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GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

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Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#61

Post by peyton »

subjectsigma wrote: post #40
junon wrote: post #7

People on Twitter are either wilfully dumb or simply ignorant. GitHub had to do this. It was required of them by law. Tornado was sanctioned . > These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. This is, unambiguously, di…

The amount of people replying "Code is free speech! You can't do this!" shows you about how much Twitter understands laws.

That’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#62

Post by personjerry »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #57
personjerry wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's written in the definition of the sanction given by the Department of the Treasury [0], i.e. at the level of US federal law, of which Microsoft must follow as a US company. > Sanctions Implications > These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, o…

Is this the first time the US has sanctioned a cryptographic protocol? The quote you pulled specifically refers to "blocked person" but in this case they are not sanctioning a person - they are sanctioning a mathematical protocol that happens to have a popular open source implementation.

I'm not familiar with the industry history but a look at the Treasury website suggests there's been similar past precedents:

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/virtual_currency_...

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#63

Post by gilrain »

sschueller wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

This probably protects those users. Contributing to the project at this point opens one up to the international reach of U.S. law enforcement.

You are going to open a huge can of worms if you are going to start prosecuting people for software pull requests. Are we going to prosecute people who manufacture phosphor bombs for the US military as well now?

I hope so.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#64

Post by moreira »

chrischattin wrote: post #17

Any constitutional law experts care to comment? If the US government put pressure on Github to remove the code and delete their accounts, it seems like a clear violation of the developer's first amendment rights – "code is speech" being precedent.

Not a lawyer, but there is a difference between providing a service (GitHub) and "code is speech". This has nothing to do with code.

GitHub are no longer legally able to provide the service, and so those people no longer have access to GitHub the service. Nothing code-related.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#65

Post by whatisweb3 »

root_axis wrote: post #49
chrischattin wrote: post #17

Any constitutional law experts care to comment? If the US government put pressure on Github to remove the code and delete their accounts, it seems like a clear violation of the developer's first amendment rights – "code is speech" being precedent.

Not all speech is legal. If I write a virus and unleash it on the internet it's not unconstitutional to arrest me.

It could be argued the sole intent of unleashing a virus on the internet is malicious. The sole intent of publishing a privacy protocol on GitHub is not. Look at Tor for comparison.

GitHub has a section on this[1]. There should be no problem with allowing this software online for research and educational purposes.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/acceptable-use-polici...

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#67

Post by trinovantes »

SXX wrote: post #24

This is a good time time for EFF to step in. This is open huge so many terrible ways for abuse. 1. Make some random crypto project. 2. Motivate people contribute to it, see DigitalOcean hacktoberfest. 3. Replace the code with Tornado.Cash source. Everyone's account is banned by Microsoft. Also I wonder what happen if you didnt sent PR yourself, but someone crafted git commit with your email and added it to such repos…

Unless they enabled PGP signed commits, can't you just forge their commits?

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#69

Post by forgotpwd16 »

SXX wrote: post #24

This is a good time time for EFF to step in. This is open huge so many terrible ways for abuse. 1. Make some random crypto project. 2. Motivate people contribute to it, see DigitalOcean hacktoberfest. 3. Replace the code with Tornado.Cash source. Everyone's account is banned by Microsoft. Also I wonder what happen if you didnt sent PR yourself, but someone crafted git commit with your email and added it to such repos…

>2. Motivate people contribute to it, see DigitalOcean hacktoberfest.

Can skip this step. Just make fake commits (https://github.com/asizikov/gang/graphs/contributors).

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#70

Post by naniwaduni »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #60
blueflow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git is decentralized per default.

not really, it’s very inconvenient to use git without a centralized server

Yes, this is a pretty common problem with decentralized services and I'm not sure we can fault git for at least making it viable.
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