Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin's largest exchanges - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/29/16060344/btce-bitcoin-exchange-takedown-mt-gox-theft-law-enforcement <comment><USER2> This is what I never understood about bitcoins's reputation, especially earlier on, about its supposed anonymity. I suppose that's much less the case now. But it always seemed odd that people considered it at all anonymous when the blockchain kept a record of everything. Sure it might not be immediately identifiable with a specific individual, but unless it was a wholly closed system, entry & exit points would always be clear, along with all the hops from wallet to wallet along the way.

And the longer the system exists, the more information will accumulate that would allow anyone with an interest in doing so to correlate blockchain transactions to "real-world" people & systems.

I'm sure I'm missing something though, since I'm by no means a cryptologist, or more than an interested spectator on crypto-coins. (I mined about 0.1 bc back when it was still possible to do that in a week or so on a mid-range AMD GPU. and, shocked at the rise in value, cashed it in for about $200 a few years ago.)

<comment><USER3> Monero[1] was created, among other reasons, to solve the privacy problem. It uses something called a ring signature[2], which is composed of a group 'decoy' public keys, plus yours, as part of every transaction which makes it impossible for an outsider to trace. Monero is fungible, whereas Bitcoin is not.

[1]: [https://getmonero.org/](https://getmonero.org/)

[2]: [https://getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringsignatures.h...](https://getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringsignatures.html)

<comment><USER4> Monero and Dash are both making a play at the anonymous space, do you have an opinion about Monero vs Dash?

<comment><USER5> 1\. Monero's transactions are private by default. In Dash it's optional (and slower).

2\. Dash is basically a coin join, working like a Bitcoin mixer. This means you can still gather some information from the mix given enough analysis. It's different compared to Monero where you cannot tell which of the possible inputs is the right one. The security is based on probability and cryptography instead of obfuscation.

3\. Monero hides both the addresses of the transaction and the amount. In Dash the transaction amount is open and analysis could correlate the obfuscated sending and receiving addresses.

4\. The mixing in Dash is performed by "masternodes", a subset of all nodes, and if compromised they can break the privacy. Particularly scary after the recent Bitcoin mixer shutdown. Monero contains no such third party weakness.

All in all the anonymity of Dash is a joke compared to what Monero gives you.

<comment><USER6> Any idea why Monero as such low usage traction?

<comment><USER5> Mainly two reasons I think:

1\. There are no mobile wallets, multisig or hardware wallets. Now all of these are in the works and hopefully ready this year.

2\. Very little effort has been spent on marketing compared to other coins (for example Dash). The biggest reason is that Monero is community funded and it's not possible to use a share of the developers share of coins, as there isn't one. This is compared to the marketing in Dash which has been fueled by the instamine. Focus has instead been placed on developing the fundamentals.

In fact it's a bit surprising that Monero has had the popularity it has. The official GUI was only released relatively recently and before then you were sort of forced to use the command line client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These domain name seizures from non US-resident entities keep coming.

But more worryingly, "The language in the indictment about BTC-e's "criminal design" mimics the indictment against Liberty Reserve".

This also mimics the Kim DotCom / MegaUpload take down, along with a likely "FBI" operation in a foreign country.

It seems there is now a policy of taking down things that are "criminal in design" \- waiting for the next raid on "criminal in design" encryption software...

<comment><USER8> Like Telegram Messenger

<comment><USER9> Or Signal

<comment> blubb-fish especially signal!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Money laundering is the process of transforming the profits of crime and corruption into ostensibly "legitimate" assets.

>A cryptocurrency tumbler is a service offered to mix potentially identifiable or 'tainted' cryptocurrency funds with others, with the intention of confusing the trail back to the fund's original source.

English might not be my native language but I can see lots of parallels.

I never actually considered this before but a mixer is the physical world would be getting mailed (by anonymous parties) 10 bags of money, 9 legitimate ones and one known to be from mafia and with sequential bill numbers known to feds and then repacking and mixing up the banknotes and receiving 10 visitors, each of whom gets one bag from you.

You just laundered the money, sort of... it gets screwy (that's a very technical term ;) although does it really? From 9 legitimate bags you made 10 (functionally) legitimate ones. You can't trace the mafia guy after your mixing, you can't pick a guy with a bag at random and say he is the mafia perp, you can't say each of these guys now has 10% of illegitimate money in his bag because they can't be responsible (and don't even know) about actions of other people who mailed you money. An entire money bag just got laundered (by the definition above, it was crime proceeds and is now ostensibly legitimate because it can't be distinguished).

<comment><USER11> Laundering isn't about traceability. It's about taking money that's been gotten illegally (and thus you can't spend without the IRS asking questions) and paying tax on it so it appears as if you earned it by legitimate means.

Making traceable money untraceable doesn't mean it's now clean.

<comment><USER10> It seems to be about both taxes and making yourself not traceable to a crime (or the latter is a side effect of the former, since making money appear legitimately earned will of course unlink it from any crimes as a side effect/prerequisite).

Look at the definition here and tell me it doesn't sounds like a mixer: [https://www.fincen.gov/history-anti-money-laundering- laws](https://www.fincen.gov/history-anti-money-laundering-laws)

Similarly there can be unusually high tax (like the 75% in Poland) on undocumented income but if that money could also be traced to a bank heist or drug deal as well you would be in much more trouble than just that tax.

As for USA's (un)usually far legal reach, strong extradition agreements, etc. - that can be up for debate. But money laundering itself (especially when starting with stolen funds) is hardly legal anywhere and mixers seem to fit the definition of laundering at a glance if you consider Bitcoin a currency, it's typical case of law not catching up with the technology and legacy laws being reused instead.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, you're right, the two are pretty well intermingled. To me, laundering is more about the "paying taxes" part, but there's definitely an element of obfuscation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The charges seem exaggerated. If he's responsible or directly involved in the Mt. Gox theft, then they should prosecute him for that. The referencing of Internet usernames as evidence of crimes indicates they have a weak case or they're using it as public relations campaign against bitcoin.

The price of Litecoin was usually higher on btc-e I think solely because people would deposit btc and buy ltc as a way to hide the source of their coins. It was widely considered shady but trustworthy by its longevity.

</comment><comment><USER13> > The language in the indictment about BTC-e's "criminal design" mimics the > indictment against Liberty Reserve — an anonymous currency service taken > down by law enforcement in 2013 — which also accused the online exchange of > having a "criminal design" and a system "designed so that criminals could > effect financial transactions under multiple layers of anonymity."

Basing the indictment on the intent of the design - something hard to prove or reason about objectively - seems like a very slippery slope. Couldn't a similar statement be made about almost any system that protects user privacy? Or maybe they're referring to specific legal requirements not being conformed to rather than a general "criminal design"?

<comment><USER14> The money laundering statutes are so broad that you are a felon under them if you take money out of your savings and put it in your checking in order to make your credit card payment one month. Even if all three are at the same bank and none of the money is the result of a criminal activity.

<comment><USER15> Citation?

<comment><USER16> I highly doubt that scenario exists without some other incriminating action, behavior, or police observation.

Civil Asset Forfeiture is an attack on private property and the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty", but there has to be _some_ suspicion of a crime (usually alleged drug paraphernalia) or simple corruption on the part of the police and/or judges.

There is a money-laundering-related charge, IIRC called "structuring", in which the reporting threshold of $10k/day/person is intentionally avoided (eg. by $9,999 transactions on consecutive days). This isn't usually charged "out of the blue". In the recent Hastert structuring case[1], he told a bank employee that he was avoiding the reporting threshold even though his money transfers weren't actually money laundering after profiting from a crime.

There is a lot that I disdain about money laundering laws and civil asset forfeiture, but I'm not inclined to believe that "rothbard-rand" (the surnames of two famous Libertarians) has no dogs in this fight, so to speak.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert#Indictment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert#Indictment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the Mt Gox parties et al who were robbed will be refunded their bitcoin, since there is a ledger, or if the government will just keep everything. How could a refund be accomplished anyway? Would one need proof of owning a wallet that was emptied?

