[18monthsin]

Volunteering to help out enemies develop sophisticated money laundering schemes is most certainly a crime, you know what they want to do with the information. Just like flying to mexico to present to cartel leaders about how to utilize hlockchain to avoid shipping cash is illegal.

[tptacek]

It seems like in this case he didn't so much have to wonder about whether what he was doing was a crime, since he asked and was informed by the State Department that it was.

[mirimir]

If that's all true, one wonders about his motivation.

Perhaps Griffith just did it to make a point. I don't know what his point might have been. Maybe just that the laws are unjust, contravene freedom, etc, etc.

Sort of like refusing to register vehicles and display plates. Or dealing in "ghost guns" or whatever.

I'm certainly sympathetic. But I can't imagine doing that stuff using my meatspace identity. For Snowden, having worked for the NSA lent credibility to his actions. But I don't see the point for Griffith.

[adventured]

I'm entirely unsympathetic. He knew exactly what he was doing, he knew that it was illegal and he knew who he was helping out. That's all extraordinarily clear.

Maybe it's as simple as Griffith looking to make a name for himself and jumpstart a criminal enterprise that he knew would inherently involve doing blackmarket deals with bad actors. He certainly knew who he was helping out, re North Korea. Having the North Korean effort on your new criminal resume would be a large resume booster. It also explains why he would be looking to leave the US, where he'd be guaranteed to get nailed by the feds for anything in that arena eventually (and sooner than later). There has certainly been enough of that action in the crypto era and money is a prime motivator for most people.

[mirimir]

I guess. But 5-20 years in federal prison is quite the career investment.

[tptacek]

5 is the high side, not the low side, according to the sentencing guidelines (which directly capture the fact that it's North Korea he helped; the sentencing guidelines for 50 USC 1705 practically read as if they were written specifically for North Korea).

[tomjakubowski]

Where do you see five years as the high end? 50 USC §1705 says "not more than 20 years".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1705

[haasted]

He’s a resident of Singapore, so “looking to leave the US” was not really relevant. Seems he should have stayed away, though.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't know what his motivation was. But the first thing I thought of when I heard the news was that it will be interesting to see what sort of case law is developed as a result of this case.

Can math be classified as a weapon? Can talking about algorithms be made illegal? If talking about an algorithm in one place legal and in another place illegal? What if you video present where the speaker is in a jurisdiction where it is legal, and the audience is in a jurisdiction where it is illegal?

Back in crypto-wars I on the coderpunks mailing list there was an interesting thread about the hypothetical question of getting a tattoo with the diffie-hellman and RSA algorihms written out, and then driving to Mexico in an effort to get arrested for exporting crypto code outside the US in violation of ITARS laws at the time.

[simonh]

This isn’t about the legality of math. It’s about what you are doing, or helping others do. Goals and intended outcomes matter. Knives aren’t generally illegal, we all have them in our houses, but stabbing someone with one generally is.

Calculating equations isn’t itself illegal, but for example calculating the ballistic profile of a missile aimed at a city and passing those results to an enemy state might be a crime. Similarly teaching their people to calculate such profiles, knowing what they intend to use that information for, could reasonably be criminal.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't disagree, what I hear when I read this comment are the same points I brought up but phrased a bit differently.

As a huge disclaimer, the charges may simplify to "we told you you couldn't go, and you went, so we get to put you in prison." And if that were true then the only question that would be answered here is whether or not the government has the right to lock you up for attending a conference without their permission. The complaint reads like their going for a more "material assistance to the enemy" kind of theory but I don't know and I'm not a lawyer.

That said, hopefully you don't mind me using your two statements as the foundation for questions they bring up.

"This isn’t about the legality of math. It’s about what you are doing, or helping others do."

I agree with that statement and I recognize that things I sometimes think should be true, turn out not to be as clear cut as I would like.

So lets say his paper was "Comparing different proof-of-work algorithms for the foundation of a crypto-currency."

That would be pretty much pure math. Algorithms where you couldn't "cheat" and get to the answer sooner than anyone else running the same algorithm. So should 'doing' that, or helping someone else 'do' that rise to the level of illegality? If so case law helps define tests for when something should be considered "bad" and when it is "ok." Let's step to your next point.

"Goals and intended outcomes matter. Knives aren’t generally illegal, we all have them in our houses, but stabbing someone with one generally is."

There is the "thing" and there is the "intent" to use the thing to do something bad. There are three "persons" in the above statement, the person that made the knife, the person that owned the knife, and the person that used the knife to do harm to another person or property. And yes, they could all be the same person) but which of those three persons are the criminal? In the USA we tend to lean toward the third example, the person using the tool to do harm. After all, you can do property damage with a baseball bat, and it isn't the bat makers fault right?

