2600, a popular Hacker website and magazine, has reinstated a $10,000 bounty for President Donald Trump's tax return. The site introduced the bounty during Trump's 2016 run for the White House, and reaffirmed the offer in April 2017.
According to the publication:
"There is no law that compels the President to release this information. But being the first in modern history to refuse to do this creates a very unhealthy environment of mistrust and suspicion, one which ultimately hurts us all. And right now, the only thing that can begin the healing process is a good dose of truth. We need to find out if there's a liar and a cheat in the White House or if some kind of a witch hunt is underway by his detractors. Continuing to withhold information that has traditionally been made public is the stuff of dictatorship, not the society we all build and maintain."
The publication says Trump needs to sacrifice some of his personal privacy -- i.e., his tax return information -- in order to end the alleged mistrust he's facing.
In order to quality for the $10,000 bounty, the returns must be from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, or 2015, and Trump must still be in office. Also, the bounty is only good if Trump's tax returns have not been disclosed or somehow made public elsewhere.
During his 2016 Presidential Campaign, Trump promised to release his tax return. But soon after he backtracked from that promise, blaming the change of heart on a tax audit.
2600: The Hacker Quarterly
2600 Magazine (The Hacker Quarterly) is well-known within security circles and throughout the hacker underground. The publication's driving force is Eric Gordon Corley, who writes under the pen name Emmanuel Goldstein -- a reference to the opposition leader in George Orwell's 1984.
I first interviewed Corley around 1995 while researching a story about Justin Tanner Petersen, a hacker and FBI informant around that time. At the time, Corley described allegations to me that the FBI hired Petersen to track fugitive hacker Kevin Mitnick (who has since gone legit).
