> It is somewhat good news for online anonymity that we don't know who Satoshi is.
Only if you believe that none of the identified candidates are him. Personally, I think not as much real effort has been spent as you think; I've found some pretty breathtaking stuff which no one has posted about publicly.
> Last best OPSEC move Nakamoto made was to disappear - removes so many options in tracking him down. Hanging around and living off the credibility you've built with your anonymous persona is likely only going to breed complacency and the odds of slipping up increase each day (you see this in many cases)
Yes, DPR comes to mind as an example of what happens when you don't know when to quit.
> I doubt even a gov investigation starting today (for whatever reason) with all the power it has would achieve it (unless more than one person knows the secret, in which case a US investigation has a broad range of legal methods to compel testimony and reveal it).
I disagree. Given what the Snowden leaks have revealed, I think the NSA, and possibly lower-level entities, could find him even now. They can attack gmx.com, AnonymousSpeech, Digirock, the Californian IP & Freenode, & the P2P Foundation looking for direct IP leaks or other information, either through penetration, legal demands, or their extensive databases of metadata; governments are the main sponsors of stylometric research (either code or writing), which are another excellent attack vector; and of course, they can simply do tailored attacks on major suspects, in the same way they've already individually gone after security researchers. For all we know, they've already done any of this - Snowden's info is dated.
Only if you believe that none of the identified candidates are him. Personally, I think not as much real effort has been spent as you think; I've found some pretty breathtaking stuff which no one has posted about publicly.
> Last best OPSEC move Nakamoto made was to disappear - removes so many options in tracking him down. Hanging around and living off the credibility you've built with your anonymous persona is likely only going to breed complacency and the odds of slipping up increase each day (you see this in many cases)
Yes, DPR comes to mind as an example of what happens when you don't know when to quit.
> I doubt even a gov investigation starting today (for whatever reason) with all the power it has would achieve it (unless more than one person knows the secret, in which case a US investigation has a broad range of legal methods to compel testimony and reveal it).
I disagree. Given what the Snowden leaks have revealed, I think the NSA, and possibly lower-level entities, could find him even now. They can attack gmx.com, AnonymousSpeech, Digirock, the Californian IP & Freenode, & the P2P Foundation looking for direct IP leaks or other information, either through penetration, legal demands, or their extensive databases of metadata; governments are the main sponsors of stylometric research (either code or writing), which are another excellent attack vector; and of course, they can simply do tailored attacks on major suspects, in the same way they've already individually gone after security researchers. For all we know, they've already done any of this - Snowden's info is dated.