From Bruce of all people, this is a wildly provocative, unsubstantiated claim about routine takedown behavior from the feds.
I mean, nobody hates the gov side of the cryptography wars more than me, but this type of article is well below table-stakes for discussion. Especially by legendary professionals of repute like Bruce.
It's very disappointing to me. The price of clicks truly deconstructs the modern man's integrity...
There's a court document from a defender specifically referring to the evidence the FBI is presenting. Lawyers can be severely sanctioned if they lie in a briefing, so the lawyer drafting that has certainly seen a court document by the FBI stating that they got the IP of this user despite Tor. Bruce never claims more than that.
"Got the IP despite Tor" might just be user error, visited the site once with Tor disabled, or logged into the same account elsewhere with both their clear IP and their Tor browser. The exact same thing that happened to Silk Road.
That's possible, but the blog never claims otherwise. In fact it says "There are lots of ways to de-anonymize Tor users" so I think it's unfair to say Bruce is making unsubstantiated claims.
My take on it: He's sending out a reminder that Gov retains ability to extract people it wants from encrypted comms. He may have noticed a downturn in similar news stories.
That we don't know the methods used here, this seems to emphasize the old reasons to live in caution.
Section 702 is up for renewal soon. I don't think it is a coincidence Bruce is bringing this particular case now. It seems like he is trying to add fuel to the "repeal" fire.
Bruce has also been hardcore anti-cryptocurrency. From a pure cryptography perspective the innovations around zero knowledge proofs are very intriguing and it’s highly unlikely they would have happened as quickly without the monetary benefit of cryptocurrency pushing such research forwards. However Bruce is an extreme statist, and if he had his way I’m sure all cryptography would be backdoored.
This is, without a doubt, the craziest thing I have ever seen pushed out by a someone who purports to know something about cryptography, law, and political advocacy:
I mean, nobody hates the gov side of the cryptography wars more than me, but this type of article is well below table-stakes for discussion. Especially by legendary professionals of repute like Bruce.
It's very disappointing to me. The price of clicks truly deconstructs the modern man's integrity...