Hacker holds alleged Romney tax returns ransom for $1M in Bitcoins | Hacker News Reader

Hacker holds alleged Romney tax returns ransom for $1M in Bitcoins

venturebeat.com

131 pointszacharycohn137 comments

>The person also set up a bit of a race for Romney: first to pay the sum will receive the goods.

If the person sent the letter to multiple offices (presumably some democrats) they are guaranteeing that the story gets out. If the story gets out, they are all but guaranteeing that Romney will not pay the blackmail money. He has the ability to claim the documents are faked if he does not pay, but he would basically be admitting guilt if he does.

If the blackmailer is looking for money, they chose about the worst way to go about doing it. If however, they want to call attention to Romney's taxes, they chose a great way of doing it.

However, if their goal is to draw attention to the taxes, it would probably be better to just release the documents out right. While I could see going through the blackmail rouse to draw even further attention, it risks cementing in people's minds that the blackmailer is a criminal and not a reliable source of information.

If you're goal is to damage Romney, not releasing the documents immediately only really makes sense if you don't have them. So, while the schadenfreude in me wishes this were true, I seriously doubt it.

If their goal is to harm Romney, blackmailing implies that the taxes are very very heinous, even without releasing them. It also extends the story through many more news cycles.

If they just released the taxes people would quickly find out that Romney does what most very rich guys do: minimize their taxes through legal shenanigans. The story would be out of mind come November.

By letting people's imaginations run wild about what is in there, each individual will create his or her own bogeyman. It's definitely below the belt, but may not be a bad strategy.

This has already hurt Romney because we are talking about his wealth and taxes and implicitly -- if we can trust him. He obviously does not want to talk about these subjects.

I agree, although I think the 'trick' is even more devious. Let's presume this is fake, there are no stolen documents, and Romney's campaign wisely pays nothing. Then the blackmailers quit bluffing and silently drop out of sight. From the public's point-of-view, this result is indistinguishable from Romney paying $1M to prevent the release.

The campaign really only has two options: ignore it, or try to get the blackmailers arrested. If they ignore it, many will conclude that they must have paid to prevent incriminating documents from being released. If they pursue legal channels, they'll call more attention to the tax returns, and in the worst case may even cause the real returns to be revealed by the court.

It's really no win for them.

From another comment thread, I saw transactions on the two Bitcoin accounts are public, so we would know if the ransom was paid.

Another option, pay the ransom yourself and then there would be no way for Romney to prove it wasn't him.

We can confirm a particular account got paid, but we can not rule out a person got paid -- simply because it's easy to get new account to be paid at.

So parent post's point stands -- his campaign can't reliably claim they ignored the blackmailer.

All bitcoin transactions are public.

My sense is that it's a false flag operation precisely to cast doubt on the credibility of any tax returns purported to be his.

Does everything need to be a conspiracy?

The easiest explanation is that this is just some guy hoping for free bitcoins.

'Free' bitcoins? I'd think he's taking considerable risk, and the nature of BTC is such that if you can do traffic analysis on more than a few nodes in the network, it's going to be relatively straightforward to track down the node where an address is accessed from. There is no guarantee that he (or she) will be able to access their ill-gotten gains without getting caught.

The risk here being? That Romney will sue the guy in civil court? He's trolling the media for bitcoins, how much do you think he has to lose?

I guess there's an extortion case to be made.

But caught where? Eastern Europe?

Anywhere that you can use TOR, or a VPN that doesn't keep logs.

You use the word "conspiracy" to pre-emptively discredit my position, grasshopper.

I understood what you were trying to say, but I think you discredited yourself by misusing the term "false flag operation" before he said anything.

Edit(ing because I can't reply yet): I think in the context you were using it, "hoax" would have been a more appropriate term. "False flag" would mean the intent is to falsely attribute blame on someone innocent (usually some geopolitical entity), and is more simply referred to as "framing" on a smaller scale.

False flag is a kind of hoax, and my point is that the goal is for it to benefit Romney.

That's exactly what I thought you were saying.

