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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#421

Post by JumpCrisscross »

notch656a wrote: post #415
lalaland1125 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how our constitution works. Roe v Wade is binding for any actions a person carries out before it got overturned in Dobbs. Even if a court ruling or legal interpretation gets overturned later, that doesn't allow you to prosecute people who were relying on that legal interpretation. Judges aren't mindless machines and they realize the importance of avoiding postfacto prosecutions.

You have more faith in judges than I do. I've seen judges act as mindless machines. and below still stands: >There's other things that can be done as well, like searching their residence for every single code violation possible, daily police visits, civil asset forfeiture, fine-comb tax auditing, etc. It's a pretty well oiled machine for finding ways to convict people or make their life hell through the legal system…

> If the powers that be want to punish those who contribute to abortion, they will find a way to do it, even ex-post-facto

In that case there is no room for crypto. Totalitarian regimes can execute anyone suspected of holding it.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#422

Post by a4isms »

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…

In my jurisdiction, if I operate a pawn shop, I am required by law to record transactions, collect ID, and make good faith attempts to prevent people from laundering stolen goods through my shop.

Does "privacy is a human right" trump the law in my jurisdiction? Can we say it is improper for the government to require me to collect ID from people selling me goods? Can we say it is improper of the government to require me to keep records of who sold me what?

I take the proceeds from my pawn shop to the bank. They are required by law to collect my ID. If I deposit large amounts of cash, they have additional reporting requirements. Does "privacy is a human right" trump these laws that exist to prevent the laundering of criminal proceeds through banks?

I also have discomfort over how much data the government collects in the name of preventing the laundering of stolen goods and criminal proceeds.

But in the large, I accept that freedom is not an absolute, it is a set of careful tradeoffs between:

1. The freedom for citizens to do as they please without society limiting what we're allowed to do, versus; 2. The freedom for criminal cartels to do as they please, preying upon citizens.

The latter is important, because when criminals prey upon citizens, they reduce our freedom as well. I want the freedom to own nice things. The easier it is for criminals to steal and fence my things, the less freedom I actually have to enjoy them

I also want the freedom to run a business. When criminals can prey upon businesses with ransomware and launder the proceeds through TornadoCash, the less freedom I actually have.

A "Libertarian Paradise" where criminals are free to do as they please because we don't want to impinge upon any citizen's freedom whatsoever, is free in name only. We may not like all of the current set of tradeoffs, but we must accept that if we don't make some tradeoffs, we will not be free in any real sense.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#423

Post by eric_cc »

kube-system wrote: post #259
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…

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.

> The right to privacy ends at the moment that it is used as an excuse to evade the law.

With your logic we’d lose 100% of our privacy.

Privacy of your own home? You could setup a drug lab.

Privacy of your own phone/computer? Can run an illegal operation.

Privacy of your own USD cash? Could be used for illegal transactions.

The better question: what privacy is there that couldn’t theoretically be used to evade the law?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#424

Post by DangerousPie »

beeboop wrote: post #383
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.

It's maybe not making them look "legitimate" but it's definitely making some funds look a lot less illicit than they are.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#425

Post by tyrfing »

darkcha0s wrote: post #199
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.

I know I will get a hail of downvotes for this, but again you're comparing apples and oranges. The operators are using crypto for a wide range of applications. Using a mixer has probably 99.9% illegal reasons and 0.1% legitimate uses. Making money laundering harder is a good thing, no matter how many people here will try to convince you it isn't.

> Using a mixer has probably 99.9% illegal reasons and 0.1% legitimate uses

Similar to people using paper money or end-to-end encryption really. Nobody needs military-grade encryption or anonymous currency unless they're trying to hide something.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#426

Post by notch656a »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #421
notch656a wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have more faith in judges than I do. I've seen judges act as mindless machines. and below still stands: >There's other things that can be done as well, like searching their residence for every single code violation possible, daily police visits, civil asset forfeiture, fine-comb tax auditing, etc. It's a pretty well oiled machine for finding ways to convict people or make their life hell through the legal system…

> If the powers that be want to punish those who contribute to abortion, they will find a way to do it, even ex-post-facto In that case there is no room for crypto. Totalitarian regimes can execute anyone suspected of holding it.

You're right, I should have said if the powers that be want to punish those who they find out contributed to abortion. I thought that was obvious, but leave it to HN for me to actually have to explain if privacy and crypto prevents a regime from finding out someone has it, then they won't be able to punish them for it (although of course they could always punish for the mere possibility, just as a totalitarian regime could execute their whole populace).

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#427

Post by eric_cc »

ABeeSea wrote: post #417
sangnoir wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah yes, arrest developers of open source privacy code and blame them for North Korea money laundering I have questions: did money laundering happen on the platform? Did the developer financially benefit from the money laundering? If the answer to both is "yes", then it sounds like the developer could be in a world of trouble, which is not related to crypto. If I build a picture-sharing board with no moderation, and…

They were also asked to implement some basic money laundering preventions. They did nothing.

Didn’t they throw away the keys to the smart contract a long time ago?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#428

Post by LatteLazy »

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.

Or he\she\they\it just burnt the keys and forever gave up those early bitcoin when they were worth a few 100 or 1000...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#429

Post by eric_cc »

lbriner wrote: post #305
dlubarov wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> A money laundering operation

Tornado Cash is not a money laundering operation. It is a privacy tool.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#430

Post by ABeeSea »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #220
ABeeSea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s weird the crypto people think this is a valid argument.

If someone did what tornando is doing with physical cash, they would also be committing money laundering.

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