US Marshals Accidentally Reveal Potential Bidders For Gov't-Seized Bitcoin

jfruh (300774) writes "When the U.S. government shut down the Silk Road marketplace, they seized its assets, including roughly $18 million in bitcoin, and despite the government's ambivalence about the cryptocurrency, they plan to auction the bitcoin off to the highest bidder, as they do with most criminal assets. Ironically, considering many bitcoin users' intense desire for privacy, the U.S. Marshall service accidentally revealed the complete list of potential bidders by sending a message to everyone on the list and putting their addresses in the CC field instead of the BCC field."

Comments

This is what happens

[Chas]

This is what happens when you have a single point of failure like a stupid, technically illiterate secretary added to the mix.

Re:This is what happens

[TWX]

Like, secretary as in the one that takes dictation, or secretary as in the one that is in charge of a large arm of government bureaucracy?

Re:This is what happens

[Jeremy Erwin]

Hacker: Who else is in this department?
Sir Humphrey: Well briefly, sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary. I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretaries are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.
Hacker: Can they all type?
Sir Humphrey: None of us can type. Mrs Mackay types: she's the secretary.

Re:This is what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but.. a sectetary is exactly the right person to trust with a secret.
"Secretary - late Middle English (originally in the sense ‘person entrusted with a secret’): from late Latin secretarius ‘confidential officer’, from Latin secretum ‘secret’, neuter of secretus"

Re:This is what happens

[Princeofcups]

This is what happens when you have a single point of failure like a stupid, technically illiterate secretary added to the mix.

Misogyny much? Secretaries are usually well versed in things like email, since it's a major part of their job. Managers are the ones who think they know everything, and make these kinds of mistakes.

ohhhhhhh crap

[slashmydots]

I once compared the bitcoin forums to Tartuga from Pirates of the Caribbean. Everyone agreed. Everyone scams everyone, nobody follows the laws, and you have to be smart to not get burned. Those are the people bidding on these. The last thing you want to do is expose their contact info to each other. They just started World War III in the bitcoin world. Close up your storm shutters because there's a shitstorm blowing in.

Spoils of war.

[tragedy]

Am I the only one who gets disturbed every time it's blithely mentioned that this or that police agency gets to take spoils for themselves? It seems a little... inherently corrupt.

Re:Spoils of war.

[Legal.Troll]

You're not the first. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex...

Re:Spoils of war.

[Virtucon]

Due Process is going out the window. That also includes defending yourself with the lawyer you choose. Recently the SCOTUS ruled amazingly enough that it was okay for the government to even seize assets that were in your lawyers hands to pay for legal fees. So now the system is rigged against you to the point where the Judge and the prosecution pick your lawyer for you. Good by freedom, hello club Fed.

Re:A planned failure

[NotSanguine]

If you think that the leak is a failure, well, it's a PLANNED FAILURE

The Fed doesn't like bitcoins, feels very threaten by bitcoins, and hope that nobody will deal in bitcoins

With the sale of those bitcoins of course they will execute a planned failure that will look to the world at large as a "leak"

It is never a leak, it is a PLANNED LEAK

I'm not so sure. I'm thinking that Hanlon's Razor should be applied here.

Re:Auctioning money?

[Adambomb]

Fine, but that doesn't change my basic point. Why bother with an auction that will necessarily get less than an open market?

The same reason you wholesale anything; You get a transaction that moves a large volume quickly. Basically all consumer goods you buy in any kind of branded store works this way, Wholesalers, whether manufacturers or a middleman, sell large volume to companies who then take the burden of distribution but reap the benefits of charging retail price and profiting on the difference between that and the wholesale cost plus infrastructure/logistics costs. The wholesaler gets the benefit of moving a large volume at an agreed upon price and not having to worry about inventory control, distribution, or logistics of getting it to the consumer.

This is not strange, or even strange at all. Side benefit in this case, they get the auction entry fee from everyone bidding regardless of whether they win and also a look into who is interested in amassing a large quantity of bitcoins.

Honestly this shouldn't require explanation,