DOJ Wants to Make It Easier to Seize Crypto Without Criminal Charges | Hacker News Reader

DOJ Wants to Make It Easier to Seize Crypto Without Criminal Charges

forbes.com

26 pointspr337h4m10 comments

Looks like they are trying to put civil asset forfeiture on the blockchain.

I've always wondered, would it be possible to have a system which is resistant to rubber hose cryptanalysis? Maybe a poison pill system which locks an asset until a future point in time, using smart contracts or something. You feel the heat and send your assets to such a time-safe, and no one would be able to access it for X months/years. Of course you'd need some data storage model to escrow it safely, but that could be hosted in some privacy-friendly country. Maybe even let the default state be locked and a deadman switch increases the timeout.

Idk if that would just piss off the LEOs and make them wanna get retribution in some other way.

That system is not great if you are in a regime (e.g. the UK) where "we will throw you in jail until you comply with a valid password" is legal. No valid password for 6 months is just a minimum 6 month jailcell.

On top of which, I'm not sure how technically information can be distributed at time X but not be usable until time X + 6 months. Shouldn't I be able to beat out of you the password that will be valid, and test it on the smart contract, even if the blockchain won't accept movement based on that account for another six months?

Given 3 years, you can create a lockbox that takes ~2 years to open by repeatedly hashing a value on the fastest available single threaded processor.

I have no idea how that would work at all. I need to derive a private key (I assume) to move the money. So what's your solution? Keep in mind, it has to work with only the password I have, so if it's just a matter of hashing an attacker can start right away with "assume the password is 'password'"

Of course they work to subvert due process at every opportunity. Cops gonna cop.

How about no? Keep your own wallet, people.

why don't they just seize the person they don't like

because they'd actually have to file criminal charges to do that.

It's way more expensive both monetarily and politically to do it that way and therefore the bar for doing it would be set higher.

Assets can't fight back.

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