Maybe it's because I've been dealing with other people today who think that the simplest explanation of the Dan Rather memos was that it was all a master plot by Karl Rove, so my patience for people suggesting non-obvious routes that lead back to a politician had already been significantly spent.

Is it possible this is something set up to benefit Romney? Yes, it's possible. It's also possible it's something set up to benefit Obama. Such speculation seems useless since the simplest explanation is that someone thinks they can make some money. EDIT or for the lulz.

What name do you suggest for the concept?

Just like Karl Rove did with Dan Rather's forged letter about Bush going AWOL. Worked like a charm.

crazy political hacker. demands bitcoins for anonymity

sends USB keys in the mail

that part lead me to believe he/she is probably clueless

I don't know how anonymous bitcoin is, but sending a USB key in the mail could be better than allowing for online download

You simply take the envelope to be mailed into a residential area and hand it to any mailman walking around.

There are no surveillance cameras, and the mailman isn't going to remember shit.

Heck, even driving to any sufficiently large city rand(10,50) miles from where you live and putting the enveloppe in any random mailbox is pretty much guaranteed anonymity.

I would be wary of surveillance cams - they would know the thing was dropped in a box between x and y times, check the cameras and have a list of potentials. They could then go back and follow you after the fact to see where you went.

If you recall this is how they caught the guy who had a car bomb in his car near times square in NYC.

Much safer to either place in someone else's outbound mail in a deep and foreign-to-you residential neighborhood or, ideally drop into a mailmans box in his vehicle when he isn't looking.

For example, when a mailman parks in front of a multi-tennent mailbox on the street and he is standing within feet of his vehicle - they typically leave the rear door open, you could place it in at that time without being seen.

There are cameras on most suburban and rural mailboxes in the states? Here in Australia there are plenty of mailboxes where you likely wouldn't even be witnessed at all placing mail into.

There are cameras on anything that can accept packages over a certain size. Kinda stupid since the anthrax came in an envelope, but you know, anything to support the panopticon.

edit: I could be wrong about the above, I haven't found anything to support my assertion, though I am pretty sure I got that impression from the automated kiosks. They display a notification that packages over a certain size cannot be accepted without a camera. It's possible that a lot of rural POs don't have cameras though I'd be surprised if it were common.

https://epic.org/privacy/postal/postalapc.pdf

Not on residential, which is why I mention that. In any urban city environment my money is on cameras moreso than not.

Either of those would work, or just pay a homeless guy $10 to drop it in the mailbox for you.

Does not the USB keys contain hardware identifications ? They could trace who purchased it or which store sold it and when ?

Would you expand on that a little?

[edited for tone/less brevity]

You can walk up to any mailman/mailwoman in the USA and hand them a stamped, addressed letter and they will throw it in their mailbag and then at the end of their shift they will dump all the outgoing mail into a sorting machine.

There are un-surveiled postal drops all over the USA.

Remember the anthrax letters? Case was never solved.

You are technically correct about the anthrax case, but that's because the guy who most likely did it killed himself.

I know that the original suspect was the wrong guy, and that the government basically tried to ruin the guy's life anyways, but the second suspect (the dead one) seemed to be the real deal.

This doesn't really detract from your statement about the post office though, I believe they found the anthrax guy because they can trace the source of the anthrax.

EDIT: It's been a while since I looked into this case, but apparently in the last few years a lot of the evidence has been called into question by external scientific organizations.

I stridently reject any "lone gunmen who commit suicide before interrogation" explanations.

(edit for adverbs)

You probably didn't mean to use 'strident' there. From Webster's dictionary 1913:

Stri'dent (?), a. [L. stridens, -entis, p.pr. of stridere to make a grating or creaking noise.] Characterized by harshness; grating; shrill.

This case will have a lot of resources thrown at it, which means tracking down where the USB key was bought from, where the envelopes are from, printing marks, where it was mailed from, how it was mailed, surveillance cameras within distance, toll booths, traffic cameras, witness statements, door knocking in the areas, electronic purchasing records, etc. you name it.

