former secret service in the sense that he's a former person.
if they traced it to a wallet, then through the blockchain they can verify other purchases made by that wallet ID.
they see funds go to another address. if they know that address, and find that it's associated with a vpn provider, then they can contact the seller of the vpn and legally gain access to the logs.
it should be commonly known that the blockchain works by exposing the payor, the payee, and the transaction amount in such a way that every transacted amount can be traced.
it's for verification purposes, primarily. the register/log is always intact, from the first transaction to the last, and knowing who made one transaction is enough to find out who they transacted with.
blockchain technology isn't expressly about 'remaining anonymous to conceal crimes', it is more properly described as 'leaving every transaction out in the open so crimes are more difficult to conceal'.
in a "good" society, we need trust. in order to have trust, there must be tranparency mixed with privacy. blockchain methods are a compromise to that end.
there are other 'coins' with difficult to nigh-impossible-to-trace addressing schemes. that makes the game more interesting.
that's how i read the indictment.
BUT
we know a few extra things.
we know that the CIA can 'fingerprint' cybercrime to look like other nations.
IF the investigation discovered the transactions
AND they led to a VPN provider
AND those VPNs show traffic to Russia
THEN the next step in the investigation is to find out what those russian endpoints represent.
if those names are "real people", then we need assistance from Russian law enforcement to reveal the nature of who they are, and who they are loyal to.
if they are CIA plants, or state-based traitors to Putin, or some other third party - we can't know.
NONE of this says that Seth Rich DIDN'T leak docs. It simply states that there is concurrent evidence of network-based-hacking, period.
and i think this is a misconception.
blockchain was never about privacy, it's about transparency.
i've heard so many times - "security through obscurity is not security".
it's a convenient shortcut to saying that it's hard to keep secrets. passwords can be cracked. encryption can be broken. zero-day software exploits happen all the time.
for our society to be "better", we have to have open, transparent, obvious trust-based security - "open source" means that if a crowd can inspect it and find problems, then we can all trust the next solution. if only a handful of people are allowed to know what's wrong with something, then exploits will always benefit the few and those with access to the most resources available.
and that's a perfectly reasonable stance.
it could be characters in the code, and that simply can't be ignored.
it could also be that the ip address block that the vpn led to was IN russia, and now they need to know if those are endpoints, or gateways/proxies.
personally, i see it as just the next step to discovery. i'm REALLY curious as to how they came up with those names, and if they're more than just "arbitrary targets".
(and this is not an appeal to authority, i am not a supertechfag or techsuperfag, but i would guess that i'm more in tune than most. never know who any of us are)
based on my own personal experiences, i'm inclined to disagree with you - but i'm open to understanding more about your theory.
can you provide any further evidence to back these claims? (the best long term cooling methods i've seen "working in the wild" have been submerged in mineral water, so i'd love to know more about liquid nitrogen efforts)
i agree with what i think you're going to say, but i can't completely because you haven't said it.
ha.