> Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical.

How can you even say that? It's easy to say that if (assumption) you haven't done anything "hugely influential", but I think the feeling would be different if this article was about you.

It's plain disrespectful. The guy obviously wants to be left alone or he wouldn't have stopped emailing, stopped answering the phone or called police when the reporter showed up.

So if someone does something of note, they give up their right to privacy, even if that could compromise their own safety?

That's basically what keeps the paparazzi in business, yes. There's a reason the First Amendment rights were listed first, as well, which is the same reason the Guardian has been doing much of their Snowden coverage out of their New York office; press freedom is a big deal, even when that's inconvenient for you...

Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?

> Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?

I don't think it's ethically sound to post his address, license plate information, city, etc. Especially since it leads to crazy media car chases and other sorts of paparazzi-style insanity that I wouldn't wish on anyone, let alone a guy who just wants to be left alone.

I'm also partial to arguments based on safety. It was one of the many reasons I was opposed to what Bradley Manning did, for instance.

However the risk to those affected by Manning was much larger than the risk to Dorian, and in any event I can't remember many people on HN saying before not to post stories about rich people since the unwashed thugs might stick a shiv in them and rob them.

Thanks for your honest answer. I'm of the opinion that it's legal (first amendment, etc), but rather unethical, especially since the evidence isn't conclusive.

Regarding safety, currency stored in banks tends to be less susceptible to theft via coercion. If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check. On the other hand, you could easily do that with bitcoins, assuming that the private key hasn't been locked up in a vault, or the transaction secured with multiple keys.

I still feel it's an unlikely scenario, but it seems that claiming someone has $400 million in untraceable digital currency is going to impact their safety more than claiming they have $400 million in a bank, or in shares.

> If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check.

While that's true I suppose, whose fault is it for designing a system that is so much more susceptible to "rubber-hose theft"? It seems to me that this threat model would apply equally to anyone who gets rich via Bitcoin, not just Nakamoto, and it's an inherent side effect of refusing to allow banks to act as a trusted third party.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Should investigative journalism be forbidden from here on to anyone who has enough Bitcoin? Because if it's true that being rich will get you physically robbed then how many Bitcoin startups have founders and officers that are in mortal peril based on their Bitcoin holdings? Surely we can't apply a blanket "no investigate" order across them all.

Rather I believe that, if this is a viable threat, that it's an unintended consequence which is essentially inherent to the new marketplace Nakamoto created, which is something that anyone publically known with Bitcoin riches will have to cope with in the future.

It's not too difficult to protect Bitcoins from "rubber-hose theft". The simplest solution is to keep the private key to the majority of the wealth in a bank vault, or several.

If Newsweek got it right, then Satoshi has a number of options for securing his wealth, assuming he still has the private keys. But if Newsweek got it wrong, there's nothing Dorian Nakamoto can really say, other than to deny the story.

Consider if Newsweek ran a story about a secretive millionaire who supposedly has millions in gold stored in his basement. If the subject of the investigation does have millions, but they are stored more sensibly, he could release a statement saying that, yes, he has gold, but its stored in banks, not in his basement. But if Newsweek are wrong, they've compromised the security of an innocent individual.

Who decides what is "anything of note" or who is considered "highly influential"

Society? People have always wanted to know who Nakamoto was in real life and would consider creating Bitcoin something of note. Any news story about Bitcoin in the past couple years have included something about the mystique of Nakamoto.

The number of page hits the article gets? Come on - Bitcoin is news, and it's been made news by people like us. Don't be too surprised or appalled when the general media tries to latch on to the publicity train.

I'm sorry, but the journalists I have met do not do A.

They conceive of a narrative and find totems that can support their position.

You are espousing ideals that are taught in school, but rarely achieved in the real world.

That whole theme of unethical in B happens most of the time.

... but they clearly did A in this case. That's why we're having this conversation.