This article should result in huge court settlements payed by NYTimes to Mr. Szabo. They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger.
> They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger.
The world is filled with millionaires and billionaires who are publicly known and yet perfectly safe, even though the vast majority of them don't have security guards or anything like that.
Why do you think things would be different for the creator of Bitcoin? The reality is that very few criminals are of the take-hostages-and-murder type in the first place and murdering or stealing from a semi-famous rich person is a surefire way to get caught, especially when Bitcoins are traceable in a way that cash is not. You might as well break in and steal a Picasso painting from some other millionaire.
There are lots of people who want to remain private and unknown; the best (though not guaranteed) way is to not do anything worthy of the public notice. If you do, you should expect some scrutiny. So while I sympathize with Szabo, I don't feel very sorry for him. He pursued his dream of working on cryptocurrency (whether or not he is Satoshi) and this is a perfectly reasonable and predictable consequence of that dream.
Things are different in third-world countries, but at least in the US, the rich person with 24/7 security is a rare beast. Go look for yourself and drive through some wealthy neighborhoods. They have alarm systems like us plebians, not bodyguards.
There are certainly exceptions, for the super-rich and some kinds of celebrities, but it's not very common.
Well, if we are including all millionaires, I doubt the majority of them have a security detail, as that would eat into a million fairly quickly unless you underpay them, in which case you are probably increasing your risk.
Those millionaires and billionaires by and large do not have large piles of untraceable money sitting around. Killing them wouldn't enrich the killer appreciably. Satoshi, whoever he is, does have a large pile of what may be untraceable money though. There is a world of difference between him and the others.
> Those millionaires and billionaires by and large do not have large piles of untraceable money sitting around.
Neither does Szabo. What Bitcoins he has are traceable and they are not just sitting around. The usual imagination is that someone would threat/torture and kill him and his family to get his keys, but that's extremely high profile and risky and works just as well for normally wealthy people. (Send your wife to take out one million dollars cash from the bank or I'll kill your children!)
> Satoshi, whoever he is, does have a large pile of what may be untraceable money though.
How would it be untraceable? Bitcoin, unlike cash, is very traceable.
Szabo's situation is not at all different from anybody else who is wealthy.
Nick Szabo has been ID'd repeatedly as the most likely author of BitCoin by various attempts to discover Satoshi's identity, and this article does not do anything more than that. Yet he remains stubbornly alive!
Why wouldn't this be protected speech under the first amendment? As long as the newspaper believes it to be true, why wouldn't they be allowed to publish it?
I don't think this is nearly the case here, but to answer your question publication of false information with "reckless disregard" for it's truth or falsity is also actionable under New York Times v. Sullivan. NYT does not have to believe it to be false to have First Amendment protections stripped.
I hope will sue their asses.