Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 526 posts

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#141

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

PeterisP wrote: post #133
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many other applications for Tornado Cash than “money laundering.” What if I don’t want my employer or friends to see what I do with my known wallet on a fully traceable public blockchain? Privacy is not illegal.

Well, no matter what other applications for Tornado Cash may exist, since yesterday it is illegal to interact with Tornado Cash or assist them in any way for anyone within reach of USA jurisdiction. That's it. Privacy as such is not illegal, but that does not mean that government may not prohibit certain specific ways of achieving privacy.

Yes what you are saying is true and it is our right and duty to protest that decision. When will they sanction something you do like and need like Signal or cryptography? Are they aware of all the bad that comes about via http? Or cash?

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#142

Post by dom96 »

jdpedrie wrote: post #124
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2. Motivate people contribute to it, see DigitalOcean hacktoberfest. Can skip this step. Just make fake commits ( https://github.com/asizikov/gang/graphs/contributors ).

Always sign your commits! gpg is a pain but once you set it up you never have to think about it again.

or don't sign your commits and then you have plausible deniability about commits in your name

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#143

Post by dingleberry420 »

PeterisP wrote: post #133
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many other applications for Tornado Cash than “money laundering.” What if I don’t want my employer or friends to see what I do with my known wallet on a fully traceable public blockchain? Privacy is not illegal.

Well, no matter what other applications for Tornado Cash may exist, since yesterday it is illegal to interact with Tornado Cash or assist them in any way for anyone within reach of USA jurisdiction. That's it. Privacy as such is not illegal, but that does not mean that government may not prohibit certain specific ways of achieving privacy.

Turns out privacy now is illegal in the US of A.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#144

Post by tromp »

junon wrote: post #7

People on Twitter are either wilfully dumb or simply ignorant. GitHub had to do this. It was required of them by law. Tornado was sanctioned . > These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. This is, unambiguously, di…

> GitHub had to do this.

They only had to block accounts that contributed after establishing the sanction. It's not clear that they limited themselves to those. It would in fact seem to be hard to contribute in the limited time range between establishing the sanction and removing the project.

There is also the collateral damage of removing unrelated projects that happened to be owned by these people. Couldn't github preserve such projects while putting them in some ownerless state?

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#145

Post by mananaysiempre »

PeterisP wrote: post #123
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your analysis. Ex post facto criminal laws are barred by the constitution for good reason. Retroactive punishment leaves people guessing what actions might or might not be punished.

Well, Github blocking an account is not considered "punishment" according to criminal law or constitution, only standard contract law would apply and I believe Github has the right to terminate such contracts if they wish. This consideration would apply if and only if the government would actually pursue criminal charges against someone who contributed to TornadoCash - which they possibly would if someone would do st…

> Github blocking an account is not considered "punishment" according to criminal law or constitution

I understand this to be the case. I don’t understand how anyone considers this to be even remotely sane.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#146

Post by phatfish »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #114
baobob wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did they do wrong? They wilfully contributed to the upkeep of a money laundering service. They should be thankful losing their GitHub account is the extent of the fallout, take it as a lesson that code can cause real harm, and act more judiciously in future when it comes to contributing labour to suspect projects.

There are so many other applications for Tornado Cash than “money laundering.” What if I don’t want my employer or friends to see what I do with my known wallet on a fully traceable public blockchain? Privacy is not illegal.

Everyone is free to use cash if they want to make a transaction that isn't "permanently" recorded in a distributed digital database.

I hear the US government actually supports this method.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#147

Post by probably_wrong »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #100
zaphar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they aren't. They are sanctioning a software project and service that runs on Blockchains not a protocol.

Tornado Cash is a protocol. It targets EVM, and has been deployed on Ethereum, Optimism, Avalanche, Polygon and other networks. It happens to be open source, the code was mirrored on GitHub for research and contributions. They are setting a precedent that any forks or similar implementations of this protocol will also be sanctioned. A comparison would be sanctioning the Matrix protocol because it facilitates end-to-e…

You can still use the Tornado protocol for handling double-blind experiments in a lab without fear of being sanctioned.

You cannot launder money, though. This is forbidden regardless of which method you use (crypto, art, car washes, etc). These sanctions are saying "we consider this specific use of this specific algorithm to be illegal, so if you interact with it via these wallets you will be sanctioned too". But they are not saying "this algorithm is illegal".

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#148

Post by cobbal »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #114
baobob wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did they do wrong? They wilfully contributed to the upkeep of a money laundering service. They should be thankful losing their GitHub account is the extent of the fallout, take it as a lesson that code can cause real harm, and act more judiciously in future when it comes to contributing labour to suspect projects.

There are so many other applications for Tornado Cash than “money laundering.” What if I don’t want my employer or friends to see what I do with my known wallet on a fully traceable public blockchain? Privacy is not illegal.

When it comes to financial transactions, KYC laws mean that privacy is, in fact, illegal.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#149

Post by hnthrow1010 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #114
baobob wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did they do wrong? They wilfully contributed to the upkeep of a money laundering service. They should be thankful losing their GitHub account is the extent of the fallout, take it as a lesson that code can cause real harm, and act more judiciously in future when it comes to contributing labour to suspect projects.

There are so many other applications for Tornado Cash than “money laundering.” What if I don’t want my employer or friends to see what I do with my known wallet on a fully traceable public blockchain? Privacy is not illegal.

No, there are no other real applications for these mixers. The only reason you even need to do that on a public blockchain is because the design of them is so bad that there's no other practical way to have privacy without enabling large amounts of criminal activity. If you really care about privacy, and you don't like criminals, then just don't use any blockchains or cryptocurrency.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#150

Post by salawat »

dingleberry420 wrote: post #136
junon wrote: post #7

People on Twitter are either wilfully dumb or simply ignorant. GitHub had to do this. It was required of them by law. Tornado was sanctioned . > These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. This is, unambiguously, di…

So making a PR to some project the US government might decide to sanction means github is going to delete my account?

Yes, pretty much.

This is why I'm surprised more people aren't way more terrified about OFAC than there are. It's probably one of the nastiest diplomatic tools the U.S. has in its arsenal.

Post reply on HN