It provides 8, 10, 12+ more bits of information in narrowing down the suspect

He sent two letters, so you double up the amount of information and then can narrow down the bits by overlapping what you find

The FBI uses a computer program now that can take all these bits of information and consolidate them, so it no longer even requires a single investigator to have the complete picture.

You can send out dozens of agents and local police to collect as much information as possible and to log it, software will do the job of spotting patterns, narrowing down ranges, etc.

By venturing outside of the realm of the internet where the advantage is with the hacker/perp you step right into a world of real evidence where the FBI has a huge advantage with resources, knowledge, information, ability to subpoena, physical evidence etc.

Very different to just a single IP address on the other side of the world

Many large and high profile cases have been broken with such evidence, for eg. BTK killer

Seemed a bit strange to think of using bitcoins but to then undo that work by leaving an evidence trail and a lot of information to narrow you down with

That's because there wasn't any actual "hacking". Obviously they were leaked by the Obama administration, which needed a way to get them out there without owning up to being the source of the leak. I'm sure in twenty years or so we'll learn the "hacker" is a member of the Obama campaign who got the documents directly from the IRS.

Congratulations, Democrats. You put this generation's Nixon in the White House.

Wow.

All the conspiracy theories. Im an outsider; i live in Holland. I dont think you americans realize just how paranoid you guys come accross, at times like these.

From both sides. If you had any distance, you would realize this is the work of a troll, with no political ambition and no secret documents.

He is making you all consider the most ridiculus scenarios where the world is filled with people you cant trust, but who are somehow able to collaborate in these large scale conspiracies.

If it makes you feel better, remember that there are far more of us who are reading these threads than commenting. All comments on the internet come from the fringe.

Well, if you're right, and this is all the work of an internet troll who doesn't actually possess any documents, then those documents won't be released. But if they are released, will you be willing to admit you may have misread the situation?

Sure. I don't know what's really going on. But neither do you. Yet you speculate the worst scenario and start slandering half of your nation.

Here in Holland we have a saying, where the literal translation in English would be "The inkeeper trusts his guests after his own character". Meaning that when a person has little faith in people, they are actually afraid that people are as morally corrupted as they themselves are.

In general, nice people collaborate more easily. Civilization is the conspiracy of nice people making a nice country. Except it's not a secret. So, when I don't know anything, and you don't know anything, the difference in our assumption, is the difference in our character.

Your speculation and slander tells us nothing about reality. It only tells us something about you.

Or maybe it's just a more informed opinion than one from Holland.

Time will tell.

"informed" does not mean what you think it means, you speculate, and then point and slander a group of people.

If you were informed, you would have relevant information, not unsubstaniated accusations. What gives you the right to just publically accusse anybody based on nothing but your prejudices?

I think the track record of the current administration puts my accusation on pretty solid ground. As I said, the election is in November, so I expect we'll know in four to six weeks.

Whoa. When did I leave hacker news?

Actually I think he increases his chances of getting paid by your own reasoning. Who says it has to be paid by Romney? The 1 million Bit Coins could be paid by anyone with a desire to make him look guilty, but not something that might cause an issue with the election (like the release of stolen tax documents of the candidate). If the blackmail is paid the day before the 28th, everyone will assume Romney was hiding something, even if he wasn't.

It might be an attempt to goad the U.S. political establishment into outlawing Bitcoin.

Well now it would certainly be on of Romney's top priorities if he ever gets to become president.

Well, it certainly will further damage Bitcoin's reputation.

Great logic. One Sherlock award for you :)

They could also just release them claiming that someone paid the million bucks. This would harm Romney even more. Ecause them Romney would be sweating bullets wondering who had the money to make him look so stupid.

And to everyone else it would appear that if someone was willing to pay the ransom to release these then there must be good meat in them and it would have an even more negative impact on Romneys credibility.

It is not trivial to check the bitcoin block chain to verify that enough money was transferred into the publicly-known release-now account?

Yes it is trival. As of right now:

0.338 BTC (~4 USD) have been sent to prevent release of the information: http://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8...

1.145 BTC (~16 USD) have been sent to vote for full disclosure: http://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6...

