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GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

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

#231

Post by WoahNoun »

jacooper wrote: post #226
WoahNoun wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Banks make good faith efforts to prevent money laundering. (KYC and SARs in particular). If tornado had KYC, this wouldn't be an issue. :)

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

#232

Post by giancarlostoro »

oliwary wrote: post #79
paulgb wrote: post #11

Earlier 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?

My understanding of the American justice system says you cannot do this, our founding fathers did not want any witch hunts, laws should deter future abuse, otherwise people might as well never do anything, ever.

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

#233

Post by salawat »

dingleberry420 wrote: post #157
salawat wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Look, the legal system, and political edifice is scary as all hell to anyone actually paying attention. It's literally a game where those in power have a large warchest with which to ruin people's lives, with the only limiting factor being that someone has to do the paperwork, and that paperwork will be checked.

With technology obviating the burden of actually doing paperwork, and essentially cranking the efficiency of the bureaucratic state sky high, as well as equipping it with the tools it needs to keep the checkers/whistleblowers at bay, you've got a frightningly powerful tool poised to crush anything in it's way. These aren't the days of "no man can do much damage in 4 years" anymore.

One of the great Checks, is becoming much less of one every day. It's scary as hell.

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

#235

Post by whatisweb3 »

zaphar wrote: post #129
whatisweb3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the matrix project was run by terrorists then your comparison would be accurate. It is not however. Tornado Cash however is run by a group with the express purpose of money laundering which is a crime. This difference is important and is why they are now sanctioned and Matrix is not.

Tornado cash is not run by terrorists. The express purpose of the tool is privacy, and that is what it is being used for.

The express purpose of an end to end encrypted chat protocol is to provide privacy. If users of it engage in criminal behavior that does not mean the express purpose of the protocol is also criminal.

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

#236

Post by WoahNoun »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #195
PeterisP wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did they do wrong? The argument probably is that they assisted a sanctioned entity by providing a contribution i.e. service to it. Quoting US Treasury "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." However, th…

> The key issue is that any collateral damage is considered acceptable, but any false negatives are absolutely not. Even though “better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer”. Not that this was ever uncontroversial, but how did it ever go so wrong, that the very problems of government that modern laws sought to correct are gleefully recreated using private companies as enforceme…

Companies try not to break laws in general. If they think doing business with you will create a liability for them, they have a freedom of association right to deny you service.

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

#237

Post by catlifeonmars »

krono wrote: post #120
ezfe wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Github repository is decentralized among everyone who has cloned it, nothing about Github changes that. The other parts, like issue tracking, obviously are not.

It's not decentralized in any practical manner when everyone's local clone is pointing to the same, now no longer available, origin. This could have been mitigated by having a pre-determined fallback origin (which could very well be something they had in place - I'm not familiar with this project).

> It's not decentralized in any practical manner when everyone's local clone is pointing to the same, now no longer available, origin.

On the contrary, removing the common, centralized origin makes the project decentralized by definition.

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

#238

Post by whatisweb3 »

zaphar wrote: post #217
Karunamon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to talk about important differences, then you need to understand the difference between money-laundering and privacy. In short, if you are not concealing the source of your funds to conceal a crime being committed , you are not guilty of money-laundering. It's that simple. KYC laws apply to banks and corporations, not individuals and not protocols and not code. Privacy is not against the law, and neither i…

If you are mixing your money with known criminals so that they can hide their money then you are money laundering even if you have other legitimate reasons for hiding your own money. The creative fiction that you can't know you are mixing it with known criminals is just that. A fiction. It has been known for a long time now that these mixers are used by known criminals. Continuing to use and contribute to that means…

It is known that criminals use E2EE, ergo anybody using this technology is knowingly helping a criminal. what a bad take.

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

#239

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tromp wrote: post #205
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193

Earlier 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? If not, what is the crucial difference?

Probably not? Tornado Cash provided one service: mixing. (In AML parlance, layering.) We know it was used to launder the proceeds of crimes. The developers knew that too, and they kept working on it. Semenov styled himself as a co-founder and the group advertised open positions on its website. All that looks much more like an enterprise knowingly facilitating laundering than a developer publishing interesting code.

ZCash and Monero look like cash. Tornado (and every mixer I’ve seen) looks like a layering service. Those aren’t illegal per se. But you’re at risk if a criminal uses it. (You’re in deeper shit if it becomes known a criminal used it and you do nothing about it.)

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

#240

Post by trasz »

This would be fine if it only affected developers that live in US. I suspect it doesn’t though, and this means it’s yet another proof that we need companies that are outside the US jurisdiction, same reason we need those outside Russian jurisdiction.
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