Topic: [Payout Updates] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation - page 7. (Read 156653 times)

Is any operator of any Bitcoin exchange willing to adopt this argument?

Will any of you agree with this statement: "If we suspect you've committed a crime, and you've discussed that issue publicly, our exchange reserves the right to release your account and transaction information to the public on that same forum, to further that discussion and investigation."

Somehow I don't think that there's a financial organization of any kind, exchange, bank, wallet service, or the like, that will publicly agree with that statement. You might want to think about *why* that is. (Hint: That's not what their customers expect, and have a right to expect.)

Yes you did say that, but I do believe you are incorrect.  Generally the privacy policy outlines what information they can and can't share, that is the whole point.  There is no reason not to disclose what you will share, sharing the information is totally legal if the patron agrees to the policy and generally the majority of people agree without even reading.


Share WITH THE GOVERNMENT for the GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION, not published for the world to anyone interested in playing detective.  The government has their own policies to only share the information when appropriate explicitly because this isn't a license to expose everything about the subject to the world.  

Ah, but most of it is not in accordance with the law, and most certainly not in accordance with the TOS. Hence my point, that any privacy policy is toast when any investigation has begun, even if that investigation is as lame as the PRC government wanting to keep Falun Gong emails out of their country, or the US government wanting to see any email that includes the phrase "assault rifle". So under the guise of "investigation" Zhou Tong's entire history with a company can be shared, for by his own actions Zhou Tong has made this forum the venue for the investigation.

And cheekily, if every business was jumping off a bridge, I expect most bitcoin businesses would be lining up to lemming themselves with the rest of them, but they would be very self-righteous about how outre they are to accept a crypto currency for the trip.

None of that is even remotely comparable to an organization that provides financial services releasing a named customer's transaction information to the public, in violation of their own privacy policy and in the absence of any government investigation, where the obviously foreseeable result of that release is that the customer will be publicly suspected of having committed a significant criminal offense. "Everybody steals paperclips from the office" is not a rational response to accusations of murder. They are *that* different.

They provide information to governments in accordance with the law, they don't publish them online for the entire world.  I think you are mistaken if you think turning over information in response to a legal government request violates the TOS.

As for the rest, you can feel free to link situations in which information has been shared with business partners and the TOS did not explicitly allow it.  Regardless, shifting the defense from "they did nothing wrong" to "everybody is doing it" is just goalpost shifting that does not excuse violating a privacy policy and sharing with a partner is also not the same as publishing something openly for the entire internet to read.  If every company is jumping off a bridge, I don't expect Bitcoin companies to follow along.  

Ummm, not to be trollish or OT on this one... but Google, Yahoo and Comcast all regularly provide the contents of millions of in-boxes, out-boxes, sent-mails and browsing activity to foreign governments, commercial partners, and political campaigns without the benefit of due process, opt-in, subpoena or legal requirement to do so, and in each case it is a direct violation of their TOS with their users. Privacy policies are about as trustworthy as panties on prom night, they tend to get lost pretty quick when the prize is in sight, and somebody usually ends up getting screwed in the deal.

Punished? Is he in jail? No. His reputation ruined? That's because the wrote the damn system full of fail - he deserves this reputation.

We aren't a court, but we can express our opinions here. If I believe that he's a thief and there is evidence to that - noone can stop me from saying it out loud.

You can't use the privacy policy to keep something from the police in a criminal matter, however you can't unilaterally decide someone is a criminal and then post their information to the entire world without violating the policy.  If anybody could just make that determination, no privacy policy in the world has any meaning whatsoever.  

Google could just randomly decide you are a criminal and publish your gmail inbox, for instance.  

Ah, I see the issue.

You've already concluded he's guilty.

You know, fundamentally I don't disagree with you. What I disagree with is I don't feel we ought to be judge, jury and executioner. I also disagree we've conclusively caught the thief.

If ZT isn't the thief, the real thief goes free whilst a valuable member of the community gets punished for a crime they didn't commit.

That to me isn't justice.

I'm not sure I follow here.

First of all, what inaccuracies are there?

You did make a considerable amount of personal information publicly available. It appears to me it was done because the information you had seemed pretty conclusive in light of the information you had. In your position I'd have come to the same conclusion, however, I'd have kept the private information private and left it to the police to decide what charges to bring. As it turns out, there might be a legitimate reason as to why $40K was in ZT's possession and this will come to light at some point.

