Griffith asked the State Department if he could attend and present at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, because attendance at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency almost certainly violates sanctions on North Korea that are enforced by countries around the world very much including the United States.

Unsurprisingly, the State Department told Griffith he could not in fact present or attend the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

Regardless, Griffith attended and presented at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

Then he (apparently? and despite previously taking some marginal steps to conceal the issuance of his DPRK visa?) tweeted his visa. That's not a crime, so much as an indicator of the level of opsec at play here. Neither, by the way, is his indication that he might want to switch citizenship; the only criminal count he's charged with is the single one at the top of the complaint, Conspiracy To Violate The IEEP, most likely in the enhanced configuration (conspiring with a state involved with nuclear/chemical/biological weapons); guideline base range 5-6 years.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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

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

How about don't do it at all?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

People like Eric Schmidt’s daughter tweet and post about NK in maybe less than legit ways? Should they go to prison for five years?

In all sincerity: why are you cavalierly apologizing for the US government (just 5-6 years guys and he did bad things! no need to worry!)?

I’m being harsh with you because you’re defending a government that’s about to destroy this guy’s life (to send a “message“) and based on his Twitter he’s like you and me and I don’t think you realize that.

Why does this matter? People like your or me can't be prosecuted for violating sanctions on NK? This is a crime that I wouldn't expect to be committed by anyone other than a white collar professional of some sort.

My read of the guy's twitter tells me he has been blinded by his ideology, and therefore prone to doing something stupid. I doubt that is anything like you or me. But we're both making snap judgements based on very little real information.

I just think (like you say with very little real information) that there’s a risk in being biased by the government’s complaint.

Occam’s razor suggests a person, who is good at ethereum development, might tweet his NK visa out of ignorance about the consequences of what he’s doing v. some elaborate criminality worthy of 5 years in prison. And maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt v. defending the government given its track record of sometimes missing things.

The statute he violated has a "willfully" mental state requirement, meaning Griffith would potentially have a defense at trial if he could convince a jury he had no idea what he was doing was prohibited by sanctions. From the complaint, it seems unlikely he'd be able to do that.

Without that he'd surely be finding a lot more sympathy, regardless of personal opinions on NK.

Did you not read the post you originally replied to?

> Unsurprisingly, the State Department told Griffith he could not in fact present or attend the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

> Regardless, Griffith attended and presented at the Pyongyang Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

Good points. But yeah US AG would allege more severe violations if they had occurred so we can presume they didn’t. Ie they insinuate he was ‘warned’ about going to NK. But what was the nature of the warning?

It’s wrong to charge someone for up to 20 years if the warning you made wasn’t clear on the penalties and we can presume that was the case because they would have stated if that were the case (ie we warned him he would face up to 20 years in prison).

It sounds like he has been nothing but cooperative with authorities. And again Occam’s razor says they’re taking their frustrations with controlling him out via this complaint (meant to also deter others from doing similar things).

But yeah my problem is the rush to judgement. There is no reason to believe he was aware of the laws he was violating and the consequences and that’s scary to me as us citizen.

Also of note that the complaint does not seem to have the actual presentation the guy did. The FBI must have been really nervous and interested in a certain line of questioning and topic. According to statement the audience left with a better understanding of blockchain and smart contracts then they had before. I don't think the guy held a presentation about "How to use Cryptocurrency-1 to launder money and evade sanctions". The 1 unit of Cryptocurrency-1 transfer from NK to SK could have been a hacker asking themselves: "Is this possible? Can I actually do this? What happens?". Well in this case you get the FBI-equivalent of blowing out the power in the neighborhood.

Of course, after the conference, some shady NK government employees came up to him and asked him more pointed questions (almost like an agent at the early defcons singling out Asian participants). It states they discussed "proof of work", not that the suspect was given a free (or paid) consultancy gig. I think they had nothing about the conference, so they had to wriggle all this out of him during an interview. FBI damn good at this. They got all the facts they needed to make this a convincing complaint. But reality is not straightforward.

I think you can think of plenty of other computer software nerds who got fucked by the law for doing what they do, and not murdering their wives.

- "Blockchain and Peace", I've given it before.

- Does any of the talk mention (looks down at paper) "smart contracts".

- Probably yes. There is a slide on trusted lending circles in India.

- Can you explain to me, when someone sets up one of these (looks down at paper) "smart contracts", can they benefit from this?

- Well, yes. Or they can lose. You see --

- Thanks.

> GRIFFITHS presentation was called "Blockchain and Peace", and he discussed, among other things how a blockchain technology, including a "smart contract" could be used to benefit the DPKR.

It is a truly weird set of circumstances. If he could plausibly have claimed not to know about the sanctions, this would be a harder case for the DOJ, because the statute requires willful violation. But if the complaint is accurate, Griffith did essentially everything he could to wreck his defense. We'll see, though.

The complaint does spend quite a bit of time trying to establish what took place was an actual 'technology transfer' and his intent to violate sanctions in some way beyond merely traveling and ottering there. And the charge itself is conspiracy, with all of the extra bits they have to show for that attached.

