One could say the same about credit/debit cards, with a suitable definition of "criminality". Charging of interest is illegal under Sharia. Porn and gambling are illegal in some jurisdictions. And so on.
Edit: My point is that "criminality" is a meaningless concept without context. Also, it lumps too many things that are clearly distinguishable.
And Amish do not use technology. You are free to get off the site now to not commit a sin in their eyes.
People mentioned here are criminals by any reasonable definition of the word: illegal drugs, weapons, ordering hitmen, identity thefts, cc frauds, etc. The linked thread outright mentions few of these as the reason for closure. This isn't some moral dilemma.
Look at it this way, almost no bitcoin mixers' users will ever be prosecuted to be called criminals and yet you do call them criminals for no reason.
I don't believe there could even be much legitimate use of bitcoin without mixers, people won't be willing to disclose that much information about themselves to everyone in the world.
Are you making an argument for or against Bitcoin now? What you basically said is: people who deal in illegal goods using Bitcoin are not criminals because they will never be caught thanks to Bitcoin and mixers.
Bitmixer.io guy/girl and others over there call them criminals and say they do illegal things (i.e.: weapons and drugs) using Bitcoin and mixers. Your distinction is really a moot point and being so pedantic serves no one and just looks stupid.
You and others are claiming they are criminals, even though they were never prosecuted. People who use those services are not uncaught criminals, this is just government propaganda, they are legitimate users.
It's just like with Tor, government agencies want you to believe that it is used mostly for "criminals", but it isn't.
Yes, people committing crimes like buying illegal weapons and drugs ARE criminals. Why are you claiming otherwise? Buying illegal goods safely is a legitimate use of bitcoin to you? No one at any point here said EVERYONE using bitcoin and tor are criminals or buying illegal goods.
I fell to government propaganda? Which government's? American? Mine? I dislike both. Did the owner of Bitmixer fall to government propaganda too? They could see what their service was used for and decided there was too much sketchy stuff.
I support vpn, tor, bitcoin, etc. on principle but I have no idea (and it doesn't change my level of support no matter what the answer is) how much of it is used for legal or illegal but moral (China, dictatorships, etc.) stuff and how much for just crime (guns, drugs, hitmen, fraud, etc.) and I'm pretty sure you don't either.
Perhaps you fell to Kool Aid instead and are blind to all the abuse these enabled too?
< Yes, people committing crimes like buying illegal weapons and drugs ARE criminals.
A crime is a crime only if some authority says that it's a crime. Why should everyone on the Internet be subject to US law (and law of subservient US client states)? There is no law on the Internet except for the raw exercise of skill and power. Consider the NSA, for example. Or the Russians. Or Google and Facebook, for that matter.
There's a revolution going on. Freedom is coming, perhaps. Or failure and subjugation, if the kleptocrats win. Time will tell.
Crimes don't work like that. The government must prove there was a crime committed by someone to call that someone a criminal, otherwise it's not a crime. And I'm pretty sure this is the case almost everywhere in the world.
As for why people use tor - you can monitor tor metrics and read news from the countries where you see growth, you'll notice that most users come to tor just to circumvent censorship.
A crime is a crime, no matter the status of its perpetrator, there are lists of "unsolved crimes" where the criminal(s) responsible are still at large and/or unknown.
As for saying so-and-so by name being criminal, that might be slander if they weren't convicted but saying "people who commit crimes are criminals" is absolutely correct and always true, by definition of these words.
Why would there be a phrase "convicted criminal" if it was a tautology and "criminal" itself included the need for conviction in its definition?
Crimes become crimes only when perpetrator is caught and convicted? You can't call clearly illegal things like buying firearms with erased serial numbers or ordering weed and cocaine crimes just because the person doing it did not the caught (yet)?
Do you really think someone does not become a criminal the moment they order a kilo of crack, only the moment they get convicted?
If someone was clearly murdered would you also say they weren't actually murdered until the murderer himself is caught and convicted too? Murder is a crime after all and crime only is confirmed when the criminal is convicted, not when it happens. Can you trample all around the body or is it called a "crime scene" and restricted by the police the moment the prematurely dead body is found?
You are ridiculous, exactly the kind of nutjob (even pulling the "government propaganda" cards on me and the owners of bitmixer for calling drug traffickers criminals) people associated with privacy tools and the kind governments can point at to discredit these tools in people's eyes.
> You and others are claiming they are criminals, ...
Indeed, they are.
> ... even though they were never prosecuted. ...
Moreover, even though jurisdiction was never properly established. And even if relevant laws are morally repugnant, and enacted by kleptocrats abusing their power.
> People who use those services are not uncaught criminals, this is just government propaganda, ...
Worse than propaganda, it's unprovoked aggression, by the powerful against the weak.
My point is that there is no fundamental reason why Internet users are subject to US/EU law any more than they're subject to Sharia, Amish law, Saudi law, Chinese law, North Korean law, etc. Except that the US has the power to make it so.
If Internet users have the power to make their own law, their definition of criminality will be as "reasonable" as any other.
Edit: Amish users have the right to forgo Internet use. US/EU users have the right to forgo drugs and porn illegal under US/EU law. Same for Saudi users and Saudi law. But no one government has the right to rule the Internet.
The illegal weapons and drugs are not produced and consumed on the internet but in one of the countries where they (or the process of obtaining them via the internet instead of a government authorized seller) are highly illegal.
In vast majority of countries even possession of drugs is illegal. Drugs trafficking and owning large quantities is usually illegal even in countries where possession for personal use is legal.
Weapons are even worse because of how liberal USA gun laws are compared to the rest of the world. There are many countries where the process to get a gun is much harder and full of bureaucracy and requires registering with the police.
Do you seriously want to make an argument that all of these guns and drugs are all Portuguese and Czechs buying 1g of coke or 10g of weed at a time, Swiss and Americans buying guns that are legal in their countries, registered with the police, etc.?
Don't be ridiculous. Tor and Bitcoin are used by criminals and it's not a coincidence.
And then there is the morality argument. Bitmixer owners felt their service was used by criminals (their words) and it left such a bad taste in their mouth that they shut it down on their own, there was no legal system involved. I can get behind that choice if that is really their reason. It's not like being an asshole is illegal but many (most) people still hate assholes and won't help them in any way. Just because something is legal (and again - drugs and weapons usually aren't) doesn't mean it should be done, applauded and enabled by convenient websites.
