What if the devs are ordered by a US judge to include a government backdoor? - page 3.

jackjack

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May Bitcoin be touched by his Noodly Appendage

Quote from: ShadowOfHarbringer on June 04, 2013, 05:48:30 AM

Quote from: apetersson on June 04, 2013, 05:39:11 AM

you would not necessarily know that there is a backdoor.

For an experienced programmer who reviews Bitcoin code on a daily basis it should be trivial to spot such a backdoor.

Git is such an extremely powerful tool to review exactly who does what and when. It will be almost unfeasible to put a backdoor in Bitcoin, currently.

This

ShadowOfHarbringer

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Bringing Legendary Har® to you since 1952

Quote from: apetersson on June 04, 2013, 05:39:11 AM

you would not necessarily know that there is a backdoor.

For an experienced programmer who reviews Bitcoin code on a daily basis it should be trivial to spot such a backdoor.

Git is such an extremely powerful tool to review exactly who does what and when. It will be almost unfeasible to put a backdoor in Bitcoin, currently.

Loozik

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Born to chew bubble gum and kick ass

Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

Would the judge pay the devs for the backdoor programming from his own pocket?

apetersson

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you would not necessarily know that there is a backdoor.

standard procedure is a NSL that prevents you from even mentioning the existence of the order.

the us gov also reserves the right to control the content of all .com/.org/.net domains.

therefore it is essential that the source and corresponding binaries are matching up and as many people as possible are watching the source closely.

also if you see gavin blinking -. ... .-.. that should give you a hint.

mezzomix

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Quote from: tutkarz on June 04, 2013, 04:35:23 AM

Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:34:17 AM

Quote from: tutkarz on June 04, 2013, 04:32:14 AM

Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

no because most of the world will simply not use such a client.

But bitcoin.org would be forced under court order to offer it?

then someone else will take the lead

In other cases the people were ordered to not talk about this change. People from unaffected countries have to review the patches, find the backdoor and publish this information.

Signed binaries is a bad idea in this case, because there is a central instance that control a BLOB and is not allowed to talk about the details. Almost no chance for the user of this signed binary to find the backdoor.

tutkarz

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Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:34:17 AM

Quote from: tutkarz on June 04, 2013, 04:32:14 AM

Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

no because most of the world will simply not use such a client.

But bitcoin.org would be forced under court order to offer it?

then someone else will take the lead

Revelation 22:13

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Quote from: tutkarz on June 04, 2013, 04:32:14 AM

Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

no because most of the world will simply not use such a client.

But bitcoin.org would be forced under court order to offer it?

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

Open source software makes it so that every change is visible.

Currently the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind release is signed by the Bitcoin Foundation ... which means the release won't work for Windows 8 and Mac users (as an update) unless Bitconi Foundation signs it. This makes it difficult for some other dev team members who are not a party to this hypothetical IRS backdoor demand to be able to release updates to the client without this backdoor themselves. It would probably have to be a fork with a different name (and signed by some other organization).

But the developers don't have final say as to what changes are accepted for the Bitcoin protocol. It is the economic majority who decides:
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

tutkarz

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Quote from: Revelation 22:13 on June 04, 2013, 04:18:52 AM

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

no because most of the world will simply not use such a client.

Revelation 22:13

newbie

Activity: 33

Merit: 0

Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

Topic: What if the devs are ordered by a US judge to include a government backdoor? - page 3. (Read 3047 times)