</comment><comment><USER18> Aside from theft - of which the only evidence is money passing through the wallet of people associated with him - it seems that no crime was committed. Another attack on Bitcoin, and the war on drugs continues to kill more than the drugs themselves.

<comment><USER19> Like it or not, the lack of KYC/AML is in itself a crime. Maybe you should rephrase "Nothing which I would consider a crime happened"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Anybody who thought about this for a second understood that law enforcement was working on a case against BTC-e," said Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center. "The question was just whether the government would catch them."

<comment><USER14> Jerry's a great guy and Coin Center is the EFF of crypto. Everyone should send them some coins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What happens when someone builds an autonomous Bitcoin exchange on Ethereum?

<comment><USER22> Decentralized exchanges are already in the works.

<comment><USER23> Etherdelta already works: [https://etherdelta.github.io/](https://etherdelta.github.io/)

<comment><USER24> Which sadly doesn't get enough love. It's going to take Gox 2.0 before people realise its true value.

<comment><USER11> It's really slow to load for me, but can you buy BTC with USD from it, for example? Otherwise it's not really solving the hard part of the problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another speakeasy bites the dust; the Wild West is ending.

<comment><USER20> Quite possible that that's the joke here, but people have been saying this since the Wild West was actually ending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What about ordinary people who had money/bitcoins/other cryptocurrency on btc-e? What will happen with money in btc-e's wallets?

<comment><USER27> It sounds like the US just got control of the domain, not the server(s).

Some reports that their other domain may still be up (btc-e.nz), but it just hangs for me.

<comment><USER28> Would their IP still work then?

<comment><USER27> They used to be hosted at cloudflare.

So, you could put "22.214.171.124 btc-e.com" in your /etc/hosts file and try it. I did that, but cloudflare times out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Japanese exchange run by Frenchy gets hacked by Russian, fences BTC through > a Bulgarian exchange and is arrested in Greece for USA warrant

[https://twitter.com/cactuspits/status/890358676300718081](https://twitter.com/cactuspits/status/890358676300718081)

</comment><comment><USER30> OK, so it's cool to see some of this background.

But far more important is the challenge of designing an exchange that can't be taken down.

</comment><comment><USER27> Did they get [http://btc-e.nz](http://btc-e.nz) also?

</comment><comment><USER31> > There are many legitimate uses of Bitcoin

What are those. I have claimed here and will repeatedly do so -- there are none. I mean, sure, there are a few companies which integrate the sell-your- bitcoins-buy-our-product in one go but the volume of that is near irrelevant. And no, international transfers do not count as a usage because not only the sender needs to buy bitcoins the seller needs to sell them too...

<comment><USER24> Very bizarre to state the obvious use cases, then nullify it with handwaving.

The current cost to move $10m of bitcoin across international borders is about $1. Attempt the same via conventional means and you'll quickly realise it's benefits go beyond monetary efficiency.

As for current working use cases Factom[0] stores an auditable timestamped data trail in a merkle tree structure, which is then anchored into the bitcoin blockchain.

This is a tech minded site, I would hope people here understand the value of immutability. Real immutability, data that can't be altered or undone in anyway.

Many seem upset at bitcoins meteoric rise and the rampant speculation for good reason, but make no mistake blockchains will be around long after we are gone.

[0] www.factom.org

<comment><USER32> And, yet, it cost me eight bucks to move a few hundred bucks from Coinbase BTC into USD.

Also, are BTC transaction fees really that low ($1 for a 10m transaction)? I've been hearing complaints for a while now about how long it takes to process minimum fee transactions. I don't have any experience with it, as I haven't messed around with BTC in a few years, but, it's definitely part of the argument for the changes happening tomorrow.

<comment><USER33> Stop using coinbase then? They double your transaction fee and take half as revenue.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps I should use BTC-e to convert to USD...Oh, wait...

So, what other reputable exchange is there that works for BTC->USD and vice- versa and doesn't have ridiculous fees (I agree that Coinbase fees are outrageously high).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PARSEC: A Paradigm Shift for Asynchronous and Permissionless Consensus - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/safenetwork/parsec-a-paradigm-shift-for-asynchronous-and-permissionless-consensus-e312d721f9d8 <comment><USER2> Highly Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance

The concept of Byzantine Fault Tolerance is a crucial one. It means that it is mathematically guaranteed that all parts of the Network will come to the same agreement at a certain point in time. Exactly what PARSEC achieves.

This is very different to any blockchain-based consensus mechanism. With blockchains, the probability that the consensus cannot be reversed increases with every additional block that is added to the blockchain — but crucially, it never reaches 100% certainty. Put simply, this is down to the way in which blocks are added in blockchain technology and not something that will change in the future. With PARSEC, consensus is mathematically guaranteed as certain (as well as having a throughput that dwarves blockchain tech). And this is a huge thing.

What's more, PARSEC is highly asynchronous. This means that there is no trusted setup nor any synchronous steps involved, as might be required in common coin implementations or threshold signature schemes. In other words, any consensus mechanism has to be able to work perfectly, even when different events on the Network are reaching nodes at wildly different times and allowing for the fact that nodes may suffer technical issues around the world or the Network could be attacked.</comment>


Dubai Tower generating 10x more energy than required to power it - <AUTHOR> http://www.designgeist.org/2008/06/rotating-tower-dubai-positive-energy-building-10x-by-dynamic-architecture.html

<comment><USER2> This is ridiculous.

The designer, David Fisher, makes more detailed claims here: <http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/dubai-project.htm>

Judging by the drawings of his tower (<http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/schema/schema_big.htm>), it's about 300 x 50 m. Ignoring the narrowing of the tower as it rises, roughly 20% of the area is devoted to wind turbines. That's around 15000 x 0.2 = 3000 m^2.

He claims that the average wind speed in Dubai is 16 km/h, or 4.4 m/s.

Assuming a Rayleigh distribution for the wind speed, the average power available as kinetic energy in the wind is (6/pi) * 0.5 * (density of air) * area * (average velocity)^3.

The density of air is 1.2 kg/m^3.

That's (6/3.14) * 0.5 * 1.2 * 3000 * (4.4^3) = 290 kW. If the wind turbines were 30% efficient, which would be pretty good for a vertical axis turbine stuck in a building, the yield would be 100 kW.

This ignores the narrowing of the building, the lack of wind near the ground, and obstruction from other buildings.

The building has around 50 m * 50 m * 60 floors = 150000 m^2 of floor space, so the areal power density is about 0.67 W/m^2.

To meet the claims of a 10x ratio between energy generated and used, the building can budget 67 mW/m^2. That might be enough to light a single LED in each room.

Oh, and the average temperature in Dubai is 27 C. I guess they can run the air conditioning when all the LEDs are off.

<comment><USER3> Excellent and humorous analysis. Thanks !

<comment><USER2> No, thank you, my good man.

As I've been thinking about it more, the most disturbing part of the tower design is not the low energy yield. It's far more alarming that this gets picked up as an exciting direction for development (judging by the discussion of the tower on TreeHugger, Inhabitat, and similar sites).

I desperately want us to figure out how to capture energy from renewable sources in an economically viable manner. If we don't do that, we are royally screwed. However, the central problem is not, for example, that we have no land for wind turbines or solar panels. The core problem is low power density. We need to be putting up the most efficient, cheapest turbines we can build in the windiest areas, not less efficient turbines in a not very windy area with the added costs of building integration.

It's not a good idea that won't quite work-- it's a terrible idea that's headed in the wrong direction. It's morons like David Fisher (the designer) who give conservatives a reason to say "Bah, that renewable energy stuff is a load of crap."

<comment><USER3> I agree. What we have with energy is a supply side problem. Yet all the thought energy of the public is directed toward the demand side (either reducing/conserving things, or changing the sourse). Yet if we were to solve the supply side in a sustainable manner, we would solve a whole lot of other things very very quickly.

