Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#171

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

biglearner1day wrote: post #56

rvnx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable to expect that Ethereum operators share responsibility in case of usage of their network for malicious or criminal activity. They have the technical means to control what goes on there or not. Otherwise it's like if you run P2P nodes and claim pedo pictures aren't your problem.

> They have the technical means to control what goes on there or not. Imagine the scenario wherein potential "illegal" crypto is mixed through another service. How would you expect Tornado to verify that without straight-up blocking specific services through transaction patterns?

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#172

Post by vsareto » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

biglearner1day wrote: post #97

ABeeSea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helping criminals launder money is not a human right.

I would challenge you to prove that they actively advertised their service as such. Stop spreading misinformation.

Oh wow, I guess if I don't advertise I'm doing a crime then I'm not guilty

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#173

Post by suoduandao2 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

highwaylights wrote: post #98

epolanski wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial privacy is not a human right. Moreover the kind of financial privacy you think of is from other citizens to not know your financial movements, it doesn't apply to nation states for obvious tax reasons and money laundering purposes.

or the purposes of funding terrorism, narcotics, human trafficking, weapons, uranium, endangered wildlife and/or biohazardous material. There's a point at which if you undermine law enforcement enough there's no point in continuing to try to enforce laws, which means there's no point in having laws at all. The hype mob either doesn't see this or doesn't care, which is incredibly naive either way.

In my capacity of unofficial spokesperson for the hype mob, I would say that if a tool can be created that has legitimate and nonlegitimate purposes, criminalizing its creation or possession is the worst possible action to take, because it ensures that all talented people who are interested in developing it for legitimate purposes become disaffected at worst or aligned with your enemies at best. Setting aside the moral argument, the NSA's treatment of Snowden, Manning, et al. makes it much more difficult for the NSA to attract the best talent in its field.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#174

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

throwoutway wrote: post #117

Tepix wrote: post #29

Wow, just wow. Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? There must be more. Perhaps he also deployed it? That would be a different story. The article is quite murky in that regard. Perhaps they don't know yet. In there is an interesting paragraph explaining what Tornado Cash is: … The ( criminal ) origin of the cryptocurrencies is…

I think the only real case the gov would have is if he ‘knowingly’ supported laundering for sanctioned nations, like if he noticed it, and commented on Twitter or discord to a friend like “Ha! Look, DPRK used my tool”. However, if that did happen, the gov also just gave him threee days lead time to delete any evidence of that, which is extraordinary. I’m surprised the arrest and sanction did not happen on the same da…

I don't think there's any causation from the USA sanctions to the arrest, possibly even vice versa, with some investigation before this arrest leading to some part of the sanctions.

The specific USA sanctions are not retroactive, it's not a crime to have violated them before an entity was sanctioned; and I doubt if it's a Netherlands crime to violate USA sanctions.

In any case, the article seems quite clear that he was arrested for facilitating money laundering, not for a sanctions-related offense, the sentence about sanctions was just extra information for context. And for this part, the big issue is intent - if it turns out that he developed this mixer with the intent to facilitate hiding illegal transactions, that would be facilitating money laundering. And looking at some comments here I wouldn't be that surprised that he might have explicitly admitted it in writing.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#175

Post by narrator » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #36

Tepix wrote: post #29

Wow, just wow. Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? There must be more. Perhaps he also deployed it? That would be a different story. The article is quite murky in that regard. Perhaps they don't know yet. In there is an interesting paragraph explaining what Tornado Cash is: … The ( criminal ) origin of the cryptocurrencies is…

Satoshi has demonstrated inhuman levels of restraint. The only explanation is that he is dead. The others are that he is not human, or that it's a committee defying Hanlon's razor: i.e. not governed by stupidity like most human affairs, but malice. Both are equally improbable.

Some people have alleged that Paul Leroux, who is sitting in prison right now, is Satoshi. That would explain why Satoshi hasn't moved any coins or sought fame.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#176

Post by sidewndr46 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

djbusby wrote: post #163

sidewndr46 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, house purchases are by default anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house is because they put in their trust name their full legal names. Last time I sold a house, the only reason I met with the buyer directly was because I didn't use an agent for the sale.

If it's anon, how does the government get their property taxes?

Property taxes are between the owner and the county where I live. They are paid in advance, so you can't sell a house without paying the property tax first. It'd be liened by the tax authority to prevent the sale.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#177

Post by sidewndr46 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #169

sidewndr46 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, house purchases are by default anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house is because they put in their trust name their full legal names. Last time I sold a house, the only reason I met with the buyer directly was because I didn't use an agent for the sale.

But you have the seller and buyer's name in the title no?

No, it just lists the trust name.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#178

Post by jjulius » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

biglearner1day wrote: post #96

threeseed wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than going after the people actually committing crimes Actually they go after the people committing the crime AND those facilitating it. > Privacy is not a crime, it’s a human right (a) Not a human right, (b) not enshrined in any country's law, (c) does not absolve illegal behaviour.

> Actually they go after the people committing the crime AND those facilitating it. But only if it is in their interest. We don't see other services and platforms sanctioned for facilitating illegal activity. Furthermore, the Data Protection Directive does give users the (human!) right to privacy, considering that crypto isn't a currency, it's merely your private data which is also protected by GDPR.

>We don't see other services and platforms sanctioned for facilitating illegal activity.

... yes we do, lol. You hear about people being arrested and platforms shut down for facilitating financial crimes in the crypto space all the time.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#179

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #169

sidewndr46 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, house purchases are by default anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house is because they put in their trust name their full legal names. Last time I sold a house, the only reason I met with the buyer directly was because I didn't use an agent for the sale.

But you have the seller and buyer's name in the title no?

Kind of yes, but if the buyer technically is a trust or a shell company, then the title lists that, and not any person.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#180

Post by codehalo » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

phphphphp wrote: post #3

Arnt wrote: post #2

So a software developer is held responsible for the software. If the software is largely SaaS, then I can see the sense in that. A software developer of SaaS is also a service developer, arguably even a service operator although that depends on how the service is developed and operated. I'm sure the judge will be thrilled to have to listen to arguments about the with the nuances of dev, ops, devops and a distributed…

If you design software to do a thing and then the software is used to do that thing, it follows that you’re responsible. Whether you believe that the sanctions make sense or not is one thing, but to argue that the developer of tornado cash is not responsible for… the behaviour tornado cash… feels like a hard sell.

Is adobe responsible if someone uses it to edit or create pictures of child porn?