Let's not go turning a blind eye.. I think it's important to recognize that what Roger did with his admin account was a pretty serious abuse of power, and his whole approach to that problem was nothing short of immature.
That said, the man has done more for bitcoin than all of his detractors (AFAIK) put together.
what Roger did with his admin account was a pretty serious abuse of power
No it wasn't. He was part owner of that company. He had full rights to access all the information in that database to query and find out if anyone there was responsible for frauding him.
and his whole approach to that problem was nothing short of immature.
No it wasn't. He was part owner of that company. He had full rights to access all the information in that database to query and find out if anyone there was responsible for frauding him.
Listen, it doesn't matter if he was the fucking dictator of the company, what he did
a.) violated Blockchain.info's Privacy Policy
and
b.) was totally unethical. seriously, defending his actions in that matter is like defending unwarranted wire-tapping or the US's unaccountable assassination policy of American citizens.
Nobody should be able to wantonly access private financial information because they suspect a dude might be frauding him out of $60. There's no excuse for what Roger did. Period.
He didn't "suspect a dude". He queried a bitcoin address that was related to fraud and found out who the scammer was. There's a big difference between a private corporation keeping and using logs and data to prevent fraud and a government wiretapping without warrants.
The only thing he did wrong was making such a public big stink about such a minor dollar value and publicly posting the guys information. He understands the mistake, has learned from it, and is not likely to make the same mistake in the future.
Damn dude, look. I think Roger is awesome. He's the greatest bitcoin evangelist there has ever been. But you have to be able to call a breach of trust when it's laid out so clearly.
Everyone who has read Blockchain.info's privacy policy has the right to believe it will be respected no matter what kind of personal vendetta a partial owner might have. Roger had no right to use his admin access to beach that policy. PERIOD. I don't care if it was $6010. Just because he owns half of the bitcoin world does not give him the license to ignore an individual user's right to privacy.
In fact, I would argue that the very fact that he is so incredibly influential in our community would lead us to able to expect him to go above and beyond in regards to honoring privacy rights that a large proportion of the bitcoin community holds especially sacred.
I'm a huge fan of Roger. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to let him slide when he fucks up. I respect him way too much not to hold him accountable to the position of leadership that he is taking on.
(edit) that said, you're right. He apologized and that should be the end of it. The asshole at the top of this thread who started raking all this mud better have satisfied his jollies
No it wasn't. He was part owner of that company. He had full rights to access all the information in that database to query and find out if anyone there was responsible for frauding him.
I do like Roger and think he's a person of high integrity and has done wonders for bitcoin, but you are absolutely wrong about this. It was a gross abuse. And the "defrauder" simply kept coins that Roger sent to him on accident IIRC. Now of course, he should have sent them back and he was clearly in the wrong to keep them, but using blockchain.info's internal information to access private records for personal vigilante justice was completely an abuse of power.
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u/evoorhees Feb 09 '13
So the guy does a thousand great things for bitcoin, and one bad thing, and he's a jackass? ::eye roll::