he only fired some of the "hacking team" that was responsible for the issues, not the entire team itself.
At the end of the day there's absolutely no reason to take them at the word here, and plenty of reason not to.
If Bob is found standing over a bleeding corpse with a smoking gun in his hand, would it be a misleading headline to say "Bob found standing over bleeding corpse with smoking gun in his hand"?
Complain, I don’t know, about actually having a contract with ICE, perhaps? More meaningful that whatever the article complained about. I would complain about what the quote from the spokesperson really mean, that doesn’t really say what the product does, making us look at the contract to even try to get a proper summary.
You say that Coinbase is selling geolocation data to ICE, which is exactly what the headline says.
I think the issue is really just working with ICE, and the ethical concerns that brings up.
https://blog.coinbase.com/living-up-to-our-values-and-the-ne...
Second, because laws and enforcement thereof in the USA are arbitrary and wielded as a weapon. Coinbase is a crypto company who would get absolutely obliterated by regulation and legal hassle if they don't play ball with the federal government - on the latter's terms, of course. The US federal government expects complete and total dragnet suspicionless surveillance of all electronic payments in the USA. Anyone doing payments in the USA is expected to cooperate fully or face destruction.
The idea that you're free to do anything in the US that isn't illegal is an illusion. Get big or important enough and what you are doing will be made illegal (or existing laws will be reinterpreted to apply to you) if you don't play ball with TPTB. See also: FISA section 702.
The same sort of pressure is applied to Apple, which is why they maintain a backdoor in the end to end crypto of iMessage for the FBI. No amount of money or commercial success allows you to bypass these power structures.
That’s a very large claim to make without any further citation or sourcing. This would be very big news if true.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
iCloud Backup (non e2e) backs up the endpoint keys for iMessage. Apple knows this is bad and they were going to do e2e backups (like Google does for Android) and Apple Legal killed the project on FBI request.
Now... you need metrics and analytics over what’s going on with your products. This sounds like something that helps address that somehow, staying anonymous from what it looks like (it says it has no identifiable information linked to people), but even the contract linked makes it hard to understand.
That just happens to be designed by some very fine people:
> In 2019, Motherboard reported that Neutrino, a blockchain-analysis firm the company acquired in order to create Coinbase Tracer, “was founded by three former employees of Hacking Team, a controversial Italian surveillance vendor that was caught several times selling spyware to governments with dubious human rights records, such as Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.”