So if you talk about blockchain to someone does that make you a criminal? Or are they a criminal when they try to use it to do some illegal act? Now if you knew that was what they were going to do, again in the USA, you could be charged with conspiracy. But if you didn't know, you were just talking in a hypothetical way like "I bet that bat would totally smash those 'unbreakable' windows on that cybertruck." Are you conspiring really?

"Calculating equations isn’t itself illegal, but for example calculating the ballistic profile of a missile aimed at a city and passing those results to an enemy state might be a crime."

The challenge here is that in the US there is a presumption of innocence. So calculating a ballistic missile profile of a missile that launches from some place and then impacts some place else, is something you can easily do in the Kerbal Space Program. As far as I can tell its pretty dang accurate. So if someone shares with the news network the game files to show where a purported ballistic missile could hit if fired from the DPRK, are they doing something illegal? Even if knowing how Kerbal works, you could play with that file to figure out what parameters your rocket would have to meet if you wanted to hit a specific target?

"Similarly teaching their people to calculate such profiles, knowing what they intend to use that information for, could reasonably be criminal."

Agreed, it is all in the "knowing" part. It is clearly conspiracy if someone asks you to tell them how much peanut is needed to kill someone with a peanut allergy because their enemy is allergic to peanuts and it seems like a good way to get rid of them. But if they just ask out of the blue with no context and you answer, are you conspiring?

The original question was "What could possibly be his motivation for doing this?"

It is an important question because motivation is required for there to be a crime. Understanding and proving that motivation is going to be key to getting a conviction. From the coverage so far it does not seem like it was money (I haven't read anywhere that the guy was paid some outrageous speakers fee or anything.) I also haven't seen anything to suggest it was a treasonous thing.

I struggle to think like a criminal mastermind, so I rely on thinking like an engineer; knowing that in politics, relational, and legal questions my thinking will be flawed :-).

So the interesting questions here for me are the ones that define what is, and what isn't, a criminal act with respect to algorithms.

[tptacek]

Motivation is not required for this to be a crime, at least in the sense you're using it.

What you're referring to is the "mental state" requirement for criminal liability. Mental state requirements vary with the statutes, and fall generally into buckets like "knowingly" or "recklessly" or "willfully" or "intentionally".

For 50 USC 1705, the standard implicated is "willfully". You can read all sorts of things about what the "willfully" standard requires, but here's a good trick when you want to use Google to quickly parse a criminal law question: Google your search term along with [model jury instructions]. These are the templates used as a starting point for the "rules" given to juries to reach verdicts.†

For "willfullness" in federal court, you'll find something like this:

    The offense(s) of (state offense or offenses that include willfully)
    charged in the indictment require(s) the government to prove that
    (name) acted “willfully” with respect to an (certain) element(s) of
    the offense(s). This means the government must prove beyond a
    reasonable doubt that (name) knew (his) (her) conduct was unlawful and
    intended to do something that the law forbids. That is, to find that
    (name) acted “willfully,” you must find that the evidence proved
    beyond a reasonable doubt that (name) acted with a purpose to disobey
    or disregard the law. “Willfully” does not, however, require proof
    that (name) had any evil motive or bad purpose other than the purpose
    to disobey or disregard the law. [“Willfully” (does) (does not)
    require proof that the actor knew of the existence and meaning of the
    statute making his conduct criminal.]

Note carefully: "“Willfully” does not, however, require proof that (name) had any evil motive or bad purpose other than the purpose to disobey or disregard the law.".

This standard is presumably why the complaint takes the time to point out multiple instances at which Griffith makes it clear that he's ignoring the sanction rules.

† I have no legal training at all, but it's my understanding that jury instructions are one of the fronts that a criminal trial is fought on, and so the template model jury instructions might not ultimately be the ones given to the jury; with that said, it seems unlikely that basic matters of law, like what a statute means when it refers to someone committing an offense "willfully", are really likely to budge much.

[goatinaboat]

It is an important question because motivation is required for there to be a crime

The legal terminology for that is “mens rea” literally “guilty mind” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

[afarrell]

I don’t see why there “illegal math” is any more illogical a category than “illegal nuclear physics” or “illegal rocket engineering”

[refurb]

This seems like a great example where “ask forgiveness, not permission” would be helpful.

The fact he was told “no”, then did it anyways puts him in a very difficult position.

[chrisseaton]

> This seems like a great example where “ask forgiveness, not permission” would be helpful.

