ruskerdax

Cryptocurrencies do not need to be adopted on the same level as state-issued fiat currencies in order to achieve this goal. So long as they provide a means for some people who wish to live outside the state, evade taxes, launder money, and channel resources into actions which harm the state and its ability to enforce laws, it succeeds. As long as there are privacy problems being solved by their use, they will appeal to people who value that privacy over living under the control of state governments.

You didn't answer my question. There is nothing about the existence of a VM that makes it "difficult to explain away" and you did not establish why the fact that there is a VM being used is relevant.

What you are now saying is that it's implausible that the CIA would be able to fake logs (and that's what we're talking about with inode data) on a VM for some reason. It would absolutely not be as simple as "have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi" because it is very likely the guy was actually using a VM legitimately. All the CIA has to do is establish that he was in possession of child pornography. Hell, they don't even need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt if A) the jury, defense, prosecution and / or judge is not tech savvy to understand some of these concepts, and B) if their goal is to trash this guy's life and have it be a warning to other leakers. You don't even need a conviction for that.

It does not strain credulity at all to think that the CIA would go to the effort to fake a small set of data on a VM. The "elaborate detail" is not any more elaborate than in any other instance -- it would be trivially easy to forge. If they wanted to ruin his life, this is a perfect, practical way for them to do it.

The fact that they would forge this data on a VM makes it seem even more plausible to people who don't even understand what VMs are, or how one might fabricate logs like that. It's apparently working on you right now, and you're savvy enough to know about the existence of inode data. You're apparently ready to condemn this guy despite the ludicrous amount of circumstantial evidence that maybe this guy is being set up by an organization literally dedicated to covert operations of this nature, who have even go so far as to detail exactly how they would undertake this exact kind of operation.

There is nothing about the use of a VM that is "hard to explain away." You know what a VM is, right? You know anyone could plant things on a VM just like any other computer, right? You know there are many ways someone like the CIA could obtain a password used to encrypt a VM, right? Perhaps it was not always encrypted? Perhaps his host machine was infected with a key logger? Perhaps they used an exploit in the software he used to encrypt the VM, or a proprietary exploit designed to do exactly this, produced in conjunction with any number of software companies. There are many, many ways this could have happened, and the existence of a VM means literally nothing.

Why are you convinced the presence of a VM in this is significant?

It is extremely within the CIA's ability to plant a VM on a computer. It is not established that the password was known only to "the defendant," as if the CIA alleging that is the case makes it true.

Extensive file system logs are also easy to generate. They could also be legitimate access logs but the VM itself was compromised by the CIA.

IRC logs are literally a text file. It would be extremely easy to fake those as well.

Do you really think the CIA is incapable of doing something like this? Hell, if I were able to obtain the password used to encrypt the VM (easily within the realm of possibility with CIA resources) I could do each one of these things myself.

The CIA has many extremely clear motivations to set this up, and they absolutely have the means to do so. They have also in the past been caught doing far, far worse. In addition the Vault 7 leaks contain instructions for doing exactly what many suspect here -- planting something like CP covertly in order to frame someone.

Come on, man.

I'm betting in your case the meaningful lie didn't involve a bid to literally save the liar's life from an assassination plot by an extremely powerful organization.

Marxists have all the evidence that Capitalism is brought into being by war and conquest, standing in stark contrast to every peaceful Marxist revolution that ended with such great results. If only Capitalists were as enlightened as Einstein, the highly regarded economist and anthropologist, who identified Capitalists as some primitive, predatory animal, we could finally evolve to see the socialist society of the future.

Is there any proof that these statements from the devs are legit?