Secondly, I think you're conflating Matthew's integrity with what was published. The two aren't the same thing. The only other meaning I can make of what you're saying is that the information is biased because he once received a donation from ZT and I can't imagine that's what you mean because as you know, the article wasn't written by him.


So you're either saying that Matthew applied editorial influence over the article (which I'm convinced you're not) or that it's a lucky coincidence the writer and Matthew have the same opinion?


I could believe that there's some malice if the inaccuracy you mentioned was indeed inaccurate but the information provided seems to have no further malicious intent than what you published regarding the whole incident (unless your meaning when you published was that you'd already judged ZT to be guilty). Also, in regards to financial incentives, it would make more sense to say that the limited, one time donation that ZT made would be nothing compared to the future advertising revenue available from aurumxchange.

Roberto,

 Thank you for your well thought out and reasonable post. I am more than happy to discuss with you privately whatever inaccuracies there might be in the article you quoted and if some specific points were posted incorrectly surely this can be resolved either by publishing your views of this matter or making retraction as appropriate where facts of the matter were perceived incorrectly by article's author.

 I also would like to clear up possible confusion about all those C level titles. As most likely know the company is very small and all those C level titles and functions of team members are rather flexible and the titles should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, I have started as CTO but then had to take over many functions of managing director and operations director as well lately (need to make sure that there are no more shipping delays as it has happened with issue #1). Things do change over time. Likewise, while we hoped initially that Vitalik will act as Editor In Chief, it has not happened for a number of reasons and that function is now with Matthew, however we expect Vitalik to take over Editor in Chief functions again before long. Also it should be noted that functions performed by the team members are different for the company and for the magazine. I am for example listed as CTO for the company and executive editor for the magazine, whatever that means. I find all these loud titles rather superficial considering how small the company is.

Surely we should have paid more attention to keeping about us page up to date. I have now fixed whatever inaccuracies I could find there. As for issue of Zhou's donation to Bittalk Media Ltd. it seems to be just a mistake made by whomever wrote the text for that page long time ago. Perhaps there was some confusion between bittalk.tv website and Bittalk Media Ltd. as a company. Clearly that donation has happened before the company was formed and I became a director of the company as well as a founding member. I have now removed erroneous statement about donation from the "about us" page.

LoupGaroux, Thank you for your posts above as well. I, personally, always enjoyed your posts and agree with you much more often than not. There is one point I would ask you consider however. Given that Zhou is a minor (to the best of my knowledge) perhaps one should be more careful with public criminal allegations. Consider that, for example, in criminal cases in UK names of minors are withheld from public record even for rapist and murderers. I would respectfully suggest that matters of privacy should be managed more delicately specifically when it concerns minors.

I appreciate this honesty and I will be more careful in the future in my presentation of my points regarding sensitive issues of this nature (I admit I have trolled with glee in this witchhunt thread where it seems everyone -but- Zhou should be burned at the stake for going senile), but there is a sense of morals here that honestly I can't shake. Whether it were Zhou or anyone else, all I keep thinking of is "BitMole" being a "scammer" because of what someone says. It can happen to anyone, and truth should be sought out, not hearsay and bullying. This community has been reduced to a bunch of children crying to burn the witch, some attempting on physical violence and total invasions of privacy, just because a picture was painting in a certain light. If the thread was created by a normal member asking questions, I would have had a much different attitude I assure you, but for the authorities in question to come and tell everyone to throw rocks, it kind of makes you lose faith in the system entirely. I think Roberto made a grave and potentially highly illegal mistake in doing what he did, and I -still- yet to see any inconclusive evidence that Zhou Tong has committed a crime, and in contrast he has continued to stick around and provide information.

Zhou Tong is not fake, there is an equal chance his identity was stolen (he does get around a lot and do a lot of things normal users don't do, as does any developer in Bitcoin who also owns a financial business, or anyone who is 17 for that matter), and the emotions surrounding the witch hunt I feel are all due to the fact that the Intersango group have taken a vacation.

It is true that he could be lying and a mastermind, but it's also true that I could be Atlas, that MtGox could be reading everyone's PMs here every single day, and that Pirate controls the price of bitcoin and is not a ponzi at all. Are we going to speculate wildly with people's lives and safety or are we going to demand evidence until we make up our minds? Why does Zhou Tong have to provide all the evidence? Where is the evidence from AurumXChange that they even emailed him in the first place? I think until Zhou gets the money back from Chen, it should be an "on-hold" situation.

