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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#211

one of the most shameful moments in digital human rights after the arrest of pgp creator in 1993. Code is speech, it is not a weapon. Banning maths is fascist

even more shameful is the tone of conversation regarding this in internet forums now vs in 1993. How the hell can you be pro arrest of developers

The opinions being expressed regarding cryptography, cryptocurrencies, freedom, and privacy has been absolutely depressing. The state and corporations have exerted their influence, particularly in the last fifteen years or so.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only explanation is that he is dead. He might be dead but someone has control of his keys & logins as they used his accounts to defend Dorian Nakamoto. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/03/06/bitcoin-...

And to advertise NFTs on December 24, 2021. http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...

Looks like that account on that website has been hacked.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am arguing that people are responsible for the software they have created. So, is your answer to the asked question yes, the developers of Metasploit should be arrested and jailed? How about the developers of Bitlocker? It's used to encrypt illegal content, impeding police discovery efforts. Every person who developed a file-sharing website should probably also be arrested. Lots of illegal/pirated/etc. content ou…

Law isn’t a binary based on responsibility, it’s reductive to suggest that by arguing for responsibility we are also arguing for prison for software developers. I can be responsible for your death and spend no time in prison. Every other industry deals with this challenge — why should software be any different?

You can take the word "jailed" out of my comment, replace it with "responsible for", and I still think my point stands...

You said:

>If a company releases software that is used nefariously, there are very common legal actions to hold them accountable

If you believe that, it follows that you believe that every developer of encryption algorithms should be "held accountable" (be it jail, or "responsible without prison", etc.) because other people use encryption to hide illegal activity. Developers of internet protocols should be accountable for the actions other people take on the internet, because lots of illegal things happen on the internet.

Metasploit, Kali, 7-zip, FileZilla, Word/Excel, Putty, OpenVPN... Should I go on? All of these are used for nefarious things all the time. Are you really suggesting that the developers of these should be responsible for the nefarious things that their users do? If not jail, what responsibility are you suggesting?

>Every other industry deals with this challenge — why should software be any different?

Most other industries have protections against this type of liability, not responsibilities. See knives, guns, planes, cars, etc. Unless their is gross negligence, which isn't just "it was used nefariously", the maker of X is generally not responsible for what some user of X does with X.

Edit for clarification:

You can argue about purpose-built nefarious software, sure. If I develop ransomware, and advertise it as ransomware, and there's no legitimate use other than ransoming... I should probably be held responsible for the ransomware attacks that occur using that tool (at least, I accept that argument). The problem with applying this to all software is that most everything that is used nefariously was originally designed for and used for legitimate uses. When that's the case, the person who committed the crime with the legitimate tool should be held responsible, not the maker of the legitimate tool.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#214

Ah yes, arrest developers of open source privacy code and blame them for North Korea money laundering rather than going after the people actually committing crimes. Sounds about right. Privacy is not a crime, it’s a human right! Sorry that it makes the polices job harder, but our rights are more important. And didn’t we go through all this already in the 90s? Are we now gonna start arresting all cryptographers? This…

> 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.

Ah, the famed “Hacker” News users advocating for the Big State and against privacy.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#215

one of the most shameful moments in digital human rights after the arrest of pgp creator in 1993. Code is speech, it is not a weapon. Banning maths is fascist

You can call it money laundering speech if you want, but that doesn't change the fact money laundering is illegal. Selling skimming services is illegal even if you don't skim people yourself.

Nobody is banning technology or math, only specific, usually criminal, uses of technology and math are banned.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#216

Ah yes, arrest developers of open source privacy code and blame them for North Korea money laundering rather than going after the people actually committing crimes. Sounds about right. Privacy is not a crime, it’s a human right! Sorry that it makes the polices job harder, but our rights are more important. And didn’t we go through all this already in the 90s? Are we now gonna start arresting all cryptographers? This…

And it is always under the guise of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism or whatever other reason they can find to excuse their inexcusable actions. Take mass government surveillance for example.

HN in its current avatar would probably cheer on if the Patriot Act was enacted today.

Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#217

This is an interesting case because it's applying financial law to a decentralised cryptocurrency operation. If research shows that Tornado was indeed processing a billion dollars of criminal funds then I'm not surprised arrests have been made even though it may be hard to prove actual involvement by the network operators. These numbers come close to the fund processing capacity of a small financial institution and t…

The dev doesn't operate the TornadoCash contract. The code is actually run by people who operate ethereum nodes. After the initial deployment, the dev has zero involvement.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#218
post #155

For those who think this is good: Private keys can be represented in text. Like this: KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM Encrypted messaging apps like Matrix or Signal, can be used to send strings with private keys, anonymously. It's very difficult to hold a position that financial privacy tools are bad, but encrypted messaging apps are good; because they are really not that different.

Messenger application are not (yet :( ) required to comply with anti money laundering regulations. Financial systems do. The two are not the same.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US sanctioning Tornado Cash Zero evidence this is connected to U.S. sanctions. Dutch law protects even cash transactions less than American law. When the investigation started, in June, the U.S. had already released evidence Tornado Cash was used to launder money. If a Dutch person kept working on it, it might be trivial to show they broke Dutch criminal statute.

The first time a developer of open source, non-custodial and autonomous smart contract code has been arrested comes days after the US sanctions the same smart contract. Probably just a coincidence.

It says in the article that the person has benefited financially from this. It's not about making open source, I don't know why people are raising that red herring. Implementing a mixer is (probably) not illegal in The Netherlands, putting one in production and setting it up in such a way that you benefit from it absolutely is.

I don't believe it's a coincidence that the sanctions and the arrest happened close together, there's likely some coordination there. But it's really unlikely the sanctions somehow are relevant in this case.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#220
post #94

Ah yes, arrest developers of open source privacy code and blame them for North Korea money laundering rather than going after the people actually committing crimes. Sounds about right. Privacy is not a crime, it’s a human right! Sorry that it makes the polices job harder, but our rights are more important. And didn’t we go through all this already in the 90s? Are we now gonna start arresting all cryptographers? This…

Helping criminals launder money is not a human right.

Guess that makes every government money printer complicit in money laundering, seeing how the majority of it happens through cash.
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