You say it like he was teaching the gospel of Christ. Teaching a hostile foreign power how to evade sanctions is a crime for a reason, and if he wants to be a martyr against that principle then let him be one.

Free peaceful expression should never be a crime, as there is no victim and no one is harmed.

Teaching itself is never inherently harmful. Sanctions are authoritarian nonsense.

Come join my free class in which we work through comprehensive instructions on how to make extremely powerful and compact fusion bombs starting from a US-1950s industrial base! It's super interesting! As a capstone project, we'll be building our own ICBMs which take our bombs to any point on the planet with an accuracy of five meters!

By your logic, Osama bin Laden and/or rather the instructors under him were only engaging in free peaceful expression when they were training men how to be engage in war and acts of terrorism against the United States and the West.

There has to be a limiting principle, and we have one in the law: giving comfort and aid to enemies of the United States and exporting controlled technology to sanctioned countries are prosecutable offenses. Sounds scary, but even those laws are limited.

> By your logic, Osama bin Laden and/or rather the instructors under him were only engaging in free peaceful expression when they were training men how to be engage in war and acts of terrorism against the United States and the West.

Yes, that is correct. Teaching people is never directly harmful.

Invoking bogeymen by name is an emotional argument. What I said holds true.

Except that they did so with the intent of engaging in Acts of Terrorism and Warfare against the United States and the West. Intent matters, as does knowledge of intent such as when someone specifically, as a US citizen, teach a country how to use a technology to bypass a sanctions regime knowing they intend to try and use it to bypass the sanctions regime imposed by the United States.

We have a democratically elected Constitutional government which engages in foreign policy. It is not the place nor the right of a private citizen to undermine that foreign policy.

I partially agree but there was clear intent in theory but in practice the action was deeply unethical.

Wouldn’t you go to jail if you taught someone how to plan a murder, with the knowledge they clearly planned on using that information?

He was teaching them how to manipulate distributed database entries that they have the explicit permission to use via their own private keys. If that is anywhere near equivalent to murder then I have a bridge to sell you.

Next up teaching north korea how to farm better and how to dodge sanctions importing fertilizer is bad, because then their people wont starve as much and therefore can do more evil in the world via more energetic soldiers.

Helping the North Korean government do anything is assisting a government happy to let their populous die while resisting sanctions.

I don’t think I compared it to murder from an immediate seriousness perspective, but I’m sure the impact of Bitcoin on NK would cost more than one life’s worth of quality of life (improving the bottom line, helping the country resist sanctions for longer, etc).

Teaching a human being something is not the same thing as helping a government do something.

You know governments are comprised of humans right?

You sound like moral, ethics and laws should work like a child sees the world.

He wasn't just teaching a country to manipulate bits and bytes he purposefully ignored all risks and existing laws to help break sanctions decided against a country based on geopolitical situation guided by matter experts.

Sooo?

You assume teaching is purely positive?

If I teach someone else my company secrets I only 'teached' or did I share company secrets?

If I go to north Korea did I teach the about some technology or did I just helped a country to circumvent sanctions?

You have a very easy perception of right and wrong if you think that's an acceptable excuse.

Very similar to the antivax people in Germany who broke demonstration laws by saying they just walking.