Dear Roberto,

I believe character and integrity are shown best in times of the greatest oppression. Your thread labeling Zhou Tong as a thief, discussing an active AML investigation (or if there was no investigation, illegitimately holding the funds in question) was unacceptable by any stretch of the imagination. This is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of any other human being, although most agree with me. If you were a customer of Bitcoin magazine and we found out you -might- be a scammer, we wouldn't break our customer privacy agreement to release data about you on a public forum for the benefit of---who?


The article at http://bitcoinmagazine.net/the-july-13-bitcoinica-investigation-and-sound-justice/ was not written by me and I mostly approve -print- articles as internet based articles can be published while I sleep and approved by other directors instead. This is something that is not known to the public so I am taking the time to mention it here.

Since you have expressed an issue with the article's contents, the best thing to do would be like everyone else and contact the article's author, which in this case is Vitalik Buterin. I am sure he would be happy to explain his viewpoints on his personal article with you. As for reflecting poorly on your business, with all due respect, the action of posting the thread against your privacy agreement and AML investigation (which I understand is a criminal offense) is probably the culprit behind the reasoning of that article, which although I did not in fact approve myself, I completely agree with. Vitalik is a very good writer.

Bitcoin Magazine is a magazine with integrity and we offer balanced articles to the public, bitcoiners and non-bitcoiners alike. Vitalik Buterin's opinions in his articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the rest of the Bitcoin Magazine. As the Editor in Chief, I will be happy to forward your general bullet point list of supposed inaccuracies to the author, but it would be much simpler to just email him yourself at [email protected]. If you however believe that the Bitcoin Magazine is in the business of restricting its writers from sharing their opinions, you are mistaken. That said, if you feel Vitalik has crossed some line, the -quickest- way to contact him is through the email address provided.

I thank you for your support of the Bitcoin Magazine as we also loved to support AurumXChange. We're all in Bitcoin for the same reasons. Progress. As a member of this community I truly and genuinely wish your exchange all the success in the world, however, I sincerely hope no further unlawful and aggressive activities will be seen officially from your exchange and that you will be more careful not to break privacy agreements and share information unlawfully in a public forum.

As mentioned earlier (and 8 months ago on DCAO's website), Zhou Tong, who was thrilled at BitTalk.TV, decided to donate $11,000 USD to the project. Since we were incorporating shortly after that, and BitTalk.TV did in fact "start" the ball rolling for Bitcoin Magazine idea-wise, I figured it didn't hurt any to refer to it as one in the same. I was wrong, and now I see why it is more important to be literal about those kinds of things. BitTalk.TV, which has no business registration and therefor is personally mine, received a donation from Zhou Tong for camera equipment. Ken Armitt also had planned on a donation for a rendering computer. Many others had planned donations as well, as everyone in the DCAO wanted BitTalk.TV to grow into something that replace the extremely boring Bruce Wagner comedy hour. I have never denied or even attempted to be anything but proud of that donation, as I still am. BitTalk Media however, to be exact, has received no donations, but investments, and those investments were not from Zhou Tong. The donation is not related to the magazine, there is no conflict of interest, if Tom Williams was the person you posted the thread about (and anyone who knows my posting history knows this) I would -still- call you out on it any day of the week.

Your issue with titles is a good point, we haven't kept up on updating the website(s) as we have been busy working (I know you know how that is sometimes). I am currently Editor in Chief and pretty much always have been, we just weren't sure on the titles in the beginning because we started very small. We are now working with over 40 employees, part-time, contract, and full, and "Bitcoin Magazine" is not "Matthew's". Vitalik Buterin was planned to replace me as Editor in Chief but a decision was made to wait longer and the website was apparently inconsistent with that decision. I will change the about us page now since it's not incorrect and serves no purpose other than to confuse.

As for your question of what can be interpreted by any reasonable court of law as biased or malicious, I will refer to your original thread in which you may have unlawfully released account information in an active AML investigation (which carries with it a punishment of 10 years of imprisonment) OR held funds for longer than 7 days -without- any actual official investigation, also illegal.

As for accusations, we have not seen any proof in the thread that you have contacted Zhou Tong, we have not seen any official registration information provided by you to Zhou Tong, and we have claims that Zhou Tong has never received anything from you. Since both sides are just hearsay, I feel I am completely justified in asking for more proof and having my own opinion. If I am mistaken in my belief that you have in fact posted a thread with private customer information unlawfully and hindered an AML investigation, I would ask that instead of further ignoring the questions given to you to request us to change the contents of our articles, and instead do due diligence and answer the questions.

