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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

fiod.nl

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#461

Post by kube-system »

eric_cc wrote: post #429
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!

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

Nobody has said it is not a privacy tool. It is a privacy tool that has documented use in money laundering. Building tools is generally legal, using them to commit crimes is something different. The developer here is not accused of building privacy tools, they are accused of knowingly being in on the money laundering and profiting from it.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#462

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mr_beans wrote: post #376
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153

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 NL government org that arrested him specifically mentions the US sanctions in their press release https://www.fiod.nl/arrest-of-suspected-developer-of-tornado...

> org that arrested him specifically mentions the US sanctions in their press release

I'm not arguing it's irrelevant. Just that this doesn't look like a sanctions arrest. Tornado Cash was sanctioned on 8 August. There hasn't been enough time for someone to violate the sanctions and produce enough evidence to get arrested. More likely: the same alleged crimes that got Tornado sanctioned prompted this arrest.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#463

Post by boppo1 »

yokem55 wrote: post #248
codehalo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Apple and Google have a kill switch.

The light clients that the parent envisions could potentially run entirely in javascript within a browser. No app store needed unless the browser engines start blacklisting bits of js.

Doesn't that leave them WIDE open to malicious code?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#464

Post by diogenes1 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #295
yawnxyz wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this kind of like the dev of SMTP getting arrested because two people committed a crime by communicating through email?

Or arresting Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, or Leonard Adleman for helping criminals hide their communications from law enforcement.

this right here, is the crux of the argument

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#465

Post by diogenes1 »

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.

unlike 'peer 2 peer' cash usecases of crypto. ethereum added a lot of social elements to it with ens names. All sorts of common folk use tornado cash to keep their private transactions separate from their public address

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#466

Post by dereg »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #453
beeboop wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 absolutely is money laundering- which has three phases. Placement, Layering, and Integration. The Layering phase is when the original source of money is concealed through transactions or bookkeeping tricks. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp

Do you believe that financial or transactional privacy should be illegal? Obfuscation is used for many things not exclusive to money laundering.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#467

Post by alsetmusic »

seanw444 wrote: post #278
carlosdp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

As usual, it's an argument for harming people that produce legitimately useful things that criminals pervert. It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US.

> It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US.

To be fair, I think most are arguing to restrict guns rather than ban. I’m not saying you did this, but many people deliberately distort that into “they wanna take all your guns” in bad faith.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#468

Post by UmbertoNoEco »

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.

myriad?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#469

Post by mint2 »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #313
codyb wrote: post #228

If someone built something that said "Launder your money here" and it took in a bunch of money, and then disbursed it sans fees to hide where it came from... they'd say it was money laundering and arrest the person. Can anyone explain the difference here? Or why anyone is "shocked" that this is happening cause it's crypto? Just seems kinda childish to think crypto's somehow special and not just a tool for moving mone…

A private key is a 256 bit integer. > If someone built something that said "Launder your [256 bit integers] here" and it took in a bunch of [256 bit integers], and then [encrypted] it sans fees to hide where it came from... they'd say it was [256 bit integer] laundering and arrest the person. When you compare this to encrypting 256 bit integers, text, or E2EE chat protocols, the shock is easier to understand. People…

Okay so you’re saying NFTs are absolutely meaningless, what the holder solely owns is a 256 bit integer and absolutely nothing else?

Anyway, in this case unlike debatably with nfts, there is concrete value tied to possessing knowledge of the integer so acting like it’s just sharing random numbers is deceptive and rather easily detected deception. resorting to deceptive arguments generally makes people turn against the position of the one trying to deceive so if advocating for tornado devs, one should avoid that argument unless one is actually trying to make people against them.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#470

Post by diogenes1 »

omginternets wrote: post #288
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.

Where did you see that this was connected to the US financial system? They mention in passing that the US has sanctioned Tornado Cash, but I didn't get the impression that this was the reason why this person was arrested.

there have been multiple coordinated attacks being made, it's quite naiive to assume US is not involved here
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