<comment><USER3> Sourse? What the heck was I thinking ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think "is expected to generate" is much more appropriate than "generating" since it doesn't exist yet. I would have been suitably more interested if it was real instead of a prediction.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"It will be continually in motion, changing shape and giving residents the ability to choose a new view at the touch of a button. The form of the building would constantly change as each floor rotates separately giving a new view of the building as it turns."_

 _"Each floor, made up of 12 individual units, complete with plumbing, electric connections, air conditioning, etc., will be fabricated in a factory."_

[http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered- to...](http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered-tower-to- begin-construction-in-dubai/)

 _"In our buildings you can have breakfast facing sunrise, and dinner in front of a sunset over the ocean... without moving from your room."_

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=RzQazjw-4jI>

Sooo... what happens when the residents on _both_ sides want to have breakfast in front of the sunrise and dinner in front of the sunset? Maybe they need a social-voting aspect to the building...

Anyway, this is still ridiculously cool, whether or not it's practical. I want one.

</comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't pass a minimal sniff test in terms of accuracy.

The solar energy impinging on the building will top out at 1kW/m^2, with an insanely optimistic 50% conversion rate, I can't imagine it generating more than 7500kW from solar.

That, by the way, isn't enough to run the hand dryers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't worry about all that environmentally efficient stuff going on in the tower, most of the people who enter the building will drive there in $300,000 supercars that get 6 MPG.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's the link with some actual info:

[http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered- to...](http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered-tower-to- begin-construction-in-dubai/)

</comment><comment><USER9> And how much extra did it cost to build the tower? This isn't free energy. It has a cost. Any serious analysis would consider how much energy we could get spending the same money on additional power plants.</comment>


The impossible post to find - <AUTHOR>

Earlier today, which could mean Saturday the 27th, I read an post on HN, 99% sure that was the place.  I have spent the past 30 minutes looking in my history got find it, and went through every item.
He did some basic queries, A records, CNAMES, AAAA, etc., always using a -t option as I recall.
I want to go back and see what I was reading, as I believe I was just skimming it.
I do recall he mentioned please excuse any terrible spelling, I'm rioting this at a bar.
That is about the only thing that is sticking out at me at the moment.  Any ideas at all, it is killing me. <comment><USER2> Maybe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8377213)

<comment><AUTHOR> You did it! thank you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has someone already built ShowMeNow? - <AUTHOR> So, I recently ran into a frustration with Google Maps. I was looking for a specific store that was far out of my way, so I wanted to know if the store was still there and open. StreetView could show me a picture of the storefront from about a year ago, but that was too old. What I needed was a snapshot of that address right now.
Has someone already built a service that delivers this? Between smartphones with cameras and GPS on the one hand and data centers on the other, I don't see any insuperable technical hurdle.
I did some searching and couldn't find anything that seemed quite right. <comment><USER2> Could you not just call the store? I don't see how this could possibly work, even with smartphones, cameras, GPS, and data centers.

<comment><USER3> You could do it with task rabbit. You could pay someone $10-$20 to run where you need an see if they're open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yelp is actually fairly good at keeping up to date on the status of whether stores are still open or not, especially if the store has been open for some time. But aside from that, why not just call and ask like someone else said.</comment>


Ask News.YC: How do you handle email blasts? - <AUTHOR>

We're currently using constant contact, but haven't been all that happy with the features provided. Does anyone have a solution to recommend for blasting 20K+ emails at a time? I built my own for mobmov.org, but I'd prefer to use a pre-built solution if any non-sucky ones exist. <comment><USER2> I hated constant contact, we switched to <http://www.campaignmonitor.com> and have been much happier.

Also heard <http://www.stun1.com> is supposed to be good, but I don't have personal experience with them.</comment>


NSA Backdoors and Bitcoin (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/nsa-backdoors-and-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> Pseudorandom parameter selection of NIST P-curves, including secp256r1 has created much controversy within the cypherpunk community in the early 2000s. the theory is that the NSA discovered a class of secret curves with an unknown special weakness, and then bruteforced the random seed that would generate the weak curve. [0] On the other hand, secp256k1's parameters were not generated by random seeds. [1]

I think the important fact is not whether secp256r1 has a backdoor, but the decision of selecting secp256k1 by Satoshi Nakamoto for the use in Bitcoin. At the time, secp256k1 was the only widely-implemented non-P curve in various crypto libraries, and almost nobody used it at the time. It seems the entire decision of using secp256k1 was made to avoid secp256r1. This is another piece of evidence that Satoshi Nakamoto must have beee active in the 1990-2000 cypherpunk community, so that he was well-aware of those discussions. This should shed some light on his possible identity.

\--

[0] DJB's paper _how to manipulate curve standards_ [2] is DJB's attempt of creating the strongest argument for this claim. But even in his analysis, overall it's not too plausible, there's little evidence that such a class of secret curves exists and it required huge computation (2^80), it's on the edge of what was possible, but the pseudorandom parameter selection is certainly technically unfavorable as he demonstrated.

[1] [https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/rigid.html](https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/rigid.html)

[2] [https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/571.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/571.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > It seems the entire decision of using secp256k1 was made to avoid secp256r1. > This is another piece of evidence that Satoshi Nakamoto must have beee > active in the 1990-2000 cypherpunk community, so that he was well-aware of > those discussions. This should shed some light on his possible identity.

I was well aware of all that, at the time and now, without being active in the cypherpunk community. Granted, I was in college for a CS and math degree, but the cypherpunk community was pretty loud if you were listening at all.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's another way to interpret his choice. "Satoshi being a member of the Cypherpunk" is only one possibility. It's entirely possible that he wasn't active at all, and his familiarity of Cypherpunks was from his learning, not from the participation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is silly. secp256k1 and secp256r1 are curves (or, standards based on parameters describing a curve). Dual_EC is a PKRNG that _uses_ curves.

You don't need curve magic to see the problem with Dual_EC; it's an RNG that works by transforming its state with a public key encryption primitive, which begs the obvious question "who holds the private key?". Dual_EC was so obviously problematic (and so slow) that many people, Schneier included, questioned whether it actually was a backdoor at all (full disclosure: I'm one of those people).

To believe the NIST curves generated from random numbers are backdoored, you essentially have to believe that there is a class of curves susceptible to some hitherto unknown attack that is large enough that NSA could find it by brute forcing hashes, but not so large that any other researcher got any inkling that the vulnerability existed. In particular: unlike Dual_EC, which is straightforwardly _a backdoor_ , with its own special key, for NIST curves to be "backdoored" there has to be some underlying vulnerability in a particular curve structure to exploit. This isn't my argument, by the way; it's shoplifted from Koblitz and Menezes.

You shouldn't use the NIST curves! They're hard to implement securely. Curve25519 has better ergonomics and is much safer out of the box. But conspiracy-theoretic stuff linking Dual_EC to NIST curves is always painful to read.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's really a conspiracy theory. Recall that before the Dual_EC affair, the reputation of the NSA was that they were a benevolent force that helped strengthen DES against differential cryptanalysis before it was publicly discovered. The Dual_EC affair marked a turning point where people started to _seriously_ consider the possiblility that the NSA was a malevolent actor weakening primatives for their own benefit.

Also the problem with Dual_EC wasn't just the bad design, but that they had (reportedly) paid RSA corporation to use it.

<comment><USER4> I find comments like these _absolutely baffling_. I learned what the NSA was from Schneier's Applied Cryptography, which I bought when I was a senior in high school, back in 1994. Throughout the book, NSA is depicted as adversarial to cryptography. They're the NSA of the Clipper chip, and of global bans on cryptography, and "this t-shirt is a munition". There has never been a point in my professional life where NSA _wasn 't_ the global adversary.

Until I started talking about this stuff on HN, it never would have occurred to me that anyone would think NSA had this benevolent reputation. Based on the timing, I suspect that's not because I'm encountering people with different priors about NSA, but rather that I'm talking to people with _no priors_ about NSA.

