Topic: [Payout Updates] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation - page 5. (Read 156711 times)

Please, everybody. Can you move the TOS and/or privacy matters to it's own thread?

You're doing nothing but cluttering with pointless noise a thread labeled [Payout Updates], wasting even more the time and energies of every bitcoinica user.

Thank you, very much.

I don't see how any person could have honestly believed that Zhou had consented to having that information released. Either Zhou didn't know the information or he knew it. In the former case, he can't have consented to releasing it (except very explicitly, which we know never happened). In the latter case, you'd have to believe he was dumb enough to consent to the release of information he knew would make him look guilty in the manner most likely to make him look as guilty as possible.

I would like to chime in a bit if I may,

If I understand that correctly, Roberto argues that by publicly complaining about his account being frozen, Zhou gave consent to publishing the information, and since their privacy policy specifies that the information will not be given without consent, what they did is ok.

I think that's stretching it. I had a similar issue in the past when a customer complained about something not working correctly, I investigated it and then charged them for it. I argued that in my interpretation, the complaint was an order of my services. They weren't very happy about it but in the end paid.

Hello, I'm Vitalik Buterin, the one who wrote the article. The following are my personal opinions, and do not represent an official position of anyone.

I agree with Matthew's posts above. I concede that the information that Zhou Tong made a $40k LR transaction itself is not private since, as Roberto pointed out, Zhou himself earlier admitted this. However, the information that Aurum and MtGox released stretches a bit beyond this. It also includes that:

1. Zhou had not been a customer of Aurum before that transaction
2. The transaction went to Zhou's bank account in Singapore
3. Zhou had an account at MtGox since "sometime in 2011" with the address [email protected] (the second part of this information may or may not have been previously obtained legitimately, so I'll let it go).
4. Your use of the phrase "closely matches" in your original statement implies that the two numbers (what the thief transferred and what Zhou did) match by more significant digits than just $40k.

Concerns about releasing info relating to money laundering investigations also exist, but are irrelevant at this moment because my accusation was about you violating a privacy agreement, not breaking money laundering laws.

Your defense was followed up with the following:


I would like clarification on this law in the Commonwealth of Dominica that says that privacy agreements are null and void if you admit to being a customer of the organization. I have never heard of such a law anywhere and, as presently described, essentially implies that if a customer says "I have to go withdraw some money from XYZ bank today" on an internet forum XYZ bank somehow gains the right to start disclosing private details about its relationship with the customer. To my intuition, this sounds ridiculous. If I am wrong, I would be glad to be enlightened.

Hi Roberto,

Would you mind sharing with us who you were referring to?

Could you also take the time to answer the very important questions on the previous page here?

As it has been several pages of responses from you the first time these questions were asked and you still haven't responded to them since I -reposted- them, and these questions could definitely redeem your actions completely, it's not helping me to understanding your side of the issue much and frankly makes things look even more negative.

Thanks!

Looking forward to clearing up all the confusion through transparency.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that your accusation referred to me. What I meant was that people too freely throw around that accusation, so much so that I've received it from both sides of an issue for making the same argument. (I reworded the beginning of that post a little bit to make that clearer.)

While I agree there are a few people here who look like they might be paid shills or sock puppets, I would strongly caution against saying anyone is "clearly" a paid shill. There is a lot of room for honest disagreement and it's all too easy to think that people who don't share our views must be unreasonable, biased, or worse.

For example, I've been accused of being a paid shill a few times. I've never been paid for shilling anything. I've even had cases where I tried to be as fair as possible to both sides and in exchange, I was accused of being a paid shill by *both* sides. (Which would have been a pretty sweet deal if I could have gotten it. If anyone would like to pay me to shill something, I'm absolutely open to reasonable offers. Now's a really good time -- my jet ski needs new RAVE valves.)

http://www.volokh.com/posts/1169515991.shtml

And, by the way, I would hope that even the people being the most critical of you would agree that you were most likely trying to do what you thought was right, even if they disagree with your decision. I don't think anyone believes you were intentionally trying to trigger a witch hunt.

I still dont understand why this matter was made public before contacting the parties involved and Zhou Tongs story smells like a fish left out in the sun.

No one is the winner here as far as I can see.