Of course there is no way to know it was not the 'hackers' who made these BC transactions.

Yes, the purpose of the Bitcoin block chain is to disseminate transaction information to prevent double-spending.

I am completely ignorant to bitcoin, so I cannot answer.

> Ecause them Romney would be sweating bullets wondering who had the money to make him look so stupid.

"Liberal criminals paid $1M for these boring old tax returns of mine. I believe in an individual's right privacy, in personal freedom, and in the rule of law."

The data is tainted by the means of its acquisition, and (rightly or wrongly) that taint would spread through the "liberal media" to Obama's campaign itself.

Even from a purely self-interested perspective ignoring the illegality and immorality of breaking into someone's private information, the Democratic campaign most definitely doesn't want any release of tax returns tainted. What would be ideal for them is if Romney overreacted and released them on his own to pre-empt their release. As a second best alternative, if everyone just forgot about this anonymous criminal and someone plausibly unrelated released them later on.

Any release by this guy would result in a conversation centered around the release itself, not the tax documents.

This appears to be an elaborate troll.

A commenter on the Reddit discussion of this news item is shedding further details here: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ze9zn/hackers_say_...

I also find this comment noteworthy:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ze9zn/hackers_say_...

  Fake...
  Unless an employee did it...
  because
  PWC uses Locklizard electronic document security..
  a password is needed to sign on
  a password is required to open the document
  a password is needed to print a document
  no copying or extracting of the file is permitted
  document control stops the file from being open after hours     (middle of the night...lol)
  and the files are encrypted and requires a 48 bit key on   the persons pc and server to match...
  So if someone steals the file its useless...

Well, that's silly. A password required to print a document is defeated by a person with the password required to open a document who has a smartphone with a camera.

>> PWC uses Locklizard electronic document security

Wow, a lot of assumptions here: was it implemented properly, was the master password stored on file server, was file server configure correctly, is data transferred securely before it is encrypted, etc tec

And the assumption that the PwC US uses Locklizard, and not a PwC firm in any other countries.

You know, considering they're separate partnerships and all.

And that's how we know the comment on reddit is trolling.

During tax season, i.e., right now (for extended deadline returns due Sept 15/17th, as Romney's are), accountants (especially Big 4 accountants like PWC) frequently work past midnight on returns. A security system which locked files after hours would be functionally useless in a firm the size of PWC.

Moreover, Locklizard is a DRM solution intended for use with distributed files (i.e., videos, presentations, etc.). It is not an internal solution...

1. These would be historical documents (i.e not refiled this year) which could be treated differently to 'working copies'.

2. These files would likely be distributed at some point. So it's not unreasonable that they would use one solution for both internal and external use cases.

1) All tax returns are live until the statute of limitations for assessments expires, i.e., usually 6 years. Tax software propogates changes from prior years to the current years. Prior years within the SOL are kept "live" b/c amendments need to be propogated to subsequent years. There is no distinction between historical returns and "working copies."

2) Tax returns are either filed electronically, using files with no DRM (per IRS instructions), or via printouts. Digital copies are distributed by the client themselves, so any DRM would be imposed by the client, not PwC. Hence, it is completely unreasonable to expect that PWC would use a DRM solution like the purported software for tax returns.

Maybe not:

http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecit...

At the end of this Reddit comment is a link to an alleged screenshot of Romney tax filing page 1.

That is almost certainly a fake. Lines 7-21 don't sum to line 22. The zip code is the zip for the Romney campaign, not Romney's home.

http://i.imgur.com/HK4mp.jpg

334K health insurance deduction? WTF?

It's fake but that's probably a reasonable amount for a rich person whose spouse has multiple sclerosis. Those are therapy dressage horses.

font looks fishy

PwC has already made a statement to the effect that no such incursion has been detected and no documents were compromised. The whole thing seems like a setup to get a bidding war going(though they're hardly making any bitcoins, yet).

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/09...

PwC has already made a statement to the effect that no such incursion has been detected and no documents were compromised.

In a story that smells like a big pile of bullshit, the one easily-believable piece- No, the one downright-expected part is that a private company was unaware of a data breach.