<comment><USER5> The NSA had a benevolent reputation with regards to primitives, not in general. The thinking was that the NSA would not structurally weaken encryption standards, because USG uses these primitives too, so they would be shooting themselves in the foot by inserting backdoors - don't shit in your own backyard basically.

<comment><USER4> The NSA was accused of weakening DES, even though they did the opposite. There has never been a time where the NSA was trusted.

<comment><USER6> They did this by 2-folds. One strengthening by changing its inner workings so it will be immune to cryptographic attacks, but on the other hand they lowered the key space, which allowed them to brute-force it. Luckily we learn it by now, the longer the key, the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So this article is six years old. Any update on the supposition? I guess no one's figured out yet whether the recommended magic number is a back door or not. My money is definitely on corrupted.

Odd the article doesn't mention the obvious conclusion; that Bitcoin was designed by NSA, or folks with intimate knowledge of NSA's back doors. I've long maintained that a US government agency is the most likely developer of Bitcoin (mostly because no one else could sit on that kind of $$$ forever). NSA is the most obvious agency. The question is.. why? I can speculate on lots of reasons.

<comment><USER8> Bitcoin was designed by an individual with intimate knowledge of the state of the art in _suspicions_ of NSA backdoors.

You are assuming Satoshi is sitting on money. Satoshi took care to hide it's identity, and thus would have switched mining to different addresses very early in bitcoins history.

It would have been obvious to Satoshi that spending from a known address would blow it's identity, so only did so for testing.

Satoshi may well be a billionaire and spending bitcoin every day.

People seem to take comfort in this idea that bitcoin was created by a government... because bitcoin seems radical when you first learn about it. However the attempts to create it date back a couple decades before it was created. Satoshi combined existing inventions with just the new element of his time chain.

But even if the NSA were behind it, what could they do? Anything they could do could also be done by someone with a math breakthrough. So whether the attacker is the NSA or not bitcoin has to be robust against it.

So where is bitcoin vulnerable?

It's easy to imagine vulnerabilities in the cryptography, but hard to produce them.

Further, if you did, it doesn't necessarily affect bitcoin. This is bitcoin's genius. It's not software, it's a set of incentives. Show an error in the software, it will be patched and bitcoin will carry on. Worst case is a hard fork.

<comment><USER9> > Bitcoin was designed by an individual with intimate knowledge of the state > of the art in _suspicions_ of NSA backdoors.

Insiders at the NSA (or any other TLA, foreign or domestic) also fit this description. The strongest position is to know both the truth, and the most compelling misconceptions.

<comment><USER8> I think it is a mistake for me to fight the "NSA created bitcoin" narrative. I am gleeful at Nelson not owning any bitcoin and want all like him who reject it for ideological reasons to continue to misunderstand it.

Freedom and human rights need financial backing, and bitcoin does that.

<comment><USER7> Nothing like personalized comments coming from a brand new pseudonym.

<comment><USER8> It took quite awhile to understand what narcissists are and to recognize that attempting to talk to them is pointless.

They are simply incapable of valuing any other human being, let alone comprehending that such human being might have superior knowledge in any area.

After all, the narcissist is the supreme being. At least in their reality.

To be fair, "Unabashedly elitist" was a confession — if one were wise enough to recognize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still doubt that there's a backdoor in the NIST curves because they're still widely used and recommended for top secret information, among other reasons.

If there were a backdoor and it leaked (or the math behind it was independently rediscovered!) the result could be catastrophic. Snowden showed that the NSA is absolutely vulnerable to leaks.

<comment><USER11> A trapdoor back door would require knowing some secret value. It is very much possible that this secret value could remain secret by not being written down in any electronic document. It would exist on some code breaking hardware, but like the cocoa cola recipe it could be known by only a few people in the world and still be useful.

<comment><USER12> The construction of the NIST curves essentially preludes trapdoors.

It doesn't completely preclude having a purposefully weak curve based on some publicly unknown weakness. ... but at the same time it also doesn't preclude the the curves having been selected to be _stronger_ against some publicly unknown weakness (as was done with DES).

[Not that I'd recommend them.]

<comment><USER11> Greg, do we know that to be true of all use cases though?

<comment><USER12> Would you clarifying your question a bit?

My comment was pointing out that those NIST curves like P-256 and P-224 can't have a trapdoor-- meaning a hidden secret key that allows the NSA and only the NSA to compromise the use-- in the curve themselves.

Some application of the curve could have its own trapdoor, as dualECdrbg did.

<comment><USER11> Well the NIST curves use random primes, and they're not the obvious, largest possible primes that meet the necessary security requirements. So maybe they were chosen according to their susceptibility to some unknown attack (or, charitably, their non-susceptibility). I think we agree up to this point.

But when the space of potential attacks is an unknown-unknown, can we really constrain with confidence what attacks might exist? Maybe the prime group was chosen to have some relationship to a composite group for which the NSA knows the prime factors? I know this doesn't jive with our current understanding of number theory, but the point is it is hard to speculate about unknown- unknowns. Can we be certain that every crazy thing we think of is ruled out by our proven, not conjectured understanding of number theory?

<comment><USER12> My post specifically pointed out "It doesn't completely preclude having a purposefully weak curve based on some publicly unknown weakness." \-- just that there is nowhere to embed a secret key that only the NSA would know. The only room in it would be for narrow vulnerabilities that others could discover-- just because there aren't that many bits of control.

[As an, aside, the NIST curves do not use random primes, E.g. P-256 is 2^256 - 2^224 + 2^192 + 2^96 - 1, which is a solinas prime with a pretty obvious performance driven structure. As is the case for all the other NIST P-whatever curves. Using primes chosen for field performance is pretty common, e.g. curve 25519 uses a crandall prime]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there are fears and doubts, perhaps it would be safest to just assume the transport is clear text in risk ranking and adapt other counter-measures to fill perceived gaps.

For really sensitive flows, perhaps dark fiber + non standard ciphers + encrypting the payload with application layer encryption using non standard or custom ciphers. I mean, why not, if it's your own B2B flows. Take an existing cipher / protocol and make a few subtle changes. It's just math.

For end-user encryption, that would take some more thought and would probably get into layers of turtles.

<comment><USER14> There's a lot of ways to get encryption wrong. A few subtle changes could undo a very deliberate countermeasure for a somewhat obscure vulnerability. I don't think that's good advice.

<comment><USER13> I agree, but I would probably do it anyway if I were mitigating someones concerns. It could be a layer on top of the standard ciphers / protocols. I certainly would not do this for end-user comms. For B2B if you control both ends, maybe its a risk worth taking. Each entity would have to weigh the risks.</comment></comment></comment>


I've Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12 - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/i-ve-had-a-cyberstalker-since-i-was-12-384ea9853b79 <comment><USER2> There's a moment in the pilot of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where the women are rescued from the bunker and put on a daytime talk show and Matt Lauer asks one of the women how she ended up in the bunker:

"I had waited on Reverend Richard at a York Steak House I worked at, and one night he invited me out to his car to see some baby rabbits, and I didn't want to be rude, so… here we are."

And Matt Lauer responds: "I'm always amazed by what women will do because they're afraid of being rude…"

It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain female agency in the world.

<comment><USER3> > It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women > to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to > constrain female agency in the world.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to call out this statement as sexist. There are also several other strange "facts" being passed around in other comments which are similarly biased. To be clear, I'm not calling you sexist. In fact, I think your comment makes a great point about submission to societal pressures leading to these sorts of problems.

Getting back to the quoted statement, I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated by societal pressures. I also don't think men find it hard to understand this. If there's data to show otherwise, I welcome it. In its absence, I believe it more wise to hold this neutral view rather than perpetuating a gender bias.

