GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by analyte123 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

Jamesbeam wrote: post #175

oliwary wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

Anyone who has ever contributed to privacy or security technology should “have their life turned to shit” too under this logic. All the evil terorrist money launderers probably used VPNs or Tor too. Maybe they posted on HN, making you part of an internet terrorist club. Maybe they asked a question on StackOverflow that you answered. You’re waving around some acronym that the government made up 20 years ago to describe normal human activity (transacting without approval from a central authority) like it’s some deadly ancient sin.

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

#252

Post by miohtama » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

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…

Sanctions do not apply retroactively, so this is overreach on Microsoft’s behalf. However Microsoft is a private business and can choose whom they do not business with. This is not protected by freedom of speech or any legal right.

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

#253

Post by itsoktocry » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #109

oliwary wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

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.

>Ex post facto criminal laws are barred by the constitution for good reason.

I think your analysis is flawed. They didn't come up with some new law and apply it to these people ex post facto. These accounts were contributing to the money laundering (per accusations, albeit indirectly).

Another way to look at it: if these people were contributing knowingly to a project that was laundering money, should they be punished? Of course.

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

#254

Post by Nursie » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

whatisweb3 wrote: post #238

zaphar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those aren't remotely equivalent, given that mixers mix up their inputs to obscure their outputs. By using E2EE yourself, you are not actively giving cover in the same way.

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

#255

Post by jmount » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

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…

> People on Twitter are either wil[l]fully dumb or simply ignorant.

Can't repeat that often enough. No matter how much I think I have internalized this, it is a continuing lesson.

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

#256

Post by thankful69 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

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

#257

Post by break_the_bank » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #215

break_the_bank wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nefarious people were probably on a unix system or a windows system. Should we go about and delete their contributors accounts as well? I’m not at all pro crypto but this enforcement does seem extreme. I do understand that Microsoft is just following the sanctions.

This is disingenuous. It's like responding to someone arguing for gun control with "all the shooters drank water, should we ban that?". We can argue about the legit/legal uses of Tornado Cash and whether it deserves to be sanctioned - but do so in good faith rather than pretending like it is equivalent to a general purpose tool like Microsoft Windows.

The tweet is very low information for me to comment. I can't tell whether these people contributed to Tornado cash before/after the sanctions were in place.

I think a fairer analogy would be, some devs contributed to signal, signal or a derivative of it got used by North Korea/Terrorist/current enemy of choice of the political class. Do we go around and delete the developers GitHub accounts?

Having never used tornado.cash or much of crypto (apart from making some money doing spot trades) I can't comment on what the good use cases are. Here's a sample thread of Vitalik claiming to use Tornado.cash to donate to people in Ukraine https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/155692560223356928.... I can find some other threads like this on Twitter.

This is just another case of Government choosing "security" over privacy and should be scary to folks on HN than be cheered upon.

As a side, I am not sure whether Tornado.cash was marketed specifically for "bad" use cases. In the example below I'd support the DoJ in fining & imprisoning a software engineer for his visit to Pyongyang https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizen-who-conspired-assi...

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

#258

Post by baobob » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #225

baobob wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If Linux were a focal point for enabling North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons, then yes, sanction the hell out of it. But sanctioning Linux would have such dramatically negative societal effects that it would outweigh any benefit - the same is not true of a mixer. Mixers in my view have absolutely no legitimate use, their exclusive purpose is the enablement of deviant behaviour in one form or another free of societal accountability, and it'd be a red flag for me just to know someone used one regardless of knowing why they used it.

It's like saying the local brothel can't be shut down because the building could potentially be used to teach the word of the lord while the employees aren't otherwise busy. The exclusive purpose of the brothel's existence is enabling trafficking and sex work, and the benefit of any potential imaginary supplementary uses are grossly outweighed by the benefit to society of closing it down.

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

#259

Post by cypress66 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #96

syzygyhack wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your vitriol against Tornado is misplaced, though not surprising given the general ignorance regarding the blockchain industry on HN.

I don't have particular vitriol against Tornado itself, they do offer compliance tool and seem to have just been an eventual outcome in crypto. I do however have an issue with the incredibly high rate of money laundering etc that flows through crypto. Particularly so with Tornado cash. It's the 'go-to' for easy money laundering. And no that's not a 'general ignorance' it's just a bi-product of having decentralized sy…

Tornado cash is not money laundering. It just isn't. Please stop claiming that.

If it were money laundering, you would be able to purchase a house with the money you made from drugs and then mixed through tornado. You can't. It's indistinct from having cash you made from selling drugs.

You still need to create a fake business to launder your money the old fashioned way if you want to have a legitimate origin for your money. Tornado does not launder your money. Claiming the origin of your money is tornado and nothing else is akin to claiming the origin of your money is cash you found on the street or something.

Tornado is just an anonymity tool.

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

#260

Post by whatisweb3 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #254

whatisweb3 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Those aren't remotely equivalent, given that mixers mix up their inputs to obscure their outputs. By using E2EE yourself, you are not actively giving cover in the same way.

E2EE and onion routing protocols use similar cryptography to "mix" and "obscure" inputs and outputs. It is very much the same approach, just that we don't call it "message laundering" because we as society have come to appreciate private communication.

I would tell you to just look at the Tornado Cash code yourself to verify this, but alas...