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

#421

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #359

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing sinister about privacy Totally agree. One damning aspect of Tornado is we know it was used to launder money. Criminals used it. This was publicly reported and certainly known to the Tornado team. If you know your product is being used by criminals to do crime and you respond by shrugging your shoulders, I’m not sure what the expected outcome is supposed to be other than getting dinged.

> If you know your product is being used by criminals to do crime and you respond by shrugging your shoulders, I’m not sure what the expected outcome is supposed to be other than getting dinged. You are aware that criminals use all the same thing as you an me right? They use toothbrush too... should Coldgate not shrug their shoulders? Sure they don't commit crime with them, but they do use them. Want something they u…

> would still disagree with the blanket sanction over the open source contributors

No contributors have been sanctioned. Three leaders had their GitHub accounts deleted, from what I can tell, and are trying to misrepresent that as a threat to everyone who ever touched the project.

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

#422

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #419

pcwalton wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of money laundering is concealing the origin of money obtained from an illegal source. You may not like the fact that this is illegal, but it has a clear definition and most people want it to be outlawed, so it is. It's obviously not "always applicable": I've never taken steps to conceal ill-gotten gains and neither have the vast majority of people.

Sure, the requirement for an "illegal source" is what made for an "add on" charge - something else illegal had to have been going on for it to apply. But here it is being used by itself to go after a piece of software that provides general financial privacy to anybody , and not merely financial privacy for criminals. So that detail of its definition isn't particularly relevant any more, and it makes sense to talk abo…

> it is being used by itself to go after a piece of software that provides general financial privacy to anybody, and not merely financial privacy for criminals

The archetypal laundromat also does normal folks’ laundry. It just also launders money for criminals. I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that.

> banking analog would be if the feds went after brick and mortar banks for allowing customers to deposit checks and withdraw cash

If they did that without checking anyone’s identity and then, after learning—from law enforcement no less—that criminals were using them to launder money, kept going, business as usual, hell yes they’d be shut down and arrested.

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

#423

Post by grepfru_it » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

joshmanders wrote: post #391

blagie wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me make this simpler, since there are a lot of comments like yours: 1) If I want to exchange redlined documents with lawyers, I need Microsoft Word. I cannot run a successful business which deals with law firms without Microsoft Word. Most businesses need to deal with law firms. If Microsoft shuts me out of Word, I cannot have a business. 2) If I want to promote my local business, I need to be on social media pla…

> 1) If I want to exchange redlined documents with lawyers, I need Microsoft Word. I cannot run a successful business which deals with law firms without Microsoft Word. Most businesses need to deal with law firms. If Microsoft shuts me out of Word, I cannot have a business. I find your reasoning here disingenuous. I have been running a business for almost 2 decades, dealing with law firms and everything and I haven't…

Took a consulting gig with RedHat once. RedHat asked for a document. I gave them a LibreOffice .odt doc (that I wrote on Fedora). They rejected that doc due to inability to access it. I sent them a LibreOffice exported .docx file and they again rejected it due to formatting issues. At that point they specifically requested I use Word and send them a Word document.

Microsoft Word makes the world go round. Sure I can use Wordpad and export a docx file, but no tables, no special effects, etc

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

#424

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

clucas wrote: post #394

moritonal wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it hypocritical to celebrate when platforms kick off the people we don't like, then mourn when they kick off the ones we do?

No it isn't. Here's an analogy: Is it hypocritical to say "we shouldn't punish people who sell marijuana," but also say "we should punish people who sell heroin?" Maybe you disagree with the person's preference for what should be punished, but saying "we should punish this behavior but not that behavior" doesn't make a person a hypocrite.

[deleted]

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

#425

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #349

dogman144 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW uses less energy than global dishwasher usage. Do you feel similar sentiments against Home Depot and dishwasher users? Facebook data centers aren’t pretty either in this regard. Edit - additionally, tornado runs on eth, which is soon to be env-friendly PoS.

The whole point of the energy critique is that it's being wasted on something either useless or deleterious. You can argue with that take, but all you're doing with the "but what about dishwashers?!" response is asking them to pass a moral judgment on dishwashers, which isn't relevant to this discussion. Also, Ethereum has been "soon to be env-friendly PoS" for years now. Let's revisit that if and when it actually ha…

Cryptocurrencies are our only counter yet against the abuses of the financial system by the governments. In some countries this abuse is only potential, on others - already very real.

In a country where a dictator can make you starve with a snap of the fingers, cryptocurrencies are vital to survival. So even 10x more energy 'wasted' on such an indespensable service would still be a bargain I'd take.

