Topic: IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it? - page 5. (Read 5999 times)

Wow, sorry for your loss bro

Don't know about the NSA but here is how "Homeland Security" and the "Justice" department do it:

1) Find a person trading Bitcoins

2) Investigate that person for 18 months, get all their bank records, all their text messages (including all the deleted ones) from their cell phone carrier, and try to build a case, even the flimsiest pretense of a case will do

3) Put a tracker on their car and follow all their movements for 45 days to try to locate all their secret stashes of Bitcoins and cash

4) No matter how flimsy a case take it to a rubber stamping grand jury and use the patriot act to get SEALED search warrants, SEALED arrest warrants, and SEALED indictments and be sure to SEAL all the grand jury testimony (SEALED is key here so you can lie all you want to and no one will ever be able to find out what lies you said in order to convince the grand jury you had a case)

5) CRITICAL:  make sure the indictment is for a charge which allows civil asset forfeiture to attach

6) Arrest them, take everything of value you can get your grubby hands on:  all their personal and business computers, all their Bitcoins and cash, even their daughter’s piggy bank containing her birthday and Christmas gift money

7) Throw them in solitary confinement in a Federal holding facility for a few days to soften them up

Offer to let them go and give them their stuff back if they pay a large sum of cash and Bitcoins to the Federal asset forfeiture slush fund

9) Use the money stolen in step to go to step 1), rinse and repeat

Read all about it here:  
http://www.burtw.com
http://www.jmwagner.com
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/follow-the-bitcoins-taken-from-me-by-homeland-security-1182005
(and many other threads here on this forum)

fork it with Classic...

They would borrow huge sums of money from the Federal Reserve Bank, and buy all the bitcoins up.

^^USD is a world reserve currency, and NSA can just ask their bankster puppet masters to print up as much as they need right out of thin air?

Well, I think he might be saying that they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try and get 51% of the network, but it might go beyond that if miners constantly buy to scale along with the added hashing power of the NSA.

Definitely won't cost a sizeable portion of the US debt though.

You're telling me miners have trillions invested in their gear?

I don't actually think it is possible even for the NSA to control bitcoin. From my understanding, the only way of controlling Bitcoin was to successfully implement a 51% attack, and that this point it would cost trillions of dollars just to do that. So, other than that was to try to flood the network with spammy transactions making the network very slow and ultimately starting to fail. I don't really think that is possible...
Or else They would need to shut off the internet of pull out the power lever all over the world. Do you think the powers that be would be willing to do that just to kill bitcoin?

Some historical stuff:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm


and

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/is-the-national-security-agency-behind-bitcoin/



edit

I don't want to be controlled by anyone but if its inevitable I'd prefer China. US and EU is one and the same. EU is a subsidiary of US when it comes to control and surveillance.

Assuming that there are several forces with different political agendas, which could compete in controlling Bitcoin core and I could make a vote, I'd prefer to be controlled by the US or EU (my personal "big brother" fave btw) rather than China (edit: or Russia, North-Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordania or whatever). Just my personal opinion.

I hope in the Chinese don't let NSA or CIA to make a 51% network attack, as they will be losing the most in this situation. Still why would NSA want to block Bitcoin? For now its not a threat but maybe in future if Bitcoin goes mainstream, then if its not by the government its not legal by definition may really take place as a situation.

But an agency backed by the government surely has the resources to build a supercomputer that can do a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network. The Chinese have most of the hashing power only because the electricity there is very cheap but that doesn't mean any other country in the world couldn't emulate the Chinese mining farms hashing power. Bitcoin has no headquarters anywhere in the world but it still is dependent on the Internet to function.

hahaha 

Still, my question remains:

You're misattributing. Fix pl0x.

This is the way it is supposed to be. Every service that is not under government control is a crime. Bitcoin separates money from state. It is a crime by definition!

So you don't think NSA can raise a few million bucks? Just lol.

Re. not having been strip searched: I have. Had a coin in my pocket. NY to LA flight.

Re. 40%: "Europol said that, according to its data, bitcoin accounts for as much as 40% of criminal-to-criminal payments online, with PayPal accounting for 25% of those reported. The figures build on previous statements from the agency regarding cryptocurrencies as a key factor in the development of the so-called "crime-as-a-service" ecosystem." -- http://www.coindesk.com/europol-bitcoin-european-cybercriminals/

It has been months since I looked at it closely. I compile from source but it's true that I don't check every distro. I also know C++ but I'm not good enough to call myself a coder and do relie on the community to discover malicious code  to some degree.

They struggle to make their budget like every other agency. While they have big money they also have huge expenses. The annual budget is about 11 Billion. They are not stupid and anyone proposing to spend 10% of the budget on an operation with no logical purpose will be looking for a job soon.
Then my new provider in Panama gets the worm. China may be a different story. They are a totalitarian state and could do whatever they want to their people.
I fly all the time and have never been strip searched, and I commute from the middle east. They do not support a strip search and that is why it is not happening.
Banning smoking in bars was a decision by society because few people smoke anymore. It doesn't bother me, but most people support the ban. When most Americans smoked it was unthinkable to have such a rule.
Now where did you come up with this 40% figure?

Not going to happen.  They would have to deal with the Chinese on this and this is an American agency.  The good part about bitcoin is that it is global and there is no global agency that can take control of it.