Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: What if the devs are ordered by a US judge to include a government backdoor?
by
grau
on 06/06/2013, 14:53:10 UTC
Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.

The devs would be forced to comply right?

Very unlikely scenario, but in that case I would be happy serving you an alternate implementation.

Bitcoin is a protocol, not an implementation and even less a binary.

Edit: Thinking through the technical implications, this would end up in a fork since older or alternate clients would not accept the transactions confiscating funds. The resolution of the fork would unlikely be a vote for a version that has these features.