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

#426

Post by nobody9999 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:39 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…

>Your perspective on this is distorted.

You make an excellent point. The entire point of Tornado Cash is[0]:

"Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency platform. It is a Cryptocurrency tumbler, a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source."

From a legal standpoint, such functionality has few (if any) purposes other than to circumvent the law.

As such, preventing such activities is likely a societal good.

I expect you won't get a lot of love from some folks here, as they aren't interested in societal good. They seek license to do what they want whenever they want, without regard to the impact on the society in which they live or those they live alongside.

And in most cases, that's just fine. I strongly value liberty myself. I'm not as dogmatic as some, but I strongly believe that the only actions which should be proscribed are those that limit the liberty of others.

In order to maintain that liberty, it must needs be an ordered liberty that discourages activities that cause harm to others.

All that said, what governments decide is "criminal activity" is often arbitrary and unfairly/unevenly applied.

This creates distrust in the legal system, which Tornado Cash circumvents. Which is why not a few law-abiding folks (especially in the age of surveillance capitalism[1] want the capabilities (anonymization of financial transactions) offered by Tornado Cash.

What's more, the legal system in the US actually works pretty well, as compared with other nations around the world.

It's not the best, nor is it free of flaws, but it's definitely better than nothing.

This (how to make our ordered liberty as broad and as fair as possible) is a complicated and nuanced topic. I haven't done it justice in this comment.

While I do appreciate the value of a platform like Tornado Cash (how, and with who, I effect financial transactions shouldn't be of concern to anyone other than those involved in a particular transaction), it's pretty clear that without appropriate controls (AML/CFT regulations) enormous harm can be done. In fact, this episode shows that enormous harm was done in the absence of the implementation of those regulations.

Github will comply with the law when it is required of them.

They have a business to run.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

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

#427

Post by meltyness » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #278

meltyness wrote: post #15

This is an overreach, and it is going to backfire. The target here is a software package, essentially speech so, one step down That hill. At least congress isn't deluded, corrupt, and senile enough to try this. Edit: further, it seems they're going to have to shut down Ethereum too, because Tornado Cash's contract is a person, and subgroup of Ethereum under the definition of entity which falls under the definition of…

>and it is going to backfire it isn't. the sheep have been bleating "corporations can do whatever they want" for 10 years now. the pigs will be fine.

In this case, maybe on the administrator with Monero holdings, or by drawing attention to this still-effective system.

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

#428

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

feoren wrote: post #415

moritonal wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it hypocritical to celebrate when platforms kick off the people we don't like, then mourn when they kick off the ones we do?

Is it hypocritical to celebrate when murderers are sent to prison, but mourn when innocents are?

[deleted]

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

#429

Post by mindslight » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #422

mindslight wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the requirement for an "illegal source" is what made for an "add on" charge - something else illegal had to have been going on for it to apply. But here it is being used by itself to go after a piece of software that provides general financial privacy to anybody , and not merely financial privacy for criminals. So that detail of its definition isn't particularly relevant any more, and it makes sense to talk abo…

> it is being used by itself to go after a piece of software that provides general financial privacy to anybody, and not merely financial privacy for criminals The archetypal laundromat also does normal folks’ laundry. It just also launders money for criminals. I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that. > banking analog would be if the feds went after brick and mortar banks for al…

> I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that.

This thread is full of these blind assertions that nobody except criminals wants financial privacy. They are patently false.

> If they did that without checking anyone’s identity and then, after learning—from law enforcement no less—that criminals were using them to launder money, kept going, business as usual, hell yes they’d be shut down and arrested.

You're basically saying that once a service gets used by a criminal, then operating that service becomes illegal because it is furthering criminal acts. This seems like yet another Godelesque everything-is-criminalized result, and your appeal that one can avoid persecution by electing to perform blanket investigation on all one's customers isn't particularly redeeming.

Like sure I get the traditional banking industry has been practically inundated with these type of invasive heavyhanded regulations to make things easier for law enforcement, but that's not a particularly compelling argument.

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

#430

Post by yrro » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

jsty wrote: post #227

yrro wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems unlikely to me too but that's what I've read. If you ask a lawyer "what are the risks of doing X" they'll give you a list, and some will be more likely than others. It's up to the client to decide what level of risk they're happy with.

I managed to dig up the mailing list thread where I read about this risk: https://groups.google.com/g/linux.debian.vote/c/Nl-J8h2pO9A/...; for context, Sam Hartman is a former Debian Project Leader and I assume his opinion is formed by advice from SPI's lawyers.