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'.
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.