NOT a hoax, GOP confirmed they received a copy:

http://google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnashvillecit...

Of course that data could be fake. But something in meatspace is happening.

Right, because if you wanted to send a message to the Romney campaign, you would do it through a regional GOP office in TN...

I don't understand why someone would think that this would work. The person who hacked into Palin's personal email account didn't even find anything interesting and he was sentenced to a year in prison (some of it was served in a halfway house). A person who attempts to blackmail a politician for $1 million is probably going to prison for a couple of decades.

It's probably the person that recently stole the $250k worth of bitcoins. Just hype up your commodity with a PR stunt before you unload it. It worked well for Facebook!

Agreed. I think the real goal is getting a mention of bitcoin on major news outlets then hope increased interest means increased demand and prices. Seems like it might be working already: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgMzm1g10zm2g25...

Is anybody credible running this story yet?

Slightly more information at The Atlantic Wire, but they seem to be approaching the story cautiously:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/someones-cla...

Save their reticence, that site is all about subjective gossipy stuff. It looks like they have aspirations, but I wouldn't call them credible. If enough other people ran the story they would too.

The source article that VentureBeat used, which has more detail: http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/secret-servi...

The ransom note: http://pastebin.com/1j1yzQ9S

One option I have not seen put forward is the possibility of someone in the Romney camp doing this. If Romney really has something to hide this could be political back up in case the tax forms go public.

Two big benefits; 1)it is now harder for the democrats to release them if they have copies on ice 2) If released the Romney camp can then say some democrat bought them from a 'terrorist' (or suitable term) and muddy the waters by flinging accusation backs.

I really don't think this is likely, but it is possible.

Neither Romney or Obama care about civil rights. It is a one party system. The only thing that Obama has done that is any good is the Affordable Care Act, we still have a military empire running most of the fucking world. Why are there bases in Germany/Italy/Japan/central Asia/...? We have more social [race relations/healthcare/education] problems here in America than Western Europe does, yet we are fighting wars halfway across the planet.

Neither Obama nor Romney will change that.

Well, this is one way to make bitcoins look seedy and give a negative impression to politicians and the mainstream.

But on the other hand, kind of bad ass.

In what way is ransoming private sensitive financial information on the Internet "bad ass"? Would it be bad ass if it were a candidate that you liked? You? Your family?

I'm no Romney supporter, but this is the ugliest kind of politics.

Wait... I thought as a Presidential candidate he would be handing that over anyway. Is that optional? I'm confused.

There's no legal requirement for any candidate of office to disclose any tax returns. It has become a standard thing to do, and Romney has released at least one (2010) and has pledged to release another (2011), but it is totally optional.

Obama, on the other hand, has released tax returns going back to 2000.

Got it. I guess since they've all done it I assumed that was just what they did. I personally don't really give a crap about their tax returns. I fail to see what it matters how much money they made last year or 10yrs ago. Is that some sort of measure of how good of a President they will be?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-30-2012/rnc-201...

While a funny piece of satire typical of Jon Stewart & The Daily Show, I don't see what that has anything to do with how the amount of money a man makes compares to his ability to lead the country. Perhaps rather than just posting a link to a funny video, you could put some thought into a response that means something to the comment to which you are responding.

How a man made his fortune says a lot about his leadership style and expectations. Presidential tax returns are expected to be release by normal non-partisans.

The video is not 100% fiction. For example, Romney did dodge the Vietnam war draft by going to France on his Mormon mission.

Statistically, American readers of Hacker News use the Daily Show as a source of news more than any other media outlet.

While I disagree with you on some points, thank you for at least making them. Sure, The Daily Show is not 100% fiction... but it is at times a one-sided, slightly exaggerated representation of non-fiction... to get some laughs. It is as much comedy as it is news. It is certainly not unbiased so it really shouldn't be used as a pure news source anymore that Fox News should. In truth, most news outlets have some degree of bias, but shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report take what ever they can use to be funny. Letterman and Leno too.

