Dear community,

I received at a time non precised this week the following informational email (cf. screenshot attached) about CoreDev Atlanta 2022 from the usual gmail.com of one of the regular organizers of CoreDev events. Myself a former organizer of CoreDev events and with the usual Chattham House rules usually in vigor, I'll silence from whom I received the email, I'll just confirm it's someone listed as a past organizer on the CoreDev website.

I did exchange from this email address over the last weeks for issues related to Bitcoin development, and the interlocutor sounds to me to be the person I know from years of online and in person professional collaboration in the FOSS field.

Here the full text:

"All,

As part of the investigation into Luke Dashjr's announced theft of his bitcoins, I received a subpoena from the FBI wanting information about attendees of the October 2022 CoreDev Atltanta event in the days before TABConf2022. I was legally advised to corporate.

There was also an order from the FBI not to disclose this subpoena for a period of one year, which just expired.

Some of you were invited to the event and attended all of the days, and some of you stopped by for some period of time as guests. The original subponea requested much information but after pushback, the FBI agent agreed to the following subset of information about you, which I provided:

I do not have any details about the investigation or whether the subpoena was due to a targeted suspect or general information gathering as part of the investigation.

I apologize for this breach of your private information. Please email me if you have any questions. "

The formal existence of this FBI subpoena comes to me as new knowledge, even if recently I underscored the risk of FOSS contributors with administrative privileges to be targeted by a subpoena (cf. this link on the old bitcoin dev mailing list). Greg Maxwell and another former Debian contributor underscored legal risks affecting FOSS protocol development over the past years.

If the information is correct, at this stage which is still very uncertain, there is no knowledge if the claimed FBI investigation is conducted in the interest of Luke Dashjr's for the effective resolution of the theft of the coins, or for other purposes. I've never verified myself the public existence of the coins claimed to have be owned by Luke Dashjr, and there is certainly a doubt on the forensics methods that can be used by the FBI (which full-validation client they are using, in what language, and which version ?).

So far, I've not in my own name replied to the disclosure email. While I'm more or less officially in vacation from Bitcoin Core development to have time to study interesting thing like machine learning, as a maybe investor in the Bitcoin mainet blockchain since genesis owning potentially exotics ordinals, milli-sats, satoshis, wholesome coins or any other amount inferior to MAX_MONEY (src/consensus/amount.h), I'm very curious what the FBI is doing with this information, and I think the other ~30/40 attendees of Atlanta CoreDev who might have been illegally doxed too.

From a more legalistic perspective, for the FBI field agent or units in charge of the investigation, I'll certainly observe that all evidences might be irremediably tainted by irregularities arising from infringement of the 1st, the 4th, the 5th, the 14th amendment and the constitutional rights are recognized by the US Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade landmark decisions, and what is still left as a matter of State rights from Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization 2022's decision. I think there are few historical cases where FBI agents have found themselves committing perjury or committing misdeamnors related to the handling of digital transaction.

If you're a bitcoin, finance or tech journalist, I can only recommend you to reach out to one of the FBI official point of contacts, at any one of their resident agencies over the US soil and ask for confirmation of the existence of FBI investigation, and why there are have been a year-long subpoena in this case, and if the FBI owned evidences by the time it plausibly send a subpoena to one of the CoreDev organizer that could have ben admissible by the court dedicated to oversee subpoenas. I'm not an expert in what is the administrative authority of the FBI, if it's Merrick Garland's DOJ or one of the Congress selected committees, Ich weiss nicht.

As a former resident on the US soil, who have worked and working with a lot of US entities on digital security matters, I have true respect and real knowledge of the US culture. Still, my lawyers and myself, we can take the bet I know more about US history and US constitutional tradition than the statically average FBI employee.

I"m not questioning their more legitimate law enforcement activities to guarantee respect of the US administrative order and inter-states, traditionally centered about money counter-feiting or alcoohols illegal transhumance. I know they are plenty of FBI agents doing an everyday hard job from Washington to Florida to Massachussets to California, with integrity and dignity.

All that said, there are still a voluminous digital security matters to fix in Bitcoin, and the underlying Internet and hardware technical stack, and I'll keep collaborating in good faith with US-resident digital security-related entities like done in the past with the MITRE for CVE assignements, including when I'm often visiting the US soil for cultural reasons.

Cheers, Antoine Riard 000000000000000000000788ba18725b5570c5ffc313383a427382408fe5be9a - height 838676

PS: If you're a journalist and you're not sured about your US constitutional rights, as a reminder there has been a landmark decision in the 70s. PPS: If you're a FOSS contributor and you're not sure about your constitutional rights, you can reach out to the EFF / ACLU for legal assistance. EFF assisted Jeremy Rubin in 2013. PPS: If you’re a FBI intern and you’re bored with your day, at least use non-anon accounts to comment on this thread, thanks.