Topic: Decentralised crime fighting using private set intersection protocols - page 5. (Read 33406 times)

I'm not proposing any changes to mining rules. So block size limits are irrelevant (for this thread).

With small blocks when "outlaw" transactions become difficult to get mined due to blacklists, the senders of those transactions simply need to up the fees to the point where it is profitable to setup an anonymous mining operation behind Tor or some other anti-censorship technology and start mining those transactions. Provided >50% of the hashing power is willing to build on those blocks the transactions will get into the blockchain.

With large blocks, setting up that anonymous mining operation at best requires access to large quantities of anonymous bandwidth - not a trivial thing to obtain - and at worst is impossible because getting a copy of the UTXO set can be made impossible without revealing your identity.

now you have jumped the shark

The point is that the "trusted" people take some action when they see a blacklist hit. So the act of buying something from them results in something happening. If the blacklist is a criminal one like "money obtained by selling child porn" then the trusted nodes probably would file a police report and then continue about their day. Maybe a month later an investigator will come back and follow up that lead.

Once something has been done, there's no point in everyone further down the chain doing anything else. The money moved into the hands of an innocent party and tracking things further is pointless. Hence, whitelisting.

See the "Bob the Murderer" example I posted further up the thread for a concrete illustration of this.

The reddit comments are funny. I am not sure any of them actually read the proposal. Probably it was too long.

Outlaw currencies are useful to outlaws all the time - you just need a currency that's only locally outlawed. Look at Argentina right now with US dollars, or the US decades ago with gold itself.

More importantly, regardless of what does or doesn't happen, Bitcoin as a technology can, with 1MB blocks, survive in the event of fairly severe oppression. I'd much rather have such a technology exist and have that option than not have it. It might not be as valuable as a BitcoinLite without those strong security guarantees, but the world is a better place when we have every option available to us.

That's why I work on Bitcoin.

That seems disingenuous.  What do small blocks do to prevent coin blacklists from being enforced by governments?

Please dont regulate bitcoin and destroy it.

"REALLY worries me to see one of the core developers trying to get support for making blacklists a part of Bitcoin! If Mike wants a currency with blacklists he should go back to working on Google Wallet! I support censorship free currency, not one with authorities trying to freeze my funds!" -jedironpaul

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He's just trying to make Bitcoin better, but I'm not sure he realises just how flawed and dumb it is.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither".
Since time immemorial we have wrestled with what is good and bad, and legal and illegal. It's not fucking black and white like Mike seems to think. If it was we wouldn't need courts, every circumstance is different." -ferretinjapan

from:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1awu5j/decentralized_crime_fighting_aka_blacklists_for/

Doesn't this make the entire idea worthless? The bad guys just have to create a bunch of new wallets, transfer money to them, then use them to buy things from "trusted" people to remove the taint... In which case the bad guys still have full use of the coins.

Lol!

This is the great thing about keeping the blocksize small: when you get tired of this Peter Todd guy blattering endlessly about fidelity bonded distributed hash table fraud proofs or whatever the fuck he's smoking with his art school buddies, you can put him on ignore and never deal with him and his complex payment systems again. Just tell whomever you want to pay that you're going to use some other solution. On the other hand, with the One True All Encompassing Blockchain I simply have to use the reference client with Mike's (quite good) LevelDB database patches for every payment I make.

You have a choice.

I heard Jacob Applebaum (from the Tor Project) say once that "the architecture defines the political situation", and like it or not, Bitcoin's architecture easily permits this, regardless of Mike's opinion about it.

Fungibility is an essential property for money to have.  If this idea is implemented bitcoin will no longer be money.  It will be worthless.

I am not surprised that this fatal idea is still around, because there are always more newbies picking up bitcoin every day.  I am surprised that an established bitcoiner would have this idea.

Mike Hearn, next time you have an idea please post under a pseudonym.  That will allow people to judge your ideas on their merits.  Posting under your main account is irresponsible.

How is the majority just switching off a blacklist different to democratically rejecting it? It's the same thing, no?

Also, remember the whitelisting aspect. Once the coins pass through someone who you trust to have done something reasonable, the taint is gone.


What power?

Yes, Bitcoin is ultimately built by people who do things with it. Create businesses, sell goods and services, provide infrastructure, write software, design hardware, etc. Buying some coins and sitting on them exposes you to risk in some sense, but not of the same level as say running an exchange. The guy who runs Mt Gox has to follow rules that can result in him being jailed if anything goes wrong.


