EFF Challenges New Jersey Subpoena Issued to MIT Student Bitcoin Developers

I think what the state of New Jersey is worried about is either that the authors are being dishonest about the informed nature of the consent, or are viewing this as producing a tool that is too easy to exploit (whatever that means).

Personally, I think that's pretty absurd, but I can understand how a non-technical attorney reading about a MIT student developing something that lets websites mine bitcoins on consumer computers might get the wrong idea. As usual, the hard-headed nature of american prosecutors does us all a disservice.

Edit: rayiner points out that no one is being prosecuted, so I should probably rein in my rhetoric about prosecutors. Still seems like an extreme reaction.

It would be great if CPU mining of bitcoin wasn't so laughably inefficient as to be pointless. The hashing rate that Tidbit claims to achieve, if left running continuously at the current difficulty level, would earn about a penny per decade.

If sites started doing this (using a visitor's GPUs and Litecoin more likely), the downside to a consumer is the extra cost in electricity (which goes to electricity co, not the website) and lower lifetime of hardware. If it's all opt-in, it's up to the consumer whether they think it's worth their cost to "support" the website. I don't see an offer of removing ads as a benefit because that can easily be done by just installing AdBlockPlus, the real benefit is feeling good about "supporting" a site. (And unless they happen to have a good GPU they'd probably support the site more by just clicking a few ads, or actually sending them real money via any of the micropayment services including bitcoin.)

I think the fear is this happening in the background, without your knowledge, causing you to pay more for electricity or draining your laptop battery.

A trade of unused processing time for displaying the site content. I usually block every ad, but I this is something I would be ok with.

How so? If I embed a piece of malware in a website that launches an .exe on your computer without you knowing it, that certainly constitutes access "beyond what was authorized." If that piece of malware mines bitcoins and uses my power supply to do it, the lack of authorization is extremely relevant. I agree that "written" authorization might be overkill, but the general idea of access without permission comes across clearly.

Of course, I don't think Tidbit was actually being spread as malware -- but it's easy to imagine a similar system that does.

Also, since "unauthorized computer access" is a crime, isn't that effectively just asking them to provide the court with a list of crimes that they are involved in?

You can't just subpoena people for a list of crimes that they have committed, surely the 5th amendment prevents that. (For instance, you cannot legally compel felons to register firearms that they are not legally allowed to have). You couldn't subpoena a suspected bank robber for a list of robberies that they committed.

Did Jeremy Rubin forget to endorse Christie last election?

>Why not turn over the source code?

They do not want to and don't believe the state has the power to compel them to. What more reason should they need?

>Since this is partially cryptographic software and also software that can be used to control a user's machine, it seems to me imperative for anyone who wants to give up control of their CPU cycles to know precisely how they're being used, or to trust the pool of smart cows who can study it for us.

Your set includes every piece of closed source software ever installed.

Responding substantively to the subpoena opens yourself up to needless legal jeopardy. They request "all past versions" and you squashed some commits at some point? Maybe that's perjury if the attorney general doesn't like you.

> Why not turn over the source code?

Other than a reflexive, blind compliance with capricious government demands, why would they? If you want it to be open sourced, it's of course fine to ask for that, but using the government's threat of force to accomplish it is just sinister.

It's bigger than that. Theoretically, anyone can use the law to go after anyone, anywhere, for anything. For example, the government of California, where I don't live and have never once been, could accuse me of trafficking drugs there, which I haven't done. Or, I could sue you for personal injury, even though we've never had contact outside this comment thread. Indeed, you could do the same to me.

Our legal system exists to resolve these claims. Ideally, when an absurd claim is made, the courts toss it. But crucially, that doesn't prevent the victim having to waste time and resources on a defense or response.

What's the solution to this problem? Usually, it's to create some disincentive against outrageous or frivolous legal actions. Sometimes, this can take the form of sanctions, which can involve a monetary penalty. But what happens when a state government is the one initiating the action? Theoretically, sanctions might be possible in some scenarios. But I'd imagine that in practice, governments get sanctioned only once in a blue moon, if that.

'Will the state pay for all these expenses?' For the most part, no.

I strongly suspect that one of the reasons for using a subpoena here is that it transfers the effort and cost of performing an investigation to the respondents, who have been put in the position of proving their innocence, or rather that no crime has actually occurred.

The interrogatories show that the attorney-general's office has made no effort to understand what this software does, and has made no investigation into whether anything suspicious has actually happened. They are on a fishing trip, with the subpoena as the dynamite.

Right, when did coding something at a hackathon as a proof of concept become a crime?

Why does NJ think they have any jurisdiction here? Frankly, this is just as absurd as another country issuing demands for legal docs from someone in the US for them doing something that's perfectly legal in the US, but illegal in that country.

Well, before this you just didn't know you needed to worry about it.

But a prominent digital rights group has stepped in and it is likely a reasonable resolution will come of it.

With a Core i7 3930k you could get 66.6 Mhash/sec.

That would give you 0.00001278 bitcoins per day or 1278 satoshis per day.