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Julian Sanchez Profile picture
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25 May, 4 tweets, 1 min read
If you could actually do this, it would entail wiping out ~$250 billion in assets, much of that held by people who engaged in lawful transactions. It’s not really clear how you could in fact do it, though.
All the major ransomware groups & most bitcoin exchanges are outside U.S. jurisdiction. So in practice you’re just making it illegal for U.S. victims to pay ransoms. Which… we could just do directly, if we wanted to do that.
There are also thorny definitional issues. Is any digital asset tracked via blockchain a “cryptocurrency”? If so, you’re banning NFTs too. If not, ransomware groups ask for payment in the form of some digital asset that falls outside the definition of “cryptocurrency.”
This is one of those beguiling ideas that sounds a lot more appealing in the abstract than when you start thinking about the pesky logistical details of actually executing it.

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More from @normative

Julian Sanchez Profile picture
21 May
As an undergrad, I’d started expecting to major in journalism. The profs I became really friendly with advised me not to: “Take a few classes, maybe do a minor, but you’re better off learning a subject relevant to what you report on. Journalism itself you learn by doing it.”
What IS vital, and related to our “info problems,” is the transmission of journalistic norms & practice & culture, which traditionally happened via working with more experienced veteran reporters & editors, whether or not you’d gone through a college journalism curriculum.
The Internet has enabled a lot of people to bypass the traditional process of slogging your way up the journalistic totem poll, as it were. As a 20-something blogger in the early aughts, this was fantastic: You could build a sizable national audience out of nowhere.
Read 11 tweets
Julian Sanchez Profile picture
19 May
I mean, in practice this is often in fact true, but that’s mostly the fault of those same members of Congress.
As both a former journalist an an advocate for transparency I hate saying this, but I often wonder if hearings would be more productive if they were not on camera.
Hearings are often a waste of time because most members seem to view them as opportunities to give self-righteous speeches they hope will get them on teevee, rather than a process for gathering information from experts and public officials.
Read 4 tweets
Julian Sanchez Profile picture
19 May
That the word “insurance” does not appear in this article is at least minor journalistic malpractice. wsj.com/articles/colon…
As ProPublica documented in 2019, insurers routinely nudge companies to pay ransoms, because the ransom demand is usually calibrated to be cheaper than mitigation. propublica.org/article/the-ex…
That might be a defensible choice for the company in some cases, but it seems like necessary context if you’re going to run the CEO’s “for the good of the country” line.
Read 4 tweets
Julian Sanchez Profile picture
18 May
If you haven’t looked at the whole document, the (majority Republican) Maricopa County Board of Supervisors letter on the AZ Senate “audit” is just absolutely blistering. maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter…
“[T]he Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings."
"You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens…"
Read 5 tweets
Julian Sanchez Profile picture
17 May
Wow. Unless there’s an extraordinarily clear threat justifying an investigation, this is outrageous. Bad enough Nunes abuses the civil courts to mount frivolous lawsuits against online critics—now it seems he had DOJ doing his dirty work as well.
There really need to be hearings about this, and if it is indeed what it looks like, heads should roll at DOJ.
It also seems telling that DOJ was unwilling to show Twitter the supposed threatening communication, which presumably would have induced them to comply if it were real.
Read 9 tweets
Julian Sanchez Profile picture
17 May
As many folks have said, the striking thing here is less the initial misperception than the dogged refusal to acknowledge a pretty clear-cut mistake. Beyond the general aversion to admitting error, I think part of what’s going on here is specific cases take on symbolic weight.
You see this in a bunch of situations where a particular incident gets cast as a stand in for a bigger Social Problem. Starting from the perception the guy was making white power shadow puppets, any counterargument is Minimizing the Problem of White Supremacy in American Culture.
I’m thinking, e.g., of that Rolling Stone story from a few years back about the confabulated frat house gang rape at UVA. The first folks pointing out problems with the story took a ton of heat, because in some sense it wasn’t really about whether the particular event happened.
Read 6 tweets

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