Let's use Curb Your Enthusiasm as a means to elucidate my argument. The lead character in that show gets into all manner of uncomfortable and disastrous situations as a result of bending to societal pressures; not wanting to be "rude". The lead character is male and I'll bet more guys than not can relate. Perhaps not to the same scale as what is portrayed in the show, because the show is meant to be entertaining, but perhaps more on the level of The Office (US) awkwardness.

So I doubt that societal malleability differs between the genders. You're still right in bringing it up, though, because indeed this habit of not wanting to be rude is clearly a contributing factor to cyberstalking cases. I just don't think it's what leads to a greater number of females being victims versus males.

<comment><USER4> > I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated > by societal pressures.

Sure but which gender does society place more pressures on?

<comment><USER5> I won't pretend that I know what the answer to this is, but the idea that the answer is evident is fucking absurd. Gender roles cut quite sharply both ways, and the only way to think otherwise is willful ignorance: for one extremely obvious example to anyone with even a second of thought, how often do you see men crying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, it sucks, but no surprise. Stalking is an old, old problem. And the police won't do anything until it turns violent. You can stalk normal people, movie stars, business people - pretty much anyone other than a psychiatrist. (It turns out that psychiatrists have a really easy time getting their stalkers committed to insane asylums.)

I know a woman who owns nothing in her own name, changes her phone number frequently, and whose own family often does not know how to reach her. All to make it harder for her stalker to keep tracking her down. When she acquired the stalker she was high profile so the FBI actually did send someone to give her advice. The advice was basically that she was screwed, how to best hide, and to get trained guard dogs.

I wish I was joking.

<comment><USER7> > And the police won't do anything until it turns violent.

Try violating a restraining order taken out against you and see if you maintain that opinion.

The behavior you describe as well as that of the article qualifies for seeking a restraining order, which this entire discussion seems to have forgotten is in existence. Once you have a EPO/TRO/PRO, _then_ the police care when it is violated. A _lot_. It's easy for them to enforce and requires no investigation, which is the thorn that hits a lot of people when they try to get cases like this going with the police. As an example, my father went to jail more than once for violating my mother's PRO. It's also on the person's record, which is why it is good to involve a lawyer if someone files one against you.

I'm one more contact from my own stalker away from filing for one, but he seems to have forgotten about me for now. I'm mystified that the FBI advised your friend and the topic of a restraining order did not come up at all. I spoke with the FBI about my stalker after he threatened to kill me across state lines and it was the first thing they told me to do. Undoubtedly, there is more to your anecdote.

In California, as long as you choose the right kind (i.e., not domestic for civil), restraining orders are fairly trivial to get. In some cases you can get a legally-binding TRO from a judge, in a day, for free. They also show up on computers in a police officer's cruiser in California (thanks to the digitization of all of it in CLETS), so if you are literally standing in front of a person on whom you have a EPO/TRO/PRO and get a cop's attention, the crime is open and shut and they _will_ arrest, speaking from experience. Bonus in California and maybe elsewhere: if you successfully take out a restraining order on someone, they have to surrender all their firearms or sell them (yes, really).

Seriously. Restraining orders, people. The courts are at your disposal, and they're not just for domestic violence.

Edit: Except in New York, apparently, where the author of the article lives. Go New York. New York readers: vote to fix that incredibly moronic situation at once, then travel to a sane state on this like California and go back home with one of ours, which should be enforceable there. Seriously, in the Internet age, the complete absence of a non-dating civil protective order mechanism is an absolute and disgusting shame, and means your only recourse from the courts exists _if you make out with your stalker._ What a grandly perverse incentive you have there from your judicial system. I'm actually worked up about this from learning it in this thread, and sympathize far more with the article author now than I did before I knew that.

California resources:

\- [http://www.courts.ca.gov/1260.htm](http://www.courts.ca.gov/1260.htm)

\- [http://www.courts.ca.gov/selfhelp- domesticviolence.htm](http://www.courts.ca.gov/selfhelp-domesticviolence.htm) (dating/relationship/etc)

\- [http://www.courts.ca.gov/1044.htm](http://www.courts.ca.gov/1044.htm) (not dating, impossible in New York, apparently)

<comment><USER6> Oh, she got specific advice about restraining orders.

The specific advice was, "The point at which a stalker is likely to flip out is the point where it becomes obvious to the stalker that the attention is unwanted and the relationship can never work. There is a real possibility that the act of taking out a restraining order will trigger a murder-suicide."

When you're dealing with insane people, you can't expect a sane response to legal threats.

(And yes, there is a _lot_ more to my anecdote. But not stuff I'll talk about in public.)

<comment><USER8> At that point, why not just buy a gun and start going to a shooting range? Most US jurisdictions have a legal framework that enables you to kill others in self-defense.

I don't personally believe that anyone should have to do this, but I also believe that if you feel sufficiently threatened it'd be silly to ignore your legal right to self-defense.

<comment><USER9> _Most US jurisdictions have a legal framework that enables you to kill others in self-defense._

 _ALL_ US jurisdictions have such a framework, although a 7 plus D.C. make it impractical to use by mostly not allowing concealed carry, and a subset of them have a duty to retreat which will likely get you crucified later in court (e.g. Maryland and at times, even in your home, Massachusetts). The author is said to live in New York, which is all but no _possession_ let alone no issue in NYC, and may issue, sometimes liberally upstate, so she probably can't take your advice.

ADDED: And it still won't stop the cyberstalking, just give her a backstop if it goes "real world".

<comment><USER8> I wasn't talking about the article, but responding to btillys comment and btilly never clarified the jurisdiction where the events he was describing took place.

I do think that the ability to defend yourself would be of great help if you're faced with a serious threat of physical violence, as seemed to be the case in the situation btilly described.

> a subset of them have a duty to retreat which will likely get you crucified > later in court

This is what I was referring to with "most".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "When I got a Facebook account in 2006 he found me again and, not wanting to be rude, I accepted his friend request."

It's hard to understand why, having previously already blocked this person elsewhere, they would accept a friend request from them. I suppose now, 10 years later, one can hope that people exact greater control over their online social networks.

<comment><USER11> Firstly I'd like to state that there's no justification for what this guy is doing. Making somebody's life intentionally and persistently miserable can have no justification.

The story basically starts with a boy falling in love with a girl that won't love him back. She's still using interaction with him for her purposes though. Then the boy grows into a man and his addiction to a person gets deformed into addiction to harming this person in non-violent ways. That's what happens to some people. Happens in marriages too. If teenagers are weird adults are way weirder.

I went similar route. I had it easier than this guy. I fell in love at the age of 16 (so later than him). I already had one episode of unrequited love earlier (probably around age of 12) which was extremely wisely ended by my love interest and friend by cutting all (and I mean all) contact with me when she learned about it.

This second girl I spent about 7 years addicted to. I was her friend. Even after she learned that I'm in love with her she still kept me around. Used me for comfort. Used me even as a rebound when she needed to ditch her second boyfriend whom she loved but who apparently got bored with her (in my state of mind I was more than happy to help).

Who knew how it all would end if I haven't made conscious decision to cut all contact. It was really hard. It took a year of manually steering away my thoughts from her. I had to vilify in my mind the person I loved. I had to ignore all pings from her (fortunately it was before Facebook, so just emails and texts) which fortunately wasn't that many of. When you are an addict every dose is something you need to be very careful about. She had new boyfriend at the time so she eventually forgot me and my brain formed mental scar tissue around pathways carved over the previous 7 years. I got comfortable, even happy. I met a girl who loved me and moved in with her (fortunately didn't get addicted again).

10 years later I meet object of my addiction on the street 100 meters from my new home where I live now. She's with another man, she's pregnant. She just accidentally lives in my neighborhood. I'm scared shitless. Fortunately I haven't met her again. I have no idea if she moved or still lives around. I don't get out much. She made one more attempt to contact me (through Facebook because I accepted her friend request, because everyone has capacity to be stupid occasionally). I answered with "?" She responded with something with something about staying at home with child broadening horizons. I responded with image that basically implies that she finds her child boring. Which she somewhat acknowledged and fortunately haven't contacted me ever since.

