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Developer faces prison time for giving blockchain talk in North Korea
The prominent hacker and Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government Friday after he spoke at an April conference on blockchain technologies in North Korea. The US government considers his presentation to be a transfer of technology—and therefore a violation of US sanctions.
But Griffith's defenders, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, describe the arrest as a massive overreaction. Griffith worked for the Ethereum Foundation, and Buterin called him a friend.
"I don't think what Virgil did gave the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] any kind of real help in doing anything bad," Buterin tweeted on Sunday. "He delivered a presentation based on publicly available info about open source software."
But federal prosecutors argue that Griffith, a US citizen residing in Singapore, knew full well that his trip violated US sanction laws. They say he sought approval for the trip from the US State Department, and his request was denied. Griffith made the trip anyway, traveling through China to evade US travel restrictions.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:49AM (3 children)
When police oppresses an armed gang, and even their unarmed accomplices, it is to prevent the gang oppressing the regular people worse. At least in theory.
There are places where police is a worse thing than any gang, and this only further proves the rule. There is no distilled Good and no purified Bad; the real world only has degrees of damage, and numbers of people suffering it. You strive to minimize that, you "do good".
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:08PM (1 child)
In this case police are not "oppressing" the armed gang. They are protecting the public. Probably enforcing actual laws that are just laws.
That is a separate topic. In the above instance, it seems to be presumed that police were doing their job properly.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:35PM
In the physical reality, you still have armed guys forcing other guys do their bidding under threat of bodily harm.
The "protecting the public" part is the only thing deserving rational consideration, and even there some "protecting" may be doing more damage to more people than the supposed danger itself. This is the reality; it is flawed; and nice-sounding words get invented to hide it from unwary observer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05 2019, @07:09PM
So we should ban guns?