Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#221

Post by pie_flavor » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

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…

An American could be excused for thinking it is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity. Unfortunately much of the world does not operate under American law.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#222

Post by landemva » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #31

rvnx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference: Airbus and Boeing do everything to prevent attacks and hijacking and it is against their fundamental interest and the interest of their customers. Whereas, for a crypto network, the more funds flows in, the better for the operators and eventually for the developers (who gets paid by node operators via increased coin value or donations). The less compliance or questions asked, or the more anonymity…

> Airbus and Boeing does everything to prevent attacks and hijacking and it is against their fundamental interest and the interest of their customers. They do today. Back in 2001, flying was a lot different. For starters, there was no such thing as an armoured door between the flight deck and the passenger compartment, mostly because such a door is heavy and costs extra fuel.

> mostly because such a door is heavy and costs extra fuel.

Those doors are not heavy. It's not a flying tank. Removal of printed in-flight seatback magazines would offset the weight. Until 9/11, flight deck door procedures were lax.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#223

Post by desindol » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

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…

Privacy is a human right? citation needed.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#224

Post by jsmith45 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #159

jsmith45 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He created and presumably deployed a service that facilitates illegal money laundering. From what I have heard approximately 20% of the volume is of coins are known to come from crime. That far exceeds the threshold for which an organization must take steps to try to prevent these things. It might not have been possible change the existing deployed contracts, or to shut the service down entirely (I’m not actually sur…

The frontend started blocking OFAC-sanctioned addresses earlier this year. Do you think this logic should also apply to encrypted messaging apps? If you're a contributor to Matrix, or another open source FOSS tool, and you hear reports that criminals are using it (because criminals are a subset of the human population), should you be legally required to take all steps to backdoor it?

If you are aware that your app is being very disproportionately used to facilitate criminal transactions, you would generally be required to take steps to try to prevent or discourage such usage. This is especially true if you are profiting from your app (as the governments think the tornado cash developers were). This does not necessarily mean backdooring the app.

Remember how Kim DotCom went down for operating MegaUpload while actively knowing that one of the bigger usages of the site was piracy, and not doing enough to discourage or prevent such use? The concept here is not all that different.

This is why I would never contribute to some open source projects like metasploit that come too close to falling on the wrong side of the line.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#225

Post by sph » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #110

sph wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't see anybody having that self-control is my point. I can't think of any person in history that has shown this level of restraint, especially about a very valuable and very controversial invention.

Occam's razor says it's easier to assume he's dead than trying to imagine him as the most patient Buddhist monk, with deep economic and cryptographic knowledge, the world has ever seen.

But we could go on with this discussion for years, so let's just agree to disagree and wait and see if his name surfaces again or not. There's bound to be more and more hucksters trying to claim they're Satoshi the longer this legend lives.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#226

Post by jeroenhd » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

pxeger1 wrote: post #109

If I create a new type of leather wallet and then North Korea uses it for money laundering, can I be charged for "facilitation"? What about if I discovered electricity, which lead to money laundering? Where is the line here, and who defines it?

If you take part in production, delivery, sales, or distribution of said in North Korea: yes. If you provide North Korea with designs of technology restricted by sanctions: yes. If at least one seventh of all electricity you generate is used for criminals: yes.

The line is defined by governments, law enforcement, and the courts. The judge may dismiss all charges if they see fit, and the government can add or remove legislature to criminalize or decriminalize certain behaviour within the bounds of constitutions and international treaties.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#227

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

pxeger1 wrote: post #109

If I create a new type of leather wallet and then North Korea uses it for money laundering, can I be charged for "facilitation"? What about if I discovered electricity, which lead to money laundering? Where is the line here, and who defines it?

The key line is intent.

If you create a new type of leather wallet that just happens to be used for money laundering, that is not a crime.

If you create a new type of leather wallet specifically designed with the goal so that it's easier to smuggle stuff, you can and should be charged for aiding and abetting if they can convince the jury that you did this knowingly with this intent.

If you do the latter and simply want to claim that it just so happened without your intent, well, the courts are there to resolve this dispute, but it can go both ways - especially as soon as there's teamwork and some record of communications, there's often evidence to support or contradict claims of intent.

Like, if you made tests where you run your new wallet through various popular models of airport scanning machines testing whether they succeed at detecting something hidden, and advertise the specific airports which do/don't detect it, that would be some evidence about your likely intent.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#228

Post by codyb » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

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 money around. Do people really think cause it's on the block chain it can evade every law in the world? And cause it's open source nobody's going to pay any attention?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#229

Post by spaceman_2020 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

rdbell wrote: post #148

lysergia wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#230

Post by sph » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

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.

We're talking about someone with inhuman self-control, and GP is talking about someone that just can't keep his mouth shut and loves being in the spotlight.

If the genesis block did contain the image of a trollface (or any other 2008-era meme) instead of "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks", I could entertain this theory.