I can imagine many points in my history when I might have turned into a stalker. If I was more lonely, had less support from my family, was less intelligent, was less introspective, had less knowledge or interest in psychology, had less awareness about how my feelings are not necessarily my identity... It could have turned ugly for everybody.

Brother of my mother was an alcoholic. I might be prone to addiction. I binge watch series. I binge game. I'm addicted to news. But I'm also addicted to learning new things and to figuring why stuff doesn't work when it should. The only addiction that severely harmed me was to a person. But I see I lucked out when I read stories like these.

Issue of stalking is real and I hope in the future there'll be a lot more research about this and that efficient ways to mitigate this will be developed. I think whatever the solution is it involves stalker getting psychological or psychiatric help.

<comment><USER12> About eight years ago I met a girl who I fell in love with almost instantly. Except she didn't fall in love with me. We had a fantastic first date, a terrible second, and an OK third, after which it ended. She had a real impact on me, with that first date. And she knew it. She could transform herself, her looks and her character, into this beautiful, lovely, hip, warm person. She was not a model, not fake hair or makeup, just a really attractive woman.

The second date I didn't recognize her. She came in pale clothes, hair without effort, barely makeup, and even today I'm confused if I think about it. It could have been someone else, and the date was a disaster. Not because of her clothes, but because of the stress test I was subject to. I didn't realize then what it was, just was taken by surprise and didn't know how to handle it. We had a third date, after which she let me know she didn't want to see me anymore.

In the email she sent, she let me know that she would never contact me again, really never, and I didn't have to try to contact her. She made it absolutely, without any doubt, clear that it would be totally pointless for me to keep on dreaming about her. Whatever I did could not change her mind. It was a long mail with a thorough explanation, and sound conclusion that this was the end.

Looking back, I realize that she must have had several stalkers. Maybe not the type that follows her 15 years, but guys that are flabbergasted by her appearance, fall in love, but cannot handle her, after which she dumps them, and they can't accept that. They may accept that mentally, but not emotionally. This is like an addiction, that's what it is, to me at least.

Thinking about this, I believe that she had her quirks as well. The way she devoted herself to things in her life, it was all or nothing. And so was my date with her.

I don't blame her. I don't think she meant wrong, or tried to trick me. I believe she was honest. But it is her way of acting that makes this happen as much as my way of reacting. I'm over her by the way, mentally and emotionally, and I haven't spoken to her since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel for this person. I recently had a stalker over the summer, a family friend whom I met at my sister's wedding. He had some sort of break down, declared me to be his lover, received my email via unwitting family members. Luckily someone had raised the alarm. Said stalked flew out of state fully expecting to find me and be with me. It did not happen, but I certainly was preparing for an altercation and was traumatized by every unexpected knock or ring at the door.

</comment><comment><USER14> End result: The thing resolved itself, likely because someone else sued her stalker.

I have to wonder though: If her local police was ignorant of actual laws applying to her case, as she indicated, couldn't she just tell the officers under which exact laws she is making a complaint?

Further, if the local police is generally ignorant and incompetent, what would her chances for success be in using a lawyer to try and identify appropiate channels and contacting them?

<comment><USER15> >If her local police was ignorant of actual laws applying to her case, as she indicated, couldn't she just tell the officers under which exact laws she is making a complaint?

To me at least it's been conclusively demonstrated that 60-90% of police are completely incompetent.

I would not trust them to do the right thing even if you mentioned the law.

<comment><USER16> I don't know how it works in the U.S. but in Australia I had a situation where someone bumped into my mother on the road and intimidated her as she went down the highway.

My mother noted the time, the license plate number and ensured she called the Police Assistance Line we have, after he passed her by. They referred her to her local police station. She went to see them the next morning, but the Officer on Duty refused point blank to file a statement. She later went back, and the same Office on Duty again refused to file a statement. So did his supervisor.

I knew this was a crime, so I did the following:

1\. I called back the Police Assistance Line and explained that my mother had been intimidated on the road. I explained the situation and asked if the police were meant to look into the matter. The Police Assistance line operator, whose details I took, advised me it is against the law and should be followed up.

2\. I called the local police station and explained to the person on the line that my mother had had someone bump into her on the highway, and she was intimidated. I asked if this was something that was allowed, and the police officer explained to me that actually, this was something that should be looked into.

3\. I then explained to the police officer that my mother had already tried to have a statement taken twice already, but it was declined each time and the supervisor would not go ahead with it either. I asked to speak to the duty sergeant.

4\. The duty sergeant, after I explained the situation to him again, sounded very sheepish and promised to look into the matter.

The Police finally took a statement.

Now if that had been me, I would have taken matters further and lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman. I very much think that police need to learn that a. they aren't lawyers, and they don't know the law even though many of them think they do, and b. they also need to know that if they literally stop others from reporting crimes (not even the point of acting on crimes, _reporting_ of a crimes) then they will be buried in paperwork because of their jerkish behaviour.

<comment><USER17> Are you a guy? It might have something to do with the different response.

<comment><USER16> Dunno why you got downvoted, that's a valid response. Yeah, I'm a guy and yes, it did occur to me that might have been part of the reason I got a different response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I learned in this article is that it's someone's job to call the victims of stalkers, apologize on their behalf, and ask to be notified if the behavior continues. It makes me wonder what process is initiated if they inform the lawyer that "Danny" has resumed harassing them. Will the lawyer call "Danny" and tell his client to shut up? Will he be billed for that time? Is the idea that, given a sufficiently expensive lawyer, he won't be able to afford his stalking habit?

It is interesting that they appear to have published this under their real name. No doubt "Danny" has read it with interest.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I've read from the article, beside the obvious, is how unaware people are about how technology works.

"With Apple and Google unable to help ...".

She thinks Apple and Google should help with spoofed mails b/c an Apple mail client is used and the spoofed email was from a Gmail address.

Also not understanding identity theft:

"including Danny's latest identity theft."

Also not understanding the difference between civil legal action and crimes.

In most western countries education about technology and how it works is insufficient. Same goes for law basics that help with life.

Edit: I don't blame this in any way on her.

</comment><comment><USER20> While this must have no doubt been a horrid experience, I can see why the cops would not have considered it worthy of launching a criminal investigation.

This is a perfect case for civil law: causing emotional distress, harassment, defamation, etc. You should attempt to sue him and get a no-contact order if you can.

<comment><USER21> Even though having a visit from the cops would probably cause this guy to be scared into no longer doing this?

<comment><USER22> Anecdotal evidence suggests that this tactic only works on some people. Some stalkers don't care when they get a visit from the police (the police very clearly can't do anything and will state that explicitly).

Some may take a short break and then feel the urge come back; others may just go right ahead. (Some people don't realize they're stalking, and will stop. It's worth a try to ask them to stop.)

After having asked nicely, suing is unfortunately your only recourse. And it really sucks that suing takes so much time, effort, and money, especially in a situation like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not a woman, but Garry of Garrysmod fame has a very interesting set of blog posts about dealing with and eventually befriending his internet stalker in an attempt to curb the guy's worst behavior.

[http://garry.tv/2015/11/10/stalkers-and-abuse- part-1/](http://garry.tv/2015/11/10/stalkers-and-abuse-part-1/)

</comment><comment><USER24> > _I was never physically afraid of Danny and never will be._

I would be. Danny clearly has more than a few screws loose.

<comment><USER18> It seems like they've had a lot of time to learn which ones, though.

<comment><USER24> True, although anyone that's both that obsessive and that malicious deserves to be considered a potential physical threat—barring some sort of major physical disability.

Even then, it's remotely possible they could still cause physical harm by proxy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Okay, so this creep's behavior pretty clearly rises to the level of harassment at a minimum.

But legally the FIRST thing to do with a stalker or harasser is to TELL them unequivocally that you want NO further contact. Preferably document in writing; in New York, you can record conversations that you are party to. At this point further unwanted contact becomes more clearly a criminal matter.

