Robin Hood Hacker Donates $11,000 of Stolen Bitcoin to Help Fight ISIS (newsweek.com) 66
An anonymous reader writes: A Kurdish region of Syria that borders territory held by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has received an $11,000 donation in allegedly stolen bitcoin from a vigilante hacker. (paywalled, alternate source) The pseudonymous Phineas Fisher donated 25 bitcoins to a crowdfunding campaign set up by members of the Rojava region's economic committee, described by Fisher as "one of the most inspiring revolutionary projects in the world." Fisher claims that the bitcoin donation, recorded publicly on the blockchain ledger and listed on the crowdfunding campaign page, came from hacking into a bank. "The money did come from robbing a bank," Fisher said. "Bank robbing is more viable than ever, it's just done differently these days."Phisher adds: "Unfortunately, our world is backwards. You get rich by doing bad things and go to jail for doing good."
No, it is NOT fuzzy (Score:5, Informative)
Stolen property is stolen property. You can't un-steal it by giving it to a cause, no matter how worthy.
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The crime is in the coercion. You can willingly share all of your things, but when you try to force others who don't want to live that way, that is criminal. What indication is there that this bank earned their money in a "bad" way?
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The key people to blame are all kind-hearted progressives who commanded evil bankers to make loans to people the banks knew wouldn't pay back.
As a good progressive you ignore that and blame the banks.
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Wow, it's 2016 and people still believe this bullshit?
Over half of the subprime mortgages were created by non-bank entities that the government did not regulate (like General Motors, who had sunk a ton of money into a website you might have heard of called "ditech.com" ... any wonder why they needed a bailout when the other car companies didn't?). Further, even with the anti-redlining rules in place, the regulations that the government had still mandated that some level of due diligence was required. The
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You need to read The Monster [amazon.com].
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Oh, the poor banks, who lobbied for changes in laws to get rid of oversight, the poor banks who fraudulently swore affidavits to foreclose on houses, the poor banks who convinced the government to bail them out for billions.
Truly, they are the suffering victims here, and only a wise and profound soul like you can look past all of their criminal conduct to see that they, they, unlike the people impoverished and taxed to pay for all of their activities, are and always will be the real victims.
After all, they'
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Re:No, it is NOT fuzzy (Score:4, Insightful)
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This.
And in case the AC is still here: I'm definitely not a Republican.
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One act of charity does not undo a lifetime of greed.
Giving a portion of what he stole to a good cause does not in any way lessen the fact that he stole it in the first place.
IFF he was stealing resources from ISIS and donating it to oppose them, you could make an argument that his actions were all done to defend and protect the bystanders getting caught up in ISIS's violence. This was most clearly not that case, as he admits to stealing the BitCoins from a bank.
Re: Fuzzy On The Whole Good Bad Thing (Score:1)
From a bank that supported ISIS.
Don't bother to fact check. I made that part up :P
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They could wait until those 25 bitcoins are worth 1 billion dollar each, though.
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Does anyone even know which Kurdish group is getting this money? The Kurds in the northeast are 75% fighting against Daesh, 25% against Assad and are working with the US. The Kurds in the northwest (Afrin-area) are 100% fighting against the anti-Assad, anti-Daesh arab rebel groups (both islamic and FSA), often alongside Assad's forces, and have been supplied by the Russians. They nearly cut off the rebels' northern supply lines under Russian air cover until Turkey stopped them with cross-border fire. Th
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Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. Kiteo, his eyes closed.
Good things? (Score:3, Insightful)
I had never heard of theft being called 'doing good' before.
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I had never heard of theft being called 'doing good' before
Usually it's in the context of war, but people fully support theft on a grand scale. This guy writes like an American, so he might be in more trouble than he thinks, though. I forget if it's the CIA that's supporting ISIL or the military, and which one is funding the remains of Al Q'ue'da, but either way, he's funding opposition to the USG.
Also, there are plenty of cheerleaders for taxation, we all know what taxation is...
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Please, point to any evidence of the US government in any way supporting ISIS, or supporting Al Qaeda in the past 10 years.
Did you just make that up, or are you posting from a conspiracy theory group?
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In more polite company (and under certain governments) taking property from someone else and giving to those deemed by the taker to be needy is called social justice.
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People have no sense of economics. The guys who did the (crappy) movie, In Time, kind of got it right, but not in any serious way: you steal from the banks, the banks start charging everyone a shitload. In the movie, they framed it the same way as all normal people think: the banks charged more because they're assholes.
In reality, the cost of production is, essentially, wage-labor time. Wage-labor time includes overhead that's diffused through production (e.g. the CEO doesn't do a damned thing to mak
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No, you are trying to intellectualize something that is governed by much more obvious behavior. If Wendy's sells hamburgers for 2$ versus McDonald's 1$ because they are trying to recoup losses from internal theft, then they aren't going to sell ANY hamburgers. Prices of goods are governed by what people are willing to pay, not what they are forced to pay.
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If you find that upsetting, just wait until you find out that the value of real money is made up [wikipedia.org] anyway.
Seriously though, what you're describing is actually pretty basic economic stuff. Money is not a price tag you put on the economy, it's a medium of exchange. And as it turns out, there doesn't have to be as much actual money in existence as there is value in the economy in order for things to function. The bank lends more money than it has in reserve because the expectation is that it will make more money
I'm going to steal some of your bitcoin (Score:2)
and force you to donate to something good, I'm doing a good job right?
Re:I'm going to steal some of your bitcoin (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the governments job. They call it taxes.
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Thank you Ayn Rand.
Unless you want to live in the world of Snow Crash, I suggest you pay up.
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It seemed to work out well for most of those in the book. Frankly, if it wasn't for the lack of an actual US government (in the book), I would say we pretty much already live there.
Clarity on that whole Robin Hood thing. (Score:2)
It's not the banks money (Score:2)
Stolen bitcoins or stolen money? (Score:2)
Hang on, were the bitcoins stolen from the bank? Or was $11,000 stolen from a bank in some other fashion, then donated via bitcoin?
Self-righteous hacker (Score:2)
Phisher adds: "Unfortunately, our world is backwards. You get rich by doing bad things and go to jail for doing good."
No, you get no brownie points for having done wrong to do right. Reminds me of a passage from the Bible-- Romans 3:1-31 [biblehub.com]
Back in my day... (Score:2)