How about don't do it at all?

[refurb]

That’s an obvious option.

[no_opinions]

> since he asked and was informed by the State Department that it was.

But what did Griffith see when he asked for permission from the State department, though? Did he know violating sanctions was criminal, or something potentially that'd be an infraction? Couldn't it be a civil penalty?

Is there an official form for what asking to visit a country under embargo (e.g. North Korea or Iran) looks like?

Is there a template/example for what a denial to visit an embargoed country looks like?

For instance if there's something involving classified information, I'm to understand there is SF-312 (https://fas.org/sgp/isoo/new_sf312.pdf). It's all about explaining who / what / where / why and that there are criminal penalties for mishandling info / leaking / etc.

So, do we know how much Griffith knew of the implications of what he was doing?

[baddox]

Wait, in your first description I assumed you were saying that it was a crime because the State Department said he couldn’t go and he still did. Now it sounds like that’s not why you mentioned that part.

[tptacek]

An element of this particular crime is that he had to commit it willfully.

[mapgrep]

You’ve moved rather quickly from reductively summarizing the accusation to accepting it as fact.

Last I checked, not everything federal prosecutors say turns out to be true.

[tptacek]

It is not my general inclination to believe that the DOJ routinely manufactures simple statements of fact out of whole cloth. Others on HN do have that inclination, sometimes powerfully. Regardless: (1) this is an unusually straightforward criminal complaint; it is short, spare, and composed principally out of simple falsifiable assertions, and (2) we're just randos on message boards talking and have no obligation to continuously and tediously disclaim that the DOJ has the burden of proving its assertions at trial. We all know it does.

[sneak]

> It is not my general inclination to believe that the DOJ routinely manufactures simple statements of fact out of whole cloth.

I thought this as well for a while, until I had some (thankfully limited) contact with the federal machine during weev’s trial.

What happens and what is said as truth in federal criminal court has very little to do with objectively measured reality.

[miracle2k]

It would not just have to prove the facts, but also convince a court of its interpretation of the law, on which the DOJ does not have the final word. Of course, we also know this. In fact, none of us needs to bother to comment, because whatever the courts decide is the law, is the law, and nothing else matters.

Except of course that these are normative arguments; you clearly feel that, fundamentally, someone speaking at Pyongyang blockchain conference deserves to be prosecuted and possibly convicted, and you feel that this would be just regardless of what a court might ultimately decide on the matter (since you ultimately don't know the outcome).

Some people apparently feel that the guy should not be prosecuted or convicted based on the actions he has been accused of; if there is a law that says otherwise, then maybe the law is wrong.

Others might fear that what they feel can be an inhumanely cruel system will come down on a person in a way that will not serve justice. And who can blame them. Frankly, those people are the ones with a functioning moral compass.

[throwaway2048]

The other side of the coin is, teaching North Korean leadership (an infamously brutal regime) about how to evade international sanctions via cryptocoin technology.

How many millions of people have they "come down on in a way that did not serve justice". Aiding such a brutally repressive regime should absolutely be a crime.

And yes, the world is not perfect, and many nations get away with similar sorts of crimes (although almost universally on a smaller scale), that doesn't make him some sort of good guy.

[CryptoPunk]

Wasn't this just a presentation providing generic blockchain information? I don't think he's being accused of advising on how to use the blockchain for any specific illegal act, let alone a "sophisticated money laundering scheme".

From a brief read through of the government's case, it seems their case rests on the accused doing the presentation despite having privately admitted to his friend that North Korea is likely interested in cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions.

See this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKkbzzYWwAAdAqa?format=jpg&name=...

tl;dr: In a response to a question about why he thought NK was interested in cryptocurrency, he is alleged to have said "probably to avoid sanctions ... who knows".

So it was his alleged belief that they would probably utilize the general information on the blockchain that he would be presenting for illegal purposes that made his giving of the presentation illegal, according to the government.

[tptacek]

The current law regarding North Korea forbids providing technical training that would support their money laundering or evasion of sanctions, and they've apparently got Griffith talking about sanctions evasion directly, so they've got what seem to be multiple predicates to pursue this on.

[edm0nd]

NK doesn't need help developing this. NK has been hacking various cryptocurrency exchanges and websites stealing hundreds of millions of USD worth of crypto via their APT aka the Lazarus Group.

[codedokode]

Whom are you calling "an enemy" here? Is there a war between US and that "enemy" now?

[rrss]

North Korea. Is this an actual question?

Since technically the Korean War never ended, yes, there is a war.

[thefringthing]

The United States is not formally a party to the Korean War. Congress never declared war.