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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) by DutchUncle on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)
Free speech is constrained by rules about safety (no yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater if it isn't real), security, confidentiality, agreements (yes there IS such a thing as a blackmail contract except it's not called that), etc.
When the Congressional "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" stunt happened, any engineer who ever worked on a secure project knew that they would have been fired, and lost their clearance, for much less of a breach. Yet somehow no punishment has been mentioned for the congresspeople.
Why are laws only for the little people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05 2019, @01:05AM
The Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.