Too often, those on the receiving end ignore or laugh off bad behavior. This is natural enough, but unless someone is clearly threatening, if they haven't been told unequivocally to stop all further contact, then they can always argue, sincerely or not, that they didn't know their contact was unwelcome. Or that in any event they were free to continue their advances.

The closest the author explicitly posts is "I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I'd block him." That is unlikely enough to suffice as "clearly informed to cease that conduct." All it would take is a message saying "never contact me again." Period, full stop. Better yet, add "or I will report you to police." At that point, further contact is actionable, criminal harassment.

That being said, much of this cyberstalker's behavior is independently harassing, e.g. forged emails to friends etc. But putting someone on notice is a first step to protecting yourself. It is premature to go to police to say, "X is bothering me, I'm not afraid of him and I haven't told him firmly to go away, but I really want him to go away." If someone isn't in any way actually putting you in fear, and all that is involved is unwanted communications/nonphysical contact, then it's on you to first tell him to go away before involving police. Then if he won't, you have an unambiguous complaint.

Edit: The author does also describe some poor policing. Good community- oriented policing centers around mediation. Ideally the police in this situation would not simply say "it's not a crime" and make the complainant feel helpless and ignored, but would try to solve help solve the problem. Specifically by taking a report and offering to communicate to the person that all further contact is unwelcome and may lead to a criminal complaint, and documenting this. This type of approach is likely to help bring an end to the behavior, or in the alternative lay a foundation for a future, actionable criminal complaint. In the best case, behavior improves, complainant can move on with her life, police don't have to deal with future complaints, everybody wins. Sadly many departments just don't want to get involved or have the resources to deal with community mediation, even if it pays for itself over time.

<comment><USER7> > in New York, you can record conversations that you are party to.

In case people get ideas from this and are unaware, California and several other states are the "other" ones that forbid this without consent from both parties in certain circumstances. Yes, even recording your stalker could get you prosecuted. Yes, it has happened. Yes, it is stupid. Yes, it even affects reporters to an extent.

IANAL, consult yours. You may also find the reference material I consulted on this while working in journalism useful: [http://www.rcfp.org/reporters- recording-guide](http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Two years passed before I finally decided to take legal action, in late 2014. Maybe it seems weird that I waited so long

What seems weird is it does not sound like she ever tried to actually confront him. Block after block, but not really confronting him. It seems she didn't want to hurt his feelings. But waited until police action? That seems like a terrible approach.

The most confrontational she got was "I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I'd block him." How surprising that didn't work.

You need to be more confrontational in a situation like this - either a heart to heart approach where you lay it on them, or something more aggressive. Blocking for the umpteenth time is not going to work.

You could call this critique victim blaming, but the my intent to encourage people to handle the situation better, without someone repeating her mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most of these amount to libel, at worst. File suit.

There are excellent reasons for police to be uninvolved in what amounts to people saying mean things, even if those mean things are directed at your employer or friends.

<comment><USER28> If it were a one-off incident I would agree with you. But a consistent pattern like this over _years_ is stalking, and either is or should be a crime. In my opinion this clearly summarizes why:

> For Franks, a big theme is that the "fundamental feeling of security that > most people take for granted is taken away." She has spoken to hundreds, > maybe thousands, of victims in her research, who describe constant feelings > "having to look over one's shoulder" that keep them from engaging fully in > their lives, online or off.

I feel that's true even if you don't believe that the stalker will try to physically harm you. There is a huge emotional toll to dealing with that kind of thing, and it's not something that should just be tolerated.

(That said, I recognize that police have limited resources, so putting more toward this would mean less for something else, or an increase in funding.)

<comment><USER27> So sue! That and restraining orders are designed for _exactly this_.

<comment><USER28> So why have crimes at all? If someone steals from you, or assaults you, you can always sue. The thing is, that shouldn't be the victim's responsibility.

<comment><USER27> You're acting like libel just became a problem in the last 5 years. There are good reasons why we don't really have criminal defamation prosecutions anymore. They _always_ involve tons of disputed facts, and they require tons of resources to investigate. Choice of cases is always political.

Let me tell you who is a good candidate for a "cyberstalking" charge. You maintain a database of police involved in questionable shootings. When one of them gets canned from their present department, you track the new PD they're foisted onto, and make sure to let the local BLM chapter know about the bad apple they're about to get, and a lurid description of what you think their crimes are. Why, that sounds worthy of some prosecutorial resources (election year, after all). Aren't you glad you made being mean on the internet a crime?

Get a fucking restraining order. It's ridiculously easy; too easy, in fact, to the point where they're routinely used as leverage in other civil disputes. Violation of restraining orders is a crime. This is a solved problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> ...so how many women are actually commenting on this post? Raise your hands please?

Hahaha, this is a _classssic_ hackernews discussion. "There is absolutely no discrimination. Women are held to the same standards as men. They just complain. Saying that women have it unfair is ITSELF sexist" type arguments are the best (for entertainment value).

@dang and other hackernews people: Regardless of if you agree with them or not, you do realize that this will reflect on Ycombinator's perception/PR right? No amount of office hours for women is going to counter this RIDICULOUS volume of INSANELY UNAWARE sexism going around in these forums. I mean, for YCombinator's sake I hope you guys agree with most of the comments here, otherwise this is just deadweight on whatever your 'diversity' aims may be. Calling them lazy, complaining fools is how you put the bullseye on your backs for the time when the pitchforks come out.

Just saying. This is ridiculous. It doesn't have to be this way. Really.

<comment><USER30> thanks for saying this. it's shocking to see the cesspool that the comments become whenever gender and race issues are raised on this site. are people really this clueless?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this person misses a key point here. She does not have a "Cyber Stalker" \- She has a Stalker ... No matter the medium of the majority of these incidents if materially affects her life in several ways and more and more as our world blurs from the real world to a digital reality these things are really one in the same and should be treated as such.

I say this not to say that she is wrong but to help raise all of our personal awarenesses and biases to this type of situation.

The term "Cyber Stalker" tends to make it seem less threatening or serious when in reality it can be just as dangerous and possibly even more so to the person on the wrong end of this.

I hope she gets this remedied in the near future, but I also hope she and maybe others reading this will realize how closely that line is walked and how we should start considering it the same crime as our data and our digital footprint becomes more an integral part of our lives.

</comment><comment><USER16> I know this is entirely inadequate, but what about suing for defamation?

The police, I fear, want to start getting a bit more proactive. When someone is able to get away with sabotaging someone else's life with complete impunity from authorities, a lot of people take actions in their own hands.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Men can be victims of cyberstalking, too, but the majority of victims are > women, who tend to experience "particularly severe" harassment online, > according to the survey. Just about everyone has been name-called or subject > to some other sort of verbal abuse online, but women are the predominant > targets of sexual harassment and the sustained abuse that constitutes > cyberstalking, typically considered the most serious form of internet > harassment.

Love how she so quickly brushes men under the rug. "This is a woman problem! Not a mans porblem!" Why do we generalize issues? Why not focus on all cyber stalking, not just cyber stalking by men? Its serious issue that I sympathize with.

</comment><comment><USER32> There should be laws against this. A judge should be able to tell when a behavior is harassment, and forbid the harasser from contacting the person again with more severe charges if he does again.

<comment><USER33> There are – that's a restraining order.

<comment><USER34> I think that's the point he was making. I think his post was saying she should have pursued that sometime during those years of stalking.

<comment><USER35> If that was the point then it would have been better made explicit.

<comment><USER25> If someone is not a relative or intimate partner, there's no easy way to get a civil restraining order against someone in New York the way you can in domestic cases. There either has to be a criminal prosecution to get a criminal restraining order, or you have to retain a lawyer and file a full- blown lawsuit in a court of general jurisdiction.

It should definitely be enough for police to act if you establish that you demanded that contact cease and and that it continued unabated. In this case it seems that the author may not have clearly established it, perhaps did not understand the best way to frame this, and police were unhelpful and didn't want to be involved unless there were threats or a domestic incident involved (where mandatory arrests come into play).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I knew two women who were being stalked online. Both took physical violence to end their stalking.

