Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#301

Post by chii » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #290

clucas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

It could be the first of many. Up until yesterday we lived in a world (by which I mean the Western World) where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open source code. It appears that this is no longer the case. This is how the Overton window gets moved, one step at a time, not in huge leaps. And clearly there are powerful forces interested in moving it in a direction that would likely be detrimental to many…

> where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open source code.

But was he arrested for _just_ the code he wrote? Or more, and the code was just an ancillary property of the person being arrested?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#302

Post by from » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

Kind of unrelated but in a lot of ways I feel like an OFAC designation is a bill of attainder that is only legal because it’s used exclusively against foreigners.

1. Designate a businessman as an SDN

2. Wait for them to conduct some transaction that uses dollars or involves any American company in some way (if you know about correspondent banking you know this will almost inevitably happen)

3. Wait for them to travel to country friendly with America

4. Extradite for conspiring to violate IEEPA

This has happened before (see US v. Tajideen). It seems like there should be some kind of legal case against this which may happen now given all of the rich Russians that are having their stuff seized on this basis.

Edit: And the interesting thing is that the Treasury Department accused Tajideen of being a Hezbollah financier which they could have charged him with when he was extradited from Morocco but they didn’t which to me makes it seem like there wasn’t much of a basis for his designation to begin with.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#303

Post by seanw444 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #157

louwrentius wrote: post #74

He wasn’t just developing software, he seems to also been involved with operating the Tornado mixer service, thus enabling / facilitating money laundering and evasion of sanctions.

Does contributing to an encrypted messaging app, like Signal or Matrix, also mean you're enabling / facilitating child pornography and terrorism? Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch of bytes, like this: `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`

The popular consensus on HN seems to be that the government having absolute monopolistic control and power over personal finance is inarguably good.

"But money laundering!" so?

"But evading taxes!" so?

You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits. Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and traceable just so it's easy for the government to arrest people is not a good tradeoff.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#304

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

suoduandao2 wrote: post #292

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> International trade in a multipolar world requires a money supply that no single government can arbitrarily enforce its will on Do we have such a money supply? If not, do we have international trade? Is the world not multipolar? This claim fails on face value. Most of history was multipolar, international trading and reliant on money states de facto controlled. (You’re not moving tonnes of gold without the state’s…

>Is the world not multipolar? An argument could be made that the US stopped being the arbiter of last resort wrt the medium of trade since the Ukraine war, but before that point, it was certainly not multipolar. There was one political entity that, along with its allies, controlled the value of money, and they were disincentivised from cheating too hard by the fact that they could dictate terms to the rest of the wor…

> that's a future you're on board with

I'm rejecting the premise that we need a neutral money supply. (I reject the notion such a thing can exist. Money--monetary value, even--are social constructs.)

International trade in a multipolar world with sovereign currencies and commodities works. It has since at least the Bronze Age. So yes, if someone wants to cart around gold or use crypto, that's fine. But it doesn't magically exempt them from the law. A Dutchman committed crimes under Dutch law. They were arrested in the Netherlands. This isn't some Kim Dotcom bullshit. It's the law being applied plainly.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#305

Post by lbriner » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

dlubarov wrote: post #289

kube-system wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to privacy ends at the moment that it is used as an excuse to evade the law. Every country recognizes warrants for this reason.

Encrypted communication protocols are also useful for evading the law; do you think they should also be banned and the developers arrested?

No, that's not what they said. They said if you are using it to break laws, then you can't not expect to be arrested.

A money laundering operation can hardly been seen as fundamentally a way to provide privacy but as a way to change dirty money into clean. It's like claiming that an illegal brothel provides employment services as well as anything dodgy that people might use it for!

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#306

Post by jiriknesl » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #66

once_inc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a mixing service that allows people to buy stuff without their employers being able to track it is a legitimate, non-trivial reason. These mixers are privacy enhancers. Privacy is a general term, and doesn't have to relate to evading the government. If you don't want your employer to know you've bought an NFT from your company's direct competitor, that is a privacy request too.

Except that privacy is not some human right enshrined in law that usurps other laws. If you facilitate money laundering that is still a crime even if the intent was for legitimate reasons like privacy.

Well, maybe we should start lobbying to make it so.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#307

Post by clucas » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #290

clucas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

It could be the first of many. Up until yesterday we lived in a world (by which I mean the Western World) where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open source code. It appears that this is no longer the case. This is how the Overton window gets moved, one step at a time, not in huge leaps. And clearly there are powerful forces interested in moving it in a direction that would likely be detrimental to many…

How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for writing open source code?"

The whole point of my comment was that he was probably arrested for more than that... Or at least, we should wait to see what the evidence against the guy is.

If you go around saying "the sky is falling! they're coming for the developers!" then it turns out the guy was actually doing bad stuff to help launder money, you're going to make it that much harder to get people's attention when there is an actual abuse of police power.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#308

Post by rocqua » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

suoduandao2 wrote: post #205

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> criminalizing its creation or possession is the worst possible action to take Sure. That’s not what’s happening. Tornado was used illegally. Its leadership kept developing it, kept getting paid, and made no apparent course corrections. This wasn’t simply a GitHub repo; it was a remunerated enterprise. When I’ve brought up the legal issues around mixers, a common response involves the impossibility of governments to…

Justifiable by what, exactly? International trade in a multipolar world requires a money supply that no single government can arbitrarily enforce its will on. Is the argument that every government should have an unchecked ability to enforce its will on the medium of exchange?

We currently have a lot of international trade that does just fine being USD based. Are we not in a 'multipolar' world? I don't know that term.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#309

Post by bsima » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #194

dannyw wrote: 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.

I don't find it difficult.

Please elaborate

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#310

Post by Someone » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

game-of-throws wrote: post #183

clucas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

If that were true, it would be so easy for them to swing public opinion in their favor by saying so. Headline: Arrest of developer with suspected ties to North Korean money laundering Body: He has also previously contributed to Tornado Cash. But all we know is what they decided to tell us... he's a developer of privacy tech. If the facts change, I'll change my mind.

Did you read the article? It starts:

“On Wednesday 10 August, the FIOD arrested a 29-year-old man in Amsterdam. He is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through the decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash”

So the suspicion is that he didn’t only develop the tool, but was involved in its illegal use, too.