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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#261

Post by tsimionescu »

sneed-oil wrote: post #241
JohnHaugeland wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't open source privacy code. Whether or not someone else does something bad with it isn't relevant. Until you can face what it really is, you aren't going to come to terms with what's happening. This is like making unlicensed guns that don't follow safety or tracking regulations, then complaining "but I'm not the burglar, I didn't kill anyone" when you get shut down. This is and always has been the obvious ex…

> you don't actually legally have the right to hide your financial transactions besides Maybe you don't, but that's what happens by default when using cash

If you're exchanging cash, you still theoretically have the legal obligation to declare it. Businesses accepting cash have the obligation of issuing a receipt, and you may have some obligations of keeping that receipt.

Now, it's true that these things are hard to enforce, or even impossible for small enough sums. But people systematically flaunting the rules for large sums of money will get arrested, even with cash.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#262

Post by balfirevic »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #204
whatisweb3 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a criminal hiring a contractor to work on Tornado Cash. It is an open source project on GitHub that many developers and researchers contributed to, in the interest of privacy. To use an analogy, see the open Matrix protocol, a tool for privacy that can facilitate encrypted communication between criminals.

You seem to believe that if a tool is illegal, as long as it's open source and the people making it don't have a criminal background, and as long as you call it something like "privacy software," somehow it's suddenly not illegal But this is a tool whose specific purpose it is to make it difficult to track illegal transactions. Of course this is happening. Programmers get way too wrapped up in "but I called it open s…

> But this is a tool whose specific purpose it is to make it difficult to track illegal transactions.

What's the difference between that and a tool whose specific purpose is to make it difficult to track transactions in general?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#263

Post by [deleted] »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #143
paulsutter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this means that you should talk with a serious law firm before you start one of these projects. OFAC, KYC, securities, AML/CFT, so many laws apply and without expert advice you can end up in a bad spot Expert lawyers do exist, example: https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/professionals/j-dax-hansen.ht... "Dax has advised and continues to work with many of the leading companies, industry associations and consortia. Proje…

There is still no legal precedent around a case like this as it relates to DAOs and autonomous smart contracts, so a law firm could not have told you anything except "we can neither confirm nor deny." If there is another US sanction that targets a non-custodial smart contract and open source project, please do share. Devastating that it has come to "do not code an E2EE privacy tool because you might find yourself in…

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#264

Post by carlosdp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156
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…

> 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? Probably. That said, he is arrested under Dutch law. We have no evidence this is tied to U.S. sanctions. As others mention, Dutch law restricts cash transactions in ways U.S. law does not. Also, in June—when the link says they began the investigation—it was publicly known Tornado was being…

> Also, in June—when the link says they began the investigation—it was publicly known Tornado was being used to launder money. If the developer kept working on it, they knew what they were doing.

People keep saying this in this thread. Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#265

Post by seanw444 »

desindol wrote: post #223
clippablematt wrote: post #60

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…

Privacy is a human right? citation needed.

Privacy not being a human right is acceptable?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#266

Post by parasense »

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…

> The (criminal) origin of the cryptocurrencies is often not or hardly checked by such mixing services.

Even omitting the "criminal" implication, that sentence has a big problems.

> The origin of the cryptocurrencies is often not or hardly checked by such mixing services.

Let me rephrase that:

> The origin of cryptocurrencies is not checked by cryptocurrencies services.

The idea is ridiculous at face value.

However, it does illustrate the best & worst part of blockchains -- everything goes on the blockchain. The government loves that audit trail. But how is an ordinary person to know some wallet addr is a pedophile, or terrorist, or druglord, or whatever? I mean that as an honest question. Is there some public crypto-wallet watch-list everyone is supposed to be referencing prior to doing p2p transactions?

Like you, I wonder how this person could be prosecuted? In the free-world, writing software is considered free-speech, at least in the USA, but I'm not sure in the Netherlands or wherever this person was apprehended? There are of course exceptions... like writing malware or viruses, etc.. So like you, the situation seems to entail something more.. like perhaps running an operation with clearly articulate facts indicating criminal activity. You know, the old saying goes "it's what you know, and when you knew it". So like, if the person was aware of criminal activity, taking part in criminal activity, etc.. I suppose an argument could be made.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#267

Post by dimensionc132 »

threeseed wrote: post #76
clippablematt wrote: post #60

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.

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, Article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966, Article 1: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor or reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#268

Post by [deleted] »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #114
sva_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People getting arrested over crypto mixers is nothing new at all.

US sanctions on mixers in the past have been associated with an individual, not a piece of code. This is the first sanction to target an open source and non-custodial mixer.

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#269

Post by tzs »

diogenes1 wrote: post #131

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

> Banning maths is fascist

What about banning chemistry and physics? If I fire a gun and the bullet hits someone I get arrested (and maybe even if it doesn't hit anyone if I am somewhere were shooting guns is not illegal), yet all I did was use some levers (physics) to add compress a spring adding potential energy to it (physics) which then got converted to kinetic energy (Hooke's law, more physics), which imparted energy to some chemicals starting a reaction (chemistry) that produced expanding gases that caused the bullet to rapidly leave the barrel of the gun, where it followed a ballistic trajectory (physics).

Or what about banning biology? Look closely at other animals sometimes. Things that in humans we'd call rape and murder and robbery are quite common. Millions of years of evolution have selected for animals that do those things. Humans too have the same propensity to do many of those same things, and would do so more often if they were not illegal. Just look at what happens when people find themselves in situations where those laws do not apply or where they have no chance of being punished, such as when a country successfully invades another country.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#270

Post by jacooper »

lizardactivist wrote: post #45

Sad to see the EU bow down to the criminal racket that is the US financial system. Even if this developer is not extradited, the US has again succeeded in maintaining the culture of fear, where they can get their slimy hands on anyone anywhere for any reason they want.

> Sad to see the EU bow down to the criminal racket that is the US financial system.

The EU in general is extremely hypocritical when it comes to privacy, its probably an opportunity to crack down on crypto while it's down.

You see all the laws that aim to put a stop to big tech, and rightly so because their government won't do anything.

In the same time, when privacy protections are against the EU itself, it suddenly doesn't work, or it needs monitoring like their horrible attempt using the chat control law, which even faces backlash from inside, like from Germany.

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