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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#561

Post by dlubarov »

kube-system wrote: post #547
dlubarov wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear from their vague, weasely language whether they're accusing him of any involvement beyond building the privacy tool. If they had any evidence of that, presumably they would have said so. > suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering

Press releases are usually summaries, not all encompassing dumps of evidence.

Of course; what I'm suggesting is that they would have simply used less ambiguous language like "working with" or "providing support to". Their weasely language suggests that they need plausible deniability because their insinuations may turn out to be baseless.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#562

Post by ROTMetro »

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?

Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent. So before they knew the Taliban uses it, not a crime. Now that they know? Well, kind of a grey area. I bet you could construct an argument that they commited a crime if any NEW feature/code commit somehow benefits the Taliban after they knew the Taliban uses it. It's legal for me to sell someone a car. It's no longer legal for me to sell someone a car if I know they are paying in drug money or they need it to have a new 'anonymous' car while on the run from the police.

Funny story. Drug dealers try to do this with analogs. They will go to a lawyer and get the lawyer's opinion that whatever benzo/fentanyl derivative they are ordering from Alibaba does not fall under the Analogs rules. They then try to argue if arrested that this shows that they didn't have criminal intent and went to great lengths to make sure that what they imported was not illegal drugs and hence no Mens Rea. Don't try this. It doesn't work. You have not found that 'one secret the Feds hate'.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#564

Post by acdha »

zmgsabst wrote: post #516
arcticbull wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What if I don’t want my employer knowing I spent my BTC/ETH/etc on a porn website — so I want a way to disassociate the payment address they know from my spending account? …or guns, alcohol, abortions, etc. People have a need for privacy and disassociating spending from receiving for perfectly normal and legal reasons.

This seems like a better argument for using a system which is correctly designed. A public ledger is a bad fit for currency and layering kludges on top isn’t as good as a better design, especially when that exposes you to being an accessory to criminal activity.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#565

Post by SigmundA »

loceng wrote: post #529
babypuncher wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that really be a bad thing? Most other developed nations seem to get by fine with very strict rules on gun ownership, and coincidentally they have far lower rates for gun violence. When something has far more capacity for harm than practical utility, it makes sense to regulate the crap out of it. Most people buying AR-15s in the US are not buying them to keep pests off their farm.

Here's a comedic piece by Awaken with JP, where he points out many historical events where within ~2-10 years of a government taking the guns away from the population then genocide occurred: "Why Guns Must Be Banned Now!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkNIoJ-9jY

This is the same guy who didn't know the difference between Infection Fatality Rate and Infection Fatality Ratio, then compared the The IF Ratio of Covid to the IF Rate of the Flu and proclaimed the Flu was deadlier because math, and straight faced didn't realize he had two orders of magnitude error.

Then he post a video making fun of his video getting removed due to misinformation that he never retracted or corrected.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#566

Post by matteopey »

codehalo wrote: post #211
diogenes1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even more shameful is the tone of conversation regarding this in internet forums now vs in 1993. How the hell can you be pro arrest of developers

The opinions being expressed regarding cryptography, cryptocurrencies, freedom, and privacy has been absolutely depressing. The state and corporations have exerted their influence, particularly in the last fifteen years or so.

It helps the fact that the vast majority of people on HN are against any project that use cryptocurrencies.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#567

Post by carlosdp »

ROTMetro wrote: post #562
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?

Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent. So before they knew the Taliban uses it, not a crime. Now that they know? Well, kind of a grey area. I bet you could construct an argument that they commited a crime if any NEW feature/code commit somehow benefits the Taliban after they knew the Taliban uses it. It's legal for me to sell someone a car. It's no longer leg…

That makes no sense and I don't think that lines up with liability.

Every hammer maker knows some people use hammers as murder weapons. Their continued manufacturing of hammers obviously does not constitute a criminal act.

This argument makes no sense, and while I'm not a lawyer, I doubt it actually has legal basis (at least in the US).

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#568

Post by Vespasian »

diogenes1 wrote: post #145
threeseed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

so when are we arresting engineers who built roads and trucks that were used for money laundering?

At least 2013 put probably for much longer.

https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#569

Post by sph »

pjc50 wrote: post #327
diogenes1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even more shameful is the tone of conversation regarding this in internet forums now vs in 1993. How the hell can you be pro arrest of developers

I don't think the cryptobros realise quite how much they've made the general forum public hate them, which is why everyone's cheering this arrest.

You make it sound like righteous people rejoicing, to me it feels like those medieval citizen cheering at a public execution or the burning of a witch.

Both thought they were right and the evil people got what they deserved. The fact that you divide the tech world into evil cryptobros vs good citizens is telling.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#570

Post by alangibson »

seanw444 wrote: post #473
alsetmusic wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Taking some leads to all

No it doesn't. Here in Austria, only cops have pistols and semiautomatic arms virtually don't exist. However most of the guys I know have at least one hunting rifle.

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