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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: 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.