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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#101

Post by lysergia »

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.

Committee? Like as in Satoshi was a team of people? That’s one possibility.

As a side note the Nakamoto Institute website archived all of Satoshi’s emails and ‘his’ IP is Californian. Make of that what you will. For all we know it could’ve been one of Musk’s side projects that caught on and went viral.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#102

Post by koheripbal »

Arnt wrote: post #2

So a software developer is held responsible for the software. If the software is largely SaaS, then I can see the sense in that. A software developer of SaaS is also a service developer, arguably even a service operator although that depends on how the service is developed and operated. I'm sure the judge will be thrilled to have to listen to arguments about the with the nuances of dev, ops, devops and a distributed…

I suspect they have direct evidence that this developer coordinated specifically with criminals to help guide them on how to use the system for money laundering.

This would be similar to the developer of the encrypted phones that everyone defended initially until it became known that he flew to other countries to train drug dealers how to use the phones.

In this crypto business, it is not enough to just build the system and expect people to magically know that it's for them and how to use it - 50% of the work is selling and training people on the system.

This is all speculation based on previous similar cases.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#103

Post by Sir_Liigmaz »

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…

I work in AML/BSA, they want it under their control. Higher ups talk about how banks shouldn't necessarily cut off (derisk) customers they think are breaking the law because then they can't keep tabs on them.

Banks and financial institutions are happily privatizing Big Brother.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#104

Post by fleddr »

How many people listed in the Panama papers have been arrested? Their assets seized? Fines? Zero. London's "the city" is pretty much one giant laundering operation for Saudi and Russian dirty money.

Money laundering, monetary privacy, wealth obfuscation is perfectly fine. It only becomes an issue when it becomes accessible to us simple minded folks too. The urgency to stop this tech really tells the tale.

Or in other words, laundering "doesn't scale".

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#105

Post by invalidname »

lysergia wrote: post #101
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.

Committee? Like as in Satoshi was a team of people? That’s one possibility. As a side note the Nakamoto Institute website archived all of Satoshi’s emails and ‘his’ IP is Californian. Make of that what you will. For all we know it could’ve been one of Musk’s side projects that caught on and went viral.

If there's one person he's not it's Elon Musk. That guy can't shut up... We'd all know.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#106

Post by biglearner1day »

ABeeSea wrote: post #92
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…

If you are told repeatedly that your work is facilitating money laundering and you keep doing that work, don’t be surprised if you get arrested for facilitating money laundering.

Please do remind me how many persons named in the Panama Papers have been arrested, or had their assets seized.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#107

Post by Sebb767 »

agotterer wrote: post #15
phphphphp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you design software to do a thing and then the software is used to do that thing, it follows that you’re responsible. Whether you believe that the sanctions make sense or not is one thing, but to argue that the developer of tornado cash is not responsible for… the behaviour tornado cash… feels like a hard sell.

By that logic why haven’t the developers of Metasploit also been arrested? It’s hard to argue that the behavior of the software isn’t/couldn’t be used for nefarious purposes and to commit crimes. Anonymizing spending on it’s own is not a crime. Clearly the line is crossed if the developer is promoting the use of the software for illegal purposes. I’m only vaguely familiar with Tornado cash, was that the case? If not,…

> Anonymizing spending on it’s own is not a crime.

Money laundering laws very much disagree with this.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#108

Post by cjg »

threeseed wrote: post #76
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…

> 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.

https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/ri...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#110

Post by throwaway0a5e »

sph wrote: post #85
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think someone who believes that it will bring certain death could resist. It wouldn't surprise me if he destroyed his private keys to prevent himself from ever succumbing to the temptation. Those coins are of little value when using any of them would kick off a race to track you down and kidnap you with the intention of rubber-hosing the key out of you before going short on bitcoin. Having a secret in your head tha…

He must have lost the keys very early, when Bitcoin was just a fun experiment, and that would still be dubious: how did he imagine his creation would be so big as to prompt destroying his keys right there and then? The common human response at that idealistic stage would be greed. And even if he had the foresight, it's probably harder to just stay silent for 15 years. I imagine one would just come out, say they've lo…

You don't need 15yr of foresight. I can see someone keeping their mouth shut for the first X years on the basis of "things are going well, my project is being adopted, I had better not F with it by increasing the number of coins in play lest there be unintended consequences" and then at some point deciding that things have gotten out of hand, the stakes are too high, pulling the hard drive off the shelf, drilling it and tossing it in the bay.
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