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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial privacy is not a human right. Moreover the kind of financial privacy you think of is from other citizens to not know your financial movements, it doesn't apply to nation states for obvious tax reasons and money laundering purposes.

Financial privacy is definitely a right. The question is whether that right is respected by any given institution. Since it is against the interests of existing institutions to do so, they will not unless compelled by a greater force. Cryptography allows individuals to use the force of mathematical law, superior to all other law, to enforce their privacy rights . (Tornado cash, like most mixers, leaves too many looph…

> Financial privacy is definitely a right.

This is a baseless, so I think you're making a bad assumption. Finance is opaque at a low level because of arbitrage and physical trade, but it's the belief that the physical world dictates social rights (which are moral at the core, so let me know if you want to jump to morality?) is simply incorrect.

What's more, I think that the default position that finance should be private actively hurts society in innumerable ways. Unfortunately, without it, capitalism immediately breaks down into monopolies. So we live in the happy middle, as with many things, suffering the inevitable (corruption, blackmail, etc).

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#432
post #422

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…

In my jurisdiction, if I operate a pawn shop, I am required by law to record transactions, collect ID, and make good faith attempts to prevent people from laundering stolen goods through my shop. Does "privacy is a human right" trump the law in my jurisdiction? Can we say it is improper for the government to require me to collect ID from people selling me goods? Can we say it is improper of the government to require…

> if I operate a pawn shop

Tornado Cash is not a company and nobody operates it. It is a privacy protocol.

Better to say “If I am a HTTPS”…

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#433
post #161

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…

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

> Why do you think they only arrested this guy?

Because he was working on something specialized, where he was in effect a supplier to a single customer. Thus, he's turned into a ready scapegoat.

You can't easily scapegoat someone if their pieces of code (or ideas) are also used, say, in every browser for securing connections, or whatever.

If you're closer than arm's length from some people who are engaging in criminal activity, an in particular doing exclusive work for them, you are prosecutable.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the owner is anonymous, how does the country know who to ask for paying the taxes? How would the county even find out that the house changed ownership?

In the grandparent example, it seems the new owner is a trust, which is also liable for paying the taxes (or there can be action taken against its property i.e. the house), but the person owning/controlling that trust is obscured. Perhaps a relevant different example I've seen sometimes is that in some markets for tax reasons developers who build larger buildings (offices, apartments) will make a separate LLC for eac…

Proposition 13 likes this.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#435
post #161

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…

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

The 'compare and contrast' case is that of not a single HSBC employee or executive being arrested for helping the Sinaloa drug cartel launder over $2 billion in profits.

> "Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as ‘the world’s local bank,’ the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record U.S. fine of $1.9 billion for facilitating money laundering for ‘drug kingpins and rogue nations.’"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61349754-too-big-to-jail

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#436
post #161

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…

If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? I get that you really want to defend crypto, but I think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend (making privacy code). It would be l…

> think a simpler explanation is that they have good reasons to believe that this guy was doing more than just the stuff you're trying to defend

This isn't a simpler explanation than the even simpler one that goverments have decided that cracking down on crypto is a good idea for a wide variety of reasons, and are executing on this decision. The way governments do this kind of thing is by starting to prosecute people who they think they have the best chance of willing a case against. This doesn't mean the case, ultimately, has merit, just that they've decided it's the most likely success.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the international law enforcement community is really trying to go after "all cryptographers" why do you think we haven't seen more arrests? Why do you think they only arrested this guy? Because the standard playbook for "cracking down" is to first win cases against the least sympathetic, most prosecutable targets. Once that's under your belt, you gradually expand outwards to increasingly ordinary people. It's w…

Then the community needs to be better about self-policing. If there are people in your group doing shady shit with your group's tech, then get rid of them. Otherwise, you start sounding like the police with "bad apples" but not all are bullshit. If you see someone doing wrong and don't sound the alarm, then you are part of the problem.

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#438

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.

It certainly is an ideal if not a legally protected right. Before slaves were free, they could still say “freedom is a human right”.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the famed “Hacker” News users advocating for the Big State and against privacy.

Haven’t you heard? The new definition of hacker is a 40something year old making 300k a year writing adtech tracking code for a FAANG

It has been wild watching this crowd slowly morph over the past decade or so, largely, into exactly what feels like this.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to privacy ends at the moment that it is used as an excuse to evade the law. Every country recognizes warrants for this reason.

> The right to privacy ends at the moment that it is used as an excuse to evade the law. With your logic we’d lose 100% of our privacy. Privacy of your own home? You could setup a drug lab. Privacy of your own phone/computer? Can run an illegal operation. Privacy of your own USD cash? Could be used for illegal transactions. The better question: what privacy is there that couldn’t theoretically be used to evade the la…

You are cherry picking part of my comment and reducing it to absurdity. Obviously any implementation needs to be more nuanced than a single sentence generalization. I mentioned warrants for a reason!
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