Can someone edit the title of this to say “tornado cash“? As a one-time contributor to the python tornado web framework, I had a bit of a scare waking up to see this!
GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
221–230 of 526 posts
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it unacceptable?
The US Constitution provides protection against ex post facto laws. A retroactive punishment is unconstitutional. It may be argued that these github accounts did not belong to us citizens and thus were not protected. Or it may be argued that Microsoft was doing this of their own freewill and therefore the constitutional prohibition does not apply. But there is generally within the American psych a distaste for retroa…
This is not an act of ex-post facto lawmaking by a legislature. This is the executive doing what it has been tasked with doing under a mandate supplied by Congress in accordance with it's role as laid out by the Constitution. The Courts are not likely to be swayed by this argument. I doubt the legislature will touch anything that enables money laundering with a 12 foot pole.
The novelty here is that prople are being forced to realize how destructive getting sanctioned is due to bearing witness to the power of the network effects involved. This was inevitable, no matter which way you cut it.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#223People 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…
Tornado is code, not an entity. AFAIK it isn't a corporation, group, or anything else - it is a smart contract address and a website.
The people who wrote the code were not sanctioned. The repo hosting the code was not sanctioned.
GitHub did not have to do this. This is Microsoft's legal department and the concept of "an abundance of caution".
Nothing about hosting open source code is at issue here. Tornado (the smart contract) was financially sanctioned; it is still fine to host source code.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> only had to block accounts that contributed after establishing the sanction The people who built Tornado Cash are already in trouble. The crime--facilitating money laundering--has already been committed. OFAC is an enforcement office. Its lists are more like wanted posters than rules. GitHub is cutting ties with people likely to be charged with federal crimes. If some of them are going to continue contributing to t…
> The crime--facilitating money laundering Did the people who built blockchains with built-in mandatory mixing (Monero) or optional completely obscured transaction inputs (ZCash) also facilitate money laundering? If not, what is the crucial difference? Am I myself in trouble for having (co-)designed a mixing service [1]? [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/mimblewimble-coinswap-proposal
>Did the people who built blockchains with built-in mandatory mixing (Monero) or optional completely obscured transaction inputs (ZCash) also facilitate money laundering?
Yes
>Am I myself in trouble for having (co-)designed a mixing service [1]?
Possibly? Depends on the details.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#225Earlier 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.
You should be able to achieve this without also enabling terrorism, child pornography and extortion. Because of this Tornado Cash was never the right solution - it requires you to permit these things just in order to have privacy. In other words it is a bullshit technology and deserves to be replaced with something better. If blockchain in turn requires a solution like Tornado Cash in order to offer any privacy, mand…
The problem with this line of reasoning is that any general purpose technology can be used for all those evil things. Hell, should we sanction the Linux kernel project, because all of those nasty people use it?
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The crime--facilitating money laundering Did the people who built blockchains with built-in mandatory mixing (Monero) or optional completely obscured transaction inputs (ZCash) also facilitate money laundering? If not, what is the crucial difference? Am I myself in trouble for having (co-)designed a mixing service [1]? [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/mimblewimble-coinswap-proposal
>Did the people who built blockchains with built-in mandatory mixing (Monero) or optional completely obscured transaction inputs (ZCash) also facilitate money laundering? Yes >Am I myself in trouble for having (co-)designed a mixing service [1]? Possibly? Depends on the details.
> Yes
Then american banks should be sanctioned, they are also involved in money laundering too.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
I think it would be a fairly novel interpretation of "persons carrying on a business in common with a view to profit" required to catch out contributors to an open source project.
Outside of a project that takes contributions / donations without a legal entity to receive them and parcels those out amongst the contributors, I can't think of a reasonable situation that would enable such a definition.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#228Earlier 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…
Your perspective on this is distorted. We are talking about an entity that according to the treasury has laundered more than 7 Billion USD, assisted criminals and neglected complying to Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations willingly and repeatedly. Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber…
> So if you contribute to such a project, that has the potential to harm your fellow citizens and contribute to financing of terrorism,
The currency that finances terrorists the most is the US Dollar.
if you believe the biggest terrorist is the US Govt and State Department than it's your morale due to use crypto.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are going to open a huge can of worms if you are going to start prosecuting people for software pull requests. Are we going to prosecute people who manufacture phosphor bombs for the US military as well now?
Honestly, that sounds like a good idea. White phosphorous munitions are generally illegal under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
It's illegal (1) against civilians, (2) against military targets in concentrations of civilians if delivered by air attack, (3) against military targets in concentrations of civilians by non-air attack unless the military targets are separated from the civilians and you take all reasonable precautions to limit incidental damage to the civilians, and (4) to use it on forests or plant cover unless they are being used to cover or conceal or camouflage military targets.
I don't think I'd describe that as "generally illegal" since it leaves a heck of a lot of situations where it is legal to use it.
Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could be argued the sole intent of unleashing a virus on the internet is malicious. The sole intent of publishing a privacy protocol on GitHub is not. Look at Tor for comparison. GitHub has a section on this[1]. There should be no problem with allowing this software online for research and educational purposes. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/acceptable-use-polici...
Does anyone want to dispute that Tornado Cash is a money laundering tool? When at least 20% of the money that has moved through it is already known to be ill-gotten gains, with the rest being indeterminant, it's kind of hard to say it's a anything but a money laundering tool. I've only seen childish arguments that "money laundering is a fake crime", not that Tornado Cash isn't a money laundering tool.
It is a tool for privacy, full stop. Criminals can use this for criminal activity, law abiding citizens can use this for law abiding activity. Also see end-to-end encrypted chat apps, VPNs, onion routing and other privacy tools that are widely used by criminals.
also consider applications that might be illegal but often considered moral like paying for an abortion with tornado cash ETH in a state where abortion is illegal, or donating to a state that your current regime is at war with.