Dear Roberto,

  I have very carefully reviewed your complaint about article "The July 13 Bitcoinica Investigation and Sound Justice" http://bitcoinmagazine.net/the-july-13-bitcoinica-investigation-and-sound-justice/ .

  It is regrettable that instead of discussing this matter privately with me as I have suggested previously you have chosen to make this conversation very public. But since such is your choice I am posting here the statement on behalf of Bitcoin Magazine. It is also published in the body of the article and we've made a correction to the article itself.


 I trust that this should satisfactory resolve the matter that you have complained about. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further questions or concerns.

Faithfully Yours,
Vladimir Marchenko,
Executive Editor, Bitcoin Magazine.

Privacy is contradictory to community. One always suffers at the expense of the other.

1) Shouldn't the amount of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?
2) Shouldn't the location of the customer's bank account be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?



Note that he neither mentions it being frozen nor active, and does not give a specific date, just vaguely refers to having made a transfer.



1) Shouldn't the time of the active order be covered by the customer's privacy agreement?



1) If there is an active AML investigation, wouldn't providing this information publicly be against the law for both parties?



Anyone can understand that as an exchange, you wouldn't want stolen funds running through you. What you have repeatedly failed to answer (and I mean -repeatedly-) is whether or not it is true in the operating country of AurumXchange that discussing details of an open investigation (which had been going on for over 10 days, correct?) publicly is in fact illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If it was not an open investigation, then you'd have to change a lot of what you've been saying.

Not even Charlie Shrem agrees with you on that.

I believe I have above, thank you for being so cordial. I still invite you to contact Vitalik Buterin directly if you have any issue with the article he wrote, but in the meantime, most of us will still like an answer to the question that has been repeatedly unanswered.


Is it not illegal to discuss openly an active AML investigation with the public, including freezing their accounts for the purpose of an AML investigation regardless of what the customer in question has posted on a public forum?
Is it not illegal to hold funds for longer than 7 days if there was no investigation?


Is it not unlawful as an exchange to publicly insinuate that one of your customers is a thief without empirical conclusive evidence provided by authorities care of an AML investigation?

Thanks for helping to resolve these confusions. Feel free to answer when more information is allowed to be revealed. I am confident we can get to the bottom of these confusions that are causing us to butt heads so long as both parties are willing to answer questions openly and transparently.

Cheers

This thread rage on for 82 pages and we're left...with no utility as to increasing the strength of the bitcoin economy.

We can argue whether or not Zhoutong is guilty or not, but at the end of the day, you ain't getting your bitcoin back any time sooner.

(Yes, I am at fault for talking too much instead of doing too)

There was no duty to go public, but even if there had been there was no duty to go public without talking to Zhou Tong first and thus learn his account had been compromised.  It's kind of ironic in context of Aurum complaining they didn't get to comment on the article about them.  Turnabout, eh?

The way the forum reacted was kind of predictable, but it's not something AurumXchange can do much about, as the matter had already been brought publicly here. Another example of disproportional public response is TheOatmeal vs. FunnyJunk (and their lawyer).
We all have a duty to report things publicly in some cases, but the following public response can be disproportioned as people often jump to conclusions.

It's the former, unfortunately.

This ^^^ is either Scientology doctrine or Atlas, I'm not sure which, but both are equally creepy.

I don't particularly care what other folks think about me.  If I see an innocent man like Zhou Tong being treated the way this forum is treating him, I will stand up for them.  One day folks around here will know how to know the truth like I have learned.  For the sake of everyone falsely accused, I hope that time is soon and you will all find the Clarity I have found.

@Rarity
I think that you are just climbing, and there is an high probability that no one will ever want your support against an accusation of scam.

  Do you honestly think that if I post the contents of one of my e-mails on a blog, Google can now start posting about my inbox on theirs because they host my email?  No, the right to disclose is with the user, not the host.  Regardless of how they found out the e-mail address belonged to Zhou Tong, they still don't have an excuse to publish it.  Finding out it belonged to a customer is in fact a reason to slow down, and handle the matter with that customer in private rather than posting their information for the world to see.  If they didn't know they might have had an excuse, the current situation is just more damning.

Both of which were already public information at that point, Zhou Tong having published himself that he had a $40k LR transaction blocked with AurumXchange on this very forum, and the fact that the email is linked to Zhou is something that didn't come from AurumXchange's protected files, but from different bitcoiners stepping up during the investigation saying they recognize this email.