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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#471

Post by diogenes1 »

tzs wrote: post #269
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 e…

you fired the gun, not the manufacturer. why would they arrest the manufacturer/inventor/etc for something that was done by you?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#472

Post by arcticbull »

carlosdp wrote: post #264
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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?

Of course not, because intent matters.

The team at WhatsApp works super hard to keep people who shouldn't be using it off the platform, so that everyone else can derive use and enjoyment. If WhatsApp was built as a platform to facilitate terrorist communication you're damn right you'd be held liable for working there.

Tornado was built, and is operated, specifically to facilitate money laundering. It has no other purpose but to conceal the source of funds which only matters if the funds were acquired illicitly. They do not now, and have not ever, attempted to stop the service from being used for this purpose - after all that's why it was created.

A shocked pikachu face isn't a defense.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#473

Post by seanw444 »

alsetmusic wrote: post #467
seanw444 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Taking some leads to all. It's not something that should be compromised on. Gun restrictions won't end until ownership is so legally complex and time consuming that nobody can reasonably do it anymore. Of course it won't be an outright ban. That would never succeed. The frog in boiling water analogy applies here perfectly.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#474

Post by InitialLastName »

tgflynn wrote: post #316
clucas wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for writing open source code?" I don't know that, but that currently appears to be the case and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. EDIT: The title of the page is "Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash". So they are certainly making it appear that they consider having developed Tornado Cash to itself be worthy of arrest.

The article doesn't actually say he was arrested for being the developer of Tornado Cash. It might be trying to imply that (or offer an explanation of what the connection is between the arrest and the investigation into Tornado Cash). All the article asserts is that he is suspected to be the developer of Tornado Cash, and that he was arrested "[under suspicion] of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering" via Tornado Cash. That could (and likely does) mean that he was involved in far more than just development.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#475

Post by colechristensen »

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…

Starting a money laundrymat and expecting not to get charged with a crime is a bit absurd. Pretending that it's totally fine because it's "privacy" not money laundering because crypto is special... is likewise absurd.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#476

Post by arcticbull »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #367
LightG wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment doesn't negate the vaporware comment.

How? I’m no fanboy but delivering working products pretty much negates all accusations of peddling vaporware.

FSD. CyberTruck. Humanoid Robot. Semi.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#477

Post by tadfisher »

arcticbull wrote: post #472
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?

> 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? Of course not, because intent matters. The team at WhatsApp works super hard to keep people who shouldn't be using it off the platform, so that everyone else can derive use and enjoyment. If WhatsApp was built as a platform to facilitate terrorist communication you're damn r…

> It has no other purpose but to conceal the source of funds which only matters the funds were acquired illicitly.

This doesn't feel sincere. Obviously money laundering is one reason why anonymity matters, but you can't think of any other reason?

I'll give a prompt: Several threads ago, someone expressed their desire to pay for a VPN service in cryptocurrency.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#478

Post by eternalban »

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour

https://capitalpunishmentstudies.tumblr.com/post/17208707639...

"Iranian authorities arrested Malekpour during his visit, accusing him of designing and moderating pornographic websites. Malekpour had designed photo uploading software, and according to his supporters, that software was being used without his knowledge for the creation of an adult website."

Good company there, Canada.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#479

Post by josephcsible »

ROTMetro wrote: post #389
lalaland1125 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> ex post facto happens all the time

Can you give an example of one such time?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#480

Post by nostrademons »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #229
rdbell wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk’s specialty is selling vaporware and big promises. Satoshi released working software without prior announcements and did hardly anything to promote it. I don’t know how anyone really thinks Elon could be Satoshi.

Dude created a company that built a reusable rocket and you accuse him of selling vaporware.

Gwynne Shotwell created a company that built a reusable rocket. Elon gave his name and a pile of money to it.
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