What is Tornado? Some context would be useful.
GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
151–160 of 526 posts
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s morally deplorable to demand office workers risk jail time just because you want a free service. If you want to run git for free, run it on your own computer.
I am not demanding anything. I am just saying they have clearly done the wrong thing.
There is no moral obligation for someone to provide web services for free for any reason.
There’s definitely no moral obligation for someone to do the same at risk of prison time.
They do have a moral obligation to follow the laws of the country they operate in, though.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Well, the big legal limitation for these sanctions is that they apply only 'across borders' as OFAC can only sanction foreign entities (e.g. in this case asserting that TornadoCash-as-organization/project is controlled by North Korea), prohibiting U.S. citizens and companies from dealing with or assisting that foreign entity.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience in Afghanistan, it was other countries that performed more "war crimes" than the US (as in violating Geneva Conventions). Why do you think they make it such a big deal when the USA does it? Is it only because the US just prosecutes their own and doesn't recognize the international court? The international court does a much better job of keeping their decisions and the soldiers being punished, private…
But the US does not prosecute its own. Instead they go after the messenger e.g. Julian Assange. They also usually find the lowest scapegoat they can get instead of having the responsibility be at the command level. Edit: Spelling of scapegoat
I'll likely get downvoted straight to Hell for this, but grammatical errors going uncorrected become common errors as they spread to others… This particular one is already extremely common.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/sc...
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the crux of the issue in my opinion. It seems ridiculous that the sanctions should apply retroactively to anyone who has dealt with a sanctioned entity at any time in the past - if the people contributed before the sanctions, they were not contributing to a “blocked person”, as the project was not blocked at the time. Imagine if, say, A foreign electronics company is sanctioned by the government - does this m…
Unless, of course, GitHub considers every single contributor to Tornado to be part of the sanctioned entity due to the decentralized nature of git? Seems like a very dangerous interpretation for open source in that case…
If you really want to lose some sleep look up partnership law.
Everyone who has ever contributed to an open source project _could_ be (in the absence of the project setting up proper legal structures) considered a membership of a general partnership, and thereby become jointly and severally subject to unlimited liability for the actions of the partnership.
(IANAL this is just what I've read online)
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Tornado being sanctioned mean that everyone who has contributed in the past also needs to be blocked? (It’s not clear from the thread whether the people blocked contributed after, or only before, the sanction.) For what it’s worth, I don’t see much evidence of people being upset at GitHub in the thread. There’s talk about decentralized alternatives, but not much actual pinning the blame on them.
This is the crux of the issue in my opinion. It seems ridiculous that the sanctions should apply retroactively to anyone who has dealt with a sanctioned entity at any time in the past - if the people contributed before the sanctions, they were not contributing to a “blocked person”, as the project was not blocked at the time. Imagine if, say, A foreign electronics company is sanctioned by the government - does this m…
> Imagine if, say, A foreign electronics company is sanctioned by the government - does this mean that anyone who has previously worked with them or bought their electronics has done so illegally? If so, that sounds like a significant impediment to commerce, since nobody can predict who will be sanctioned in the future.
That's not what's happening here. What you're seeing is a US company evaluating its ongoing business relationships, and making the decision that continuing to associate with principals of a designated company isn't worth any potential legal risk.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Nice, what's next? Jailing everyone who ever had an abortion? Why aren't y'all americans doing that yet, if it's apparently acceptable to punish people for things they did before the supposed crime was made illegal?
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not demanding anything. I am just saying they have clearly done the wrong thing.
There is no moral obligation for someone to provide web services for free for any reason. There’s definitely no moral obligation for someone to do the same at risk of prison time. They do have a moral obligation to follow the laws of the country they operate in, though.
```Record or rewind any change to your code to keep you and your team in sync. Host it all for free with unlimited public and private repositories.``` - https://github.com/
Once again, just because they were legally obliged to do it it doesn't mean the action is not immoral. Oh god, will I do it... Okay, I think I must, because my point is not going through I see. Think of Nazi Germany. It was illegal to try to save jews. Was it moral not to do it?
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because others are answering you in much more detail, I’ll give them more generalized answer – This is quite simply not how a sanctions regime works. The US government does not make a list of all the sanctioned persons’ assets, then start going after those in court. Instead, it goes the other way: any company with a US nexus watches those sanction lists carefully. When someone is listed they look at their internal re…
Be that as it may, isn't this still an unacceptable collateral damage? So when you contribute code to an open source project, you generally do so under an open source license. All of them generally contain something akin to the following: IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (this particular excerpt is from the BSD li…
Probably not to GitHub or the courts. If in a few years it is discovered that GitHub missed something they can tell the courts "We did our best to comply, look at all the accounts we killed [and other evidence], so go easy on us for an honest mistake." In general the courts look kindly on someone who tried their best to obey the spirit of the law but missing one hidden detail.
If you are affected you could take this to court, and might even be able to convince them that the law went too far in incentivizing GitHub to delete your account. It seems very unlikely, but with a good lawyer courts can do weird things. If you do pull this off, then that would change court precedent, and when combined with a few dozen other cases eventually make it so courts will not accept deleting all accounts as a useful to to prove attempting to comply with the law. (Let me be clear, I doubt you could win this case, but it is theoretically possible so I offer it for completeness sake)
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Well, the big legal limitation for these sanctions is that they apply only 'across borders' as OFAC can only sanction foreign entities (e.g. in this case asserting that TornadoCash-as-organization/project is controlled by North Korea), prohibiting U.S. citizens and companies from dealing with or assisting that foreign entity.
> OFAC can only sanction foreign entities
There are a variety of sanctions mechanisms. Tornado didn’t have to be controlled by North Korea (it isn’t), just used by them to fall afoul of U.S. law.