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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#381

Post by PeterisP »

tsimionescu wrote: post #285
sidewndr46 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if the owner is anonymous, how does the country know who to ask for paying the taxes? How would the county even find out that the house changed ownership?

In the grandparent example, it seems the new owner is a trust, which is also liable for paying the taxes (or there can be action taken against its property i.e. the house), but the person owning/controlling that trust is obscured.

Perhaps a relevant different example I've seen sometimes is that in some markets for tax reasons developers who build larger buildings (offices, apartments) will make a separate LLC for each building, so when they want to sell it, the title to the real estate doesn't change hands (it still belongs to the same company) but rather they sell the whole "company" instead with the building as its main/only asset.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#382

Post by trebbble »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #140
wolongong942 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the west. Typically all large transactions get auto reported to the financial intelligence unit, with the tax man getting access to the data set as well. If paid via crypto they'd find out when the recipient cashes out, forcing him/her to do source of funds.

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.

> 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.

But most homeowners don't have the house in a trust. That's mostly a rich-people thing. The default is that it's your personal name(s) on the documents, including in e.g. county tax records.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#383

Post by beeboop »

dcolkitt wrote: post #260

A lot of the apologists for this are making arguments along the lines of "being decentralized doesn't make you exempt from the rules" or "imagine if a bank laundered this much money". The problem is it doesn't make sense to treat protocols like companies. And it definitely doesn't make sense to treat protocol devs as if they were the executives of those companies. The CEO of a bank and the lead dev of a protocol have…

Let's be clear - this isn't money laundering. Money laundering is taking illicit funds and making them look legitimately sourced. Tornado Cash does not do this, it is clear that the source is Tornado Cash, and it does nothing to legitimize funds. To spend crypto you still most likely need to convert it to fiat and that fiat money will still be under scrutiny for its source.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#384

Post by f38zf5vdt »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #371
f38zf5vdt wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various states already prohibit using public money to fund abortions, a prohibition on private funds for an act they consider extremely illegal and equivalent to murder is not a stretch. "12 states prohibit state family planning funds from going to any entity that provides abortions." https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-family...

If planned parenthood isn't performing any abortions in a state where it is illegal, how could funding them ever be made illegal? None of this makes sense.

People from illegal states already cross state lines to get abortions and then return to their home states. While it's not presently illegal, without Roe v Wade, I think that may quickly change.

> No state has yet enacted a law to ban this travel. But it has been attempted: In Missouri, a bill is pending that would enforce abortion restrictions through civil lawsuits if the abortion is administered outside the state.

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/can-states-punish...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#385

Post by jasonlotito »

josu wrote: post #231
desindol wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is a human right? citation needed.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: >Article 12 >No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

That allows for interference with someones privacy.

Basically, interference of privacy based on reason or system is allowed.

It does give you the right to not be subjected to interference of your privacy from random choice or personal whim is not.

According to the article, that right has not been broken.

Moreover, you do not have a right to privacy.

Rather, you have a the right to not have your privacy arbitrarily interfered with.

This is a pretty important distinction.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#386

Post by im3w1l »

aqme28 wrote: post #119
sph wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My pet theory is that he's just one of the myriad of early developers who made hundreds of millions from crypto and keep relatively private. At that point he'd have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by revealing himself.

Satoshi owns a huge hoard of bitcoin that has never moved. He has a lot to gain (and a lot to lose) by making use of that money.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#387

Post by kube-system »

glennvtx wrote: post #343
lbriner wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It absolutely protects your privacy in a system where the movement of money is public. Donations to politically sensitive organizations can be used against you, this technology limits that possibility, just as the traditional banking system does not make your transactions public. Many places in the world people do not enjoy your privilege of immunity from state violence due to support for activism.

Nobody said it didn't protect privacy. Obviously, that is the technology's function.

Above, we were talking about whether one has a right to that privacy. That right is observed differently by location, but it is commonly accepted to have at least some exceptions.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#388

Post by drexlspivey »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #214
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.

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

Haven’t you heard? The new definition of hacker is a 40something year old making 300k a year writing adtech tracking code for a FAANG

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#389

Post by ROTMetro »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #361
dcolkitt wrote: post #323

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? Because the standard playbook for "cracking down" is to first win cases against the least sympathetic, most prosecutable targets. Once that's under your belt, you gradually expand outwards to increasingly ordinary people. It's w…

> As abortion laws restart, states won't begin by arresting anyone who's ever donated to Planned Parenthood. But if left unchecked, some will eventually get there. First thing, you can't arrest people for prior donations as postfacto laws are unconstitutional. Second, if abortion is considered murder, why should it be legal to fund illegal abortions? We generally don't allow people to fund criminal activity for good…

TLDR: You have no rights in America other than the ones you can afford to pay a lawyer to force to be enforced.

Dude, as someone in the system, ex post facto happens all the time. In my case I can challenge it, but if I get slapped with lets say a completely 'theoretical' $5000 ex post facto "fine" it's going to cost more in lawyers to challenge, plus piss off my judge/PO for wasting time. As someone who can't get a job due to my record and can't afford a lawyer I have 'access' to the court for remedy, but I don't have access to a lawyer for remedy. The Constitution and our government are two different things.

If something gets ruled unconstitutional, that doesn't suddenly free prisoners in the USA. Each prisoner needs to then challenge their conviction in court, and get past the high procedural bar (as a Fed prisoner, do you submit to the circuit in which you are now unconstitutionally imprisoned, or the circuit that convicted you unconstitutionally? Depends on the argument you are making, either could be right or wrong. Pick the wrong one and you waste three months minimum (so much for speeding trial, that only applies to your initial trial according the the supreme court) for the court to come back and say 'they don't have jurisdiction'. Not forward to the correct court, just denied for lack of jurisdiction. For you challenging something already found unconstitutional that should just be immediate release upon Supreme Court ruling. And don't forget, you have a time limit to challenge something found unconstitutional. You took too long? To bad, you're now stuck in prison for something found unconstitutional because you didn't understand your rights and navigate the bar placed in the form of the court system in a timely), nevermind hurdles placed in prison (mailroom only open from this time to this time, mail room not certifying your mail or 'losing' it, law library copyers broken, commissary 'out' of law library typewriter ribbons for sale), etc. If the Constitution was law, those people held unconstitutionally would be released upon Supreme Court findings. The fact they aren't and can be kept in prison for 'taking to long' to challenge their Supreme Court determined unconstitutional conviction shows the Constitution is just a 'guideline' in the USA.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#390

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

From the article:

"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."

This does not read as "all he did was write some software."

Yes, he might have written software, but if it was with the purpose of money laundering, for example, and that can be proven, that's not just writing some software.

We do not have enough information to decide either way, but what information we do have now (which has yet to be verified, of course) is that he did not just "write some software."

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