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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.

All bitcoin transactions are public.

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.

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.

What name do you suggest for the concept?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Whoa. When did I leave hacker news?

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.

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

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, it certainly will further damage Bitcoin's reputation.

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

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?

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

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

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.

> 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.