I'm responding to people who aren't doing or posting anything beyond, "zomg mike is an evil statist!" ... and pointing out that these posts don't carry much weight.

Dansker, I already read that thread. The concept of taint isn't new, for sure. But I think the concrete objections in that thread are addressed in this one. For instance, "what happens if coins get tainted after you already accepted them" - no problem. You could report it (to whomever), if you wanted to. Maybe someone will follow up later if it doesn't seem like too little bang for buck. Or you could do nothing, depending on your wish. If you are known to reliably take some useful action when coins get tainted then you are or could be a nexus and others can check your own whitelist, so then you'd effectively clear the taint. It isn't intended to last forever. Indeed it physically can't, the tracing process has limits even without whitelisting.

Seems unpractical. All the perpetrator has to do is to launder his tainted coins (by using a mixer service, or by exchanging them for gold/fiat and back) before it goes into blacklist.

It's typical g$$gle attitude. Spy on everything that moves.

Mike, this attitude is thoroughly bizarre, but your attitudes overall are appearing increasingly so.

Is there a way that we can blacklist all coin outputs from your addresses? It'd probably be the biggest blacklist in your entire system, Mike.  

Are you really resorting to ad hominem attacks now? I think you should take a time out for a few days before you post again, for your own sakes.

Then when you have cooled down, I would be very pleased if you read my post from september 2012, where I discuss issues similar to the ones your proposal could result in: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-bitcoin-could-turn-into-a-big-brother-nightmare-114372

Or maybe you will not deem me worthy of a response, seeing how I value keeping my physical persona detached from my online one?

+2

+1

edit; for those who dont have time to visit, the user is calling for a developer black list.

A comment in the Reddit post that sums it up:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1awu5j/decentralized_crime_fighting_aka_blacklists_for/c91lonj

I bet if we had a discussion about legalizing child pornography here because of the ultimate existence of Tor and other services, people would be much more receptive to the theory and willing to discuss it, despite how disgusting the concept would be to so many people. Why can't the logic apply here? This thread is just being hijacked by vocal anti-intellectual forum users. How many people effectively calling Mike a statist conspirator even know what game theory is and how it applies here? This idea doesn't advance the libertarian utopia you all want, but it's still worth considering because governments will eventually consider imposing these types of restrictions anyway. We should think of reasons why it can't work, or any tangential discussions which have implications for Bitcoin's acceptance. Mike clearly loves Bitcoin and isn't suggesting something which would be imposed on others.

Controversial discussions are the best discussions.

I think Mike puts too much faith in the ability of people to stop accepting a blacklist if it's being abused. Rather, the blacklists will cascade because it puts the value of your business or coins at risk in future commerce otherwise. At best, through the ability to tailor your coins to trigger the fewest blacklists in certain contexts, the entire system would be balkanized by each country.

Maybe there is a way to democratically reject a blacklist if abuse occurs, so people aren't scared of putting their coins at risk?

Unfortunately most countries have similar laws. Not as extreme or bureaucratic as in the US, thank goodness. By the way, I'm a Brit who lives in Switzerland.

One reason every country has AML laws is that they're forced to through threat of sanctions That's why simply saying, hey, let's try and dismantle the system ... it's a huge risk because your chance of convincing everyone, everywhere simultaneously that they've been doing it wrong for 40 years is very low.


Yes you can go fully underground. But then how do you exchange Bitcoins against the money you earn with your salary? How do you buy anything from a normal business? If your income is in Bitcoins earned via a hidden service how do you pay your rent?

Trying to build an entirely separate parallel economy that never touches the real one isn't going to work. That really would destroy Bitcoin!


Yes, how dare I appear reasonable! It doesn't get worse than that! Watch as I quake in fear in front of the almighty Carlton Banks!

I think some people here need to get real - nobody gives a shit what some random anonymous forum user posts, because talk is cheap and anonymous talk is free. See, when Vladimir posts, I read carefully because he has actually stood up in the past and set up real Bitcoin businesses, under his real name where people can find him. He's made himself accountable and taken risks for the project. When d'aniel posts, I read carefully because even though I don't know who he/she is, I find his/her posts to be highly insightful.

When Carlton Banks or mik3 posts? Who cares. They do no work. They don't take any risks. Their posts contain no new insights. They have no credibility and might as well not have posted at all.