The first woman I told a friend about. We worked together as landscapers for a local company. He was a low level drug dealer and had some sketchy friends. The more I talked about her and the ongoing saga, he finally told me for a few hundred bucks, he could get it to stop. A few weeks went by and I didn't think much about it, until she said her stalkers messages started going up a notch just like in the story.

I never told her, but I found out the guy's name and after a quick DOXing, I found out where he lived and some other useful information like the bars he frequented. I paid my buddy $200 and turned the information I had on my friends stalker over to him. A week later, my friend said she stopped getting messages from the guy. I found out much later he sent two of his "associates" over to talk to the guy at work. They got him out in the parking lot and assaulted him pretty good. Broken nose, busted lip and several broken ribs. They warned him they would come back and pay him another visit if he didn't stop stalking my friend. It did work and less than a year later, she graduated and moved out of the city.

The other situation was very similar. Another friend of mine was being stalked by a college ex-boyfriend. He was unrelenting, showing up at her work, following her to the bar, and other strange stuff. She finally told her father about after almost two years of him stalking her. Her dad was an ex-marine and had done several tours in Vietnam. He was a quiet guy, but you could tell you didn't want to cross him.

She lived in the city where we were going to college, so most of the time, she lived at home. Her stalker made the mistake of following her home one day. She went in and her Dad asked why there was a car parked down the street. She went to look out the window and knew it was her crazy ex and told her Dad to call the police. Instead, he told _her_ to call the police and hurry because something bad was about to happen. He took his handgun and went through the backyards in order to sneak up on his car. He yanked him out of the car (he later said, "You should have seen the terror in his eyes!") and slammed him on the ground and put the gun in his face and told him he knew who he was and if he ever came near his daughter he would make sure he would walk with a limp the rest of his life or worse. He make it clear not to mess with him or his family ever again. The cops showed up a few minutes later and arrested him for an outstanding warrant and thanked her Dad for calling them. Thankfully, that was the end of her ordeal.

I would never advocate violence in these situations, but when you feel helpless, sometimes there are no other alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER36> OK, first of all: I don't question that this guy turned out to be an asshole and a stalker and that author is a victim.

But I can't help but raise a question of definitions here. He was a stalker for 4 years, not for 12. His behaviour during first years of their relationships wasn't something that I would even remotely call "stalker behaviour". Up until this point:

> I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so > much or I'd block him. "Ok. good luck on your quest," he wrote back three > minutes later. "Huh," I thought. "That was easy." Then he sent three more > angry messages in quick succession and I blocked him on Facebook.

there's literally nothing in the description of his behavior that calls for the term "stalker". (Later — of course).

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazing.

"I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I'd block him."

... "so much or I'd block him." <\--- the stalker?

<comment><USER12> Yep, it's reinforcement all over. Everything she does that does not shut him off completely, without notice, without any reaction, that is rewarding to him. I don't blame this girl for this, because she did the best she could, but from the outside it is rather clear how this works. The problem is probably mostly emotionally, on her side. For some reason she could not end it completely and hand it over to the police.

<comment><USER37> Sorry, but it does sounds to me like you are blaming the victim when you write "The problem is probably mostly emotionally, on her side." It's her stalker who has the emotional problem. Calling her emotions the problem appears to me rather sexist, given that women are stereotyped as overly emotional. Furthermore, she DID stop responding, and she DID go to the police, but they didn't do shit. Please read the article more carefully, and please don't place the burden of justice on the victim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What's with the image overlay. Can't read the text. Is that some sort of art? It looks cool but makes the site unusable. Entire layout seems broken (latest FF, OSX) Edit: seems to be broken on the entire site not just for this article

</comment><comment><USER21> Honestly, this guy needs to be thrown away in a cell and forgotten about. He clearly is not willing to stop on his own, and, quite frankly, I can't see him stopping for anything other than being locked away.

<comment><USER39> That's a pretty disturbing concept of justice

<comment><USER21> Why? This guy has, time and again, harassed this person after being asked to stop. He has shown that he does not care to follow the rules of civilized society.

<comment><USER40> So there's no hope for his rehabilitation? I hardly think so. You also seem to believe that prisons exist merely to punish rather than deter and/or rehabilitate - which, incidentally, reveals the most cursory of understandings of the penal system.

<comment><USER21> No, I am very much in favor of rehabilitation over punishment. However, there are people who don't respond to that. I believe this guy is one of them. 12 years, and he didn't stop? That's not someone who's interested in rehabilitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is it weird that when I saw the article title, I thought it was going to be about the NSA?

</comment><comment><USER42> Seems like a great opportunity for a company that "bounty hunts" cyberstalkers - tracks them down then physically intimidates them for you.

<comment><USER43> Both Reddit and 4chan have demonstrated exceptionally well why this is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER16> I shouldn't do this, but I will.

In the specific case mentioned here, where state and Federal law enforcement won't take charge, why shouldn't she find a professional investigator to confirm who the perpetrator is, then use the same tactics he has used against her against him?

After all, law enforcement refuse to take action right? So it appears that law enforcement wouldn't care if she ensured that he is kept out of the picture.

(for the record, I'm playing devil's advocate)

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure an investigator is the most productive course. If it was me, I'd start with a Cease and Desist letter from a lawyer. Cost: about 2 billable hours. If that fails, since there is, in fact, a law being broken, and now the creeper has ignored a C&D, get a court order. No need to involve police, they can continue writing speeding tickets and tending to other urgent matters. If the creeper ignores the court order, then see if you can get a bench warrant issued. Although, in this case, it sounds like the person is mentally ill -- what you can do about that varies greatly from state to state.

<comment><USER16> Now that's actually a very clever solution! Never considered this. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So...

Why didn't she just give him a firm, but polite "I'm not interested"?

I'm not saying that stalking and/or harassment are acceptable. I'm just saying that she probably could have avoided 14 years of misery if she had just politely told the guy that there was no potential for anything more.

Women need to learn to reject people in whom they're not interested. They think they're being "nice" or at the very least, being "not mean" but they are being incredibly cruel by letting the other person think there's hope when there isn't.

Don't expect him to take the hint. Tell him directly.

<comment><USER46> You're blaming the victim. Do you really believe she didn't tell him no clearly?

> Women need to learn to reject people in whom they're not interested

No, that's not the problem, women get plenty of experience with that. People should not stalk or harass, period.

<comment><USER47> People should not stalk or harass. Authorities and all other members of society should take stalking and harassing seriously. BUT potential victims should take reasonable measures to protect themselves too(not saying that a "firm rejection" is enough or even safe though). I hope Internet safety instruction becomes more of a thing in our education system.

<comment><USER45> Exactly.

What she did would be interpreted by someone with limited social skills as sending mixed signals. She went out for a meal with him when he showed up unannounced and gave her a gift.

She'd block or ignore him sometimes and engage him other times.

No, he shouldn't have harassed her but she should have been clear from the beginning that the attention was unwanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So this woman is unlucky enough to both be the target of a persistent stalker and persistent stalker who manages to stay withing the letter of the law while being incredibly annoying. Big deal, people get struck with lightening and bitten by sharks from time to time too. She just happens to be able to write about her bad luck in a particular corner of the internet that gets more than nil for traffic.

Sure it probably freaks her out a lot (and rightfully so) but did she really expect any authority to be able to take action on that basis. Think of the kinds of shit that would hit the fan if "distasteful behavior that freaks others out" was enough to get someone arrested (and all the life ruining things that go with it).

</comment><comment><USER49> Am I the only one who thinks this sounds a little too perfect? A totally sympathetic female victim, the evil older male, the dismissive male police force ... it reads like a movie. I'm probably too jaded by such stories on the internet, but if she was in my office I would probably have a few questions. Of course if she was in my office then it would be far more than a story I read on the internet.</comment>