So Romney went to a private school... so? So his dad gave him a lot of money... so? So he did a Mormon mission in France while the Vietnam war was going on... so? I don't call that a dodge anymore than my dad not going because he had childhood polio. Not every single able bodied man was slogging through the jungle.

I would agree that how a man made his living could be an indicator of his leadership and expectations. But not the only one... and not always a good one. A person could be moderately successful at business, not make a huge amount of money... and be a raging dick of a leader. A person could be very successful in a business, make a crap ton of money... and be a horrible leader... or a great leader. He could have inherited a bazillion dollars from his family. Or made a couple of wise investments 30 years ago. Or won the lottery. None of which say anything about his leadership style or what we expect from him. I think there are better, less private ways to find out his leadership style and expectations than looking at some glorified spreadsheet the IRS collects every year. Sure it can be one of the useful items... and he did release some.

(for the record, I'm not a Romney supporter. I just don't really care about his tax returns. I don't care about Obama's either. I'll look at the candidates for their policies and ideas. And on some level their ability to manage money.)

People make the argument that it's a measure of character, but I don't buy it.

I kind of like that it has provided a concrete example of how different people pay vastly different effective tax rates, but that could have been done in a bunch of different ways.

I think the intent is for the candidate to show that he/she has not been involved in illegal/suspicious activity. Back in the 70's a sitting VP had to leave office due to charges of extortion, bribery, and others (see Wikipedia on Spiro Agnew). It was Mitt's father, George, who began the voluntary practice of disclosing tax records.

A measure of character? Jeez... I hope we don't have too many people measuring a person's character based on the thickness of their wallet.

Well, when a guy is running on a platform of being as American as mom and apple pie, it wouldn't look good for him to be using all kinds of offshore tax havens and loopholes.

I think it is more about the aggressiveness if their loophole exploitation than mere thickness.

Just like I encourage my tax man to find every possible way for me to reduce my tax burden, I would expect everyone to do that. A loophole is a legal way to do that. If a person has the know-how to aggressively find and use the resources available to them... that shows a great deal of character to me. Don't hate the player... hate the game. You have a problem with a loophole, lobby to get it closed. Or use it also. But I imagine this view is not shared by everyone.

Openness and transparency makes corruption more difficult.

Do you really think they are going to report illegal stuff on their taxes? Those get sent to the IRS.

No, but there are many forms of corruption and immoral tax-avoidance that are technically legal.

ah... morality. How we all like to think ours is the one.

>Obama, on the other hand, has released tax returns going back to 2000.

Pelosi won't release her tax returns because she was only the 3rd most powerful person in the US government...

She jokes that she will release them when she runs for president.

I think that all these crooks in government be required to release all of their financial information. They need to be held accountable to us the us public. After all - they work for us. We need transparency, we need to see when they are taking kickbacks or making side deals, bribes ETC.

What is your take on this?

My take is that this little token of transparency doesn't really matter all that much. It's not like there's a line item on the 1040 for "bribe income". Fixing the transparency and disclosure requirements for super-pacs would probably be even more valuable than opening up everyone's taxes, which does have personal privacy implications.

Nancy Pelosi, like Romney, is making a strategic decision not to disclose because she sees the drawbacks as greater than the benefits of doing so. And just like with Romney's taxes, or the Obama's "short form" birth certificate, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that anyone has something to hide

> It's not like there's a line item on the 1040 for "bribe income"

Amusingly: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html#d0e33264 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html#d0e34287

There is a line for bribe income. You include it as "other income" and must provide an attached statement describing each of the income items that are included in "other income".

Obama released his long form birth certificate and the Hawaii Department of Health certified it.

What more could he possibly do ?

You missed my point, which is that people jump to the "they must be hiding something" conclusion too readily. I don't doubt, for a second, where and when our president was born.

I actually am more upset about it being ransomed rather than simply released.

Releasing someone's private financial documents against their will is pretty ugly as well, but I agree that the ransom/blackmail/extortion angle makes this particularly ugly.

"it" is BS.

The person/organization in charge has to be caught, otherwise the world is being signaled that bitcoin is the perfect extortion currency.