Question #1: Is there a criminal investigation/police filing on Zhou Tong?

Question #2: Was there at the time the funds were held? I was told that you waited 12 days before posting the thread and that the other parties involved did not want you to because they -knew- it was unlawful to do so.

Question #3: Was a criminal report (if ever filed) filed -after- you posted the thread?

Question #4: Can you provide proof that emails were in fact sent to any email address Zhou Tong owns?

Question #5: Can you provide proof that you have given Zhou Tong contact information for your business? (Adam Harding, our customer accounts manager posting an address on this thread does not count in a court of law as you giving him your contact information)

Thank you Roberto!

I hope we can get all of this figured out soon and get on with our lives.


Matthew N. Wright
Editor in Chief and Co-Founder
of BitTalk Media, publishers of
Bitcoin Magazine

Or not. One cannot use the law to protect unlawful action. Any right to privacy that "Zhou Tong" believed he had disappeared when the hack happened, and his account applied for the transfer of those very same stolen funds, however they magically appeared in his account.

No, quoting ML as admitting to stalking and committing crimes in relation to ZT is not the same as dodging questions of guilt to talk about questions of funding to imply ulterior motives.  The only question is if the accusations of privacy violations are true, and they are.  

Gosh... I thought the only shooting of messengers was your own vitriol towards ML there Rarity? Whose privacy policy was violated? Once a criminal act is in the mix any published rules no longer apply, as one cannot use a contract to support a criminal act, the criminal act abrogates the contract.

Or are you referring to me spearheading a witch hunt? I'm not. I like witches. I don't like thieves, and I will not suffer fools, or those who follow them. Where exactly do you want to dance for this number?

You did violate your privacy policy and you are spearheading this witch hunt.  Shooting the messenger doesn't change that.

Vladimir-

Thank you for the clarity on Bitcoin Magazines relationships both with Zhou Tong and with others in this community. I am pleased to note that Zhou Tong does not hold any position of authority in your organization, as has been rumored by some, and is limited only to some donations before the Magazine really went live, to some in your organization. Matthew has often spoken as if he is the leader of your group, and my thoughts were that he might be bringing others along on his crusade who might not want to be associated with the guilty in this matter.

And to be frank- I don't have a problem with Matthew as a contributor, leader or lightening rod in this community, rather I respect him for his views, and encourage most all of them, as I have found him to be a champion of what is good and right about bitcoin far more than this present issue. I feel, and this is a personal observation only, that he has a very narrow focus due to his relationship with the person represented as Zhou Tong, and is trying to be a supportive friend and mentor. Great big props for the initiative, but the Loupish judge is giving a poor score on technical execution. Finding fault with one insignificant point of public disclosure is finding the mote in a gnat's eye, when there is a huge boulder crushing the life out of the elephant next door. ArumX has disclosed, has had their info publicly outed, and it is available. Trying to argue a minute point of information privacy, which would not apply in this case, is not a solution. Let's all work together to bring this ugly chapter to a close, not find reason for internecine squabbling between ourselves. This is a near fatal blow to bitcoin, and can do nothing positive for the future of our much beloved crypto-currency, the only thing any of us should be concerned with now is establishing who is guilty, bringing them to justice, be it traditional, vigilante or Sharia, getting the approx. half million dollars in wealth back to the owners, and most importantly learning out lessons from this catastrophe.

Those lessons should be obvious, but we all want to believe in the magic tooth fairy. There is no free lunch. You cannot create more out of less. The house always wins, and if the house is crooked, the player always gets burned in the end. Not everybody is completely honest on the internet, and a lot of very bad people have very compelling stories, and huge technical skill. Be wary if something sounds too good to be true- it is. Nobody is looking to bankrupt themselves to give it all away. Life is full of ulterior motives, many of which have you playing the role of chump, loser and victim. Even if you want to disbelieve when someone is saying the Emperor is running down the street naked, just because it isn't the popular opinion, take a moment in the privacy of your own thoughts to consider that the lunatics who don't see what you are convinced is true, might be right. Skepticism is healthy.

Thus endeth the lesson.

You can speak for yourself, and others can speak for themselves. Keep your generalizations to yourself.