I have zero expertise in this beyond nerdgooglery but the fact this dude's previous adventures seem to have included bananas shit like 'running a web-to-tor gateway and trying to sell the logs to governments' makes me wonder if there isn't more to this that's even dumber and worse for him.

Equally bewildering are the motivations and intent of the North Koreans. Surely if you actually want someone's actionable insights on violating sanctions, you're not going to do it in public at a conference. "American expert declares cryptocurrency use to circumvent imperialist oppression promotes peace" might be all they really needed from him. It's a cliché but 'useful idiot' seems kind of plausible, with quadruple emphasis on 'idiot'.

Even otherwise also there might be conscientious reasons for doing something that a government might find objectionable. Like people going to Iraq during the war, to act as human shields, in an attempt to stop war.

This is not how we assess if someone has committed a crime, thankfully.

What a passing impression of someone have to do with whether or not they committed a crime?

This isn't a case of someone doing something by accident and getting slapped by the government.

What you wrote is basically the DA storytelling with the string of evidence that will help convince a jury.

While on their own, 1-3-4 are not criminal, they reveal the defendant's mindset.

It doesn't appear to be paid, 3400 euro fee to attend.

Blackmail / extortion / compromise trap right there. Don't email em, don't talk to em.

If you're an American and you go there, they have dirt on you and can threaten to reveal it if you don't play ball with them.

Shame on you, North Korea!

Also that feel when the only tech smarts you can get is cryptocurrency folks

> If you're an American and you go there, they have dirt on you and can threaten to reveal it if you don't play ball with them.

Perhaps, but they'd lose the ability to promise other people that their relationship with North Korea was safely secret. I wouldn't worry about this; I suspect North Korea really does want to maintain its ability to have skilled foreigners come and help if they're so inclined.

I understand some people maintain two passports, one for Israel and the other for the rest of the Middle East. This is a similar thing. I wouldn't expect Iran to insist on disclosing an American's visit to the US government either.

Anyone complicit in, and profiting from, money laundering for North Korea is effectively a murderer and rapist, at least.

a former IL governor got caught in such a thing and prosecuted all because he asked for someone to commit a felony in connection to bribing

Also, you're missing some of the allegations.

Good thing he didn't try to steal a propaganda poster while he was there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier

Imagine what they do to their own citizens. Virgil Griffith apparently was ok doing business with a murderous dictator.

It's funny to see the difference in attitudes between how South Koreans view the north and how westerners view them. They are starkly different.

"The interest of participants to continue building bridges of friendship and collaboration with the DPR of Korea, as well as the exclusive environment of confidentiality and contacts with the highest government officials and engineers"

What do you suppose that entails? Do you think in a state like North Korea is going to permit anyone North Korean except state officials into a conference like this, triply so with wording like that?

https://nkcryptocon.com/

We already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that North Korea is trading in crypto currency to fund their regime.

https://bitcoinist.com/un-north-korea-accumulating-cryptocur...

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/N-Korea-at-crossroads/Nort...

This conference had absolutely nothing to do with enabling regular North Koreans to access cryptocurrency, they don't even have access to the internet to begin with.

I wouldn't know, all I know about the country is from mainstream media.

> is trading in crypto currency to fund their regime

So why not do the same if that's our enemies are doing? Governments around the world are often some of the biggest wallet owners apart from exchanges due to confiscation.

> they don't even have access to the internet to begin with

NK Internet is weird, but non-nonexistent. How is one of the biggest nations on Earth who are implicated in hacking nearly everyone not connected to the internet? (do mean everyone, even their own friends) Are their hackers somehow not regular soldiers? Last I saw they aren't elites. Would be interested to hear some more wild allegations.

It's messy but for fucks sake please learn something from the last 70 years of the cold war and see where it ends up everytime.

People really need to step back and think about where these things lead. I would assert that the vast majority of North Koreans are good decent people. Do we really need another proxy war fought over ideologies?

Well that's your fault for being uniformed.

There is plenty of non-mainstream media coverage, ranging from evangelical Christians[1] to those globalists at human rights watch[2] to not-for-profit groups[3][4] to more globalists at the UN[5], so you can pick you poison.

It's almost like there are actual facts, and your falling victim to the conspiricy-fueled anti-fact propaganda machine has blinded you to it.

[1] https://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/stories/north-korea-180103/

[2] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/north...

[3] https://www.c4reports.org/dispatched

[4] https://c4ads.org/about-us

[5] https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/coidprk/pages/reportof...

The conference was about enabling the North Korean government to trade in cryptocurrency to evade sanctions, do you expect the American government to not take issue with that?

As for the North Korean internet, government elites get access to the global internet, but everyone else gets access to a tightly controlled intranet.

https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/22/technology/security/north-k...

It's not just "mainstream media" reporting that North Korea is a totalitarian regime. It's a universally-acknowledged fact.