No, Bitcoin is not the perfect extortion currency. The transactions are public, so the value is traceable. Even if it is moved into one billion accounts which are split into another billion accounts, if any of the money ends up being spent to the accounts of known actors then it can be seized and the purchases can potentially be traced.

I have no doubt that the Secret Service would monitor that account and the transitive closure of the transaction graph involved for the next 50 years if a payment was made to it. Hell, if there is any value currently assigned to that account it is effectively pinned.

The owner of the account would have to work very hard to launder it.

Wouldn't 'laundering' look exactly like 'sending the BTC to any of the dozens of services which store BTC for you in a centralized account, (SR, instawallet, etc) and then withdrawing that same amount? This produces bitcoins not visibly linked to the originals - it's exactly like depositing and then withdrawing money from a bank (a bank which doesn't make a record of people's identity).

If the authorities observe transactions in the block chain sent to known actors (like a centralized BTC bank), the actor can be subpoenaed, raided, or shutdown.

You think? I'm pretty sure they already have sufficient motivation to shutdown Silk Road, which for laundering purposes is essentially a bank. By what mechanism do you propose they raid Silk Road's records, assuming such even exist?

Reminds me of the cypherpunk's 'assassination politics' episode.

(I do not condone assassination)

Episode? Did you mean "essay"? This one, in particular: http://cryptome.org/jdb/ap.htm

Side note: the story of the author of that essay in an interesting one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell

No, yes, maybe: I meant legal episode of the author of that essay.

Everyone should read this for some interesting comparisons,

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-trickster-rove-b...

Blogspam. The linked article isn't even comprehensible. I really wish I had enough karma to downvote.

For people who didn't know the background story on Rove, is probably incomprehensible. I wish I could find a better synthesis, other option is to link to the entire documentary.

This situation appears to be no more than an attempt to scam money off frenzied people. But it does sound like an entertaining book/movie plot.

While pitching Coinbase to investors today, I got asked several times about early use cases. Opportunity?

FYI, users are not anonymous on Coinbase.

If this were legit, why would they ask for Bitcoins when those are so easy to steal anyway ?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4479370

What? You can't just steal Bitcoins out of someone's wallet. That's like saying, people get robbed, thus cash is unsafe.

The examples like you posted, are people who stored bitcoins in wallets on servers unencrypted. It would be like giving you my wallet and then you getting robbed.

I have always thought that not releasing the returns was part of Rommney's strategy. The Dems will put so much effort into slamming Mitt for this that it serves as a distraction. In the 11th hour he will release them and there will be nothing much there to criticize. This will not only have distracted the Dems, it will make them look like bafoons.

Good point. Like Obama's birth certificate and college transcripts, the more "birthers" talk about them, the crazier they sound.

Except that every single other presidential candidate has released several years of tax returns and no other president has ever has his birth certificate put in question.

But yeah, other than that minor point, the situation is exactly equivalent.

r00fus, you are a rose among thorns!

Dems have control of the executive branch which includes the IRS and DOJ(if Mitt took amnesty in 2009). They probably have a good "sense" of what is on his tax returns. Previous administration knew and leaked info about "Valerie Plame". CIA covert agent's identity are little more secure than someones tax returns.

>Today, a hacker allegedly stole Mitt Romney’s tax returns, is demanding $1 million in Bitcoins for silence, and sent a USB drive and letter to the GOP and Democratic party offices in Williamson County, Tennessee as proof.

The hacker stole the information today and was able to physically deliver a letter and usb drive to two government offices? I wonder how he did this without being caught on video? There are cameras everywhere around these offices. He could not have used the postal service as it would have taken more than a day. Courier services would have witnesses.

Strange that he would not just email the information to a contact email in each of the offices.

This whole thing is nothing but a Con (a pretty good one too).

You're not groking the grammar correctly. "Today" references the breaking of the story, not necessarily that the entire series of events all happened today.

It's a bad sentence regardless.

The lack of parallelism with the writer's verb tenses is pretty embarrassing.

Romney war room's reaction: http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9405/b6e532a7a0ba.jpg

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