Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#671

Post by babypuncher » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

akomtu wrote: post #663

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.

If reincarnation exists, I hope that such people who are busy restricting others freedoms get all assembled together on a big island where they all get to live a very long life restricting each other to the ground, and when their nation makes Orwell blush, they get to live another 1500 years, enjoying each others company in a zero-freedom society, until they finally learn that it's not their f-ing business messing wi…

It must feel liberating to view the world in such black and white terms

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#672

Post by phpisthebest » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #667

phpisthebest wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning gun Free Zones, and allowing armed citizens will do the same thing See Indiana Mall Shooting

Or, you get a bloodbath, like what happened in Kenosha, where everyone (except the first person who was killed) involved was convinced they were the good guy with a gun. In the fog of war of an active shooting, nobody has any idea of who is the threat, and who is responding to the threat, and nobody has time to sit around and wait for 8 months for a jury to determine whether the shooting was justified or not.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on what happened in Kenosha.... Because your rendition of events as no match for what was reveled in trial, and other sources

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#673

Post by dcolkitt » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #530

MrPatan wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear criminals keep using cash to launder money, but the central banks keep printing cash! Outrageous! Unbelievable behaviour! To jail with the lot, straight away!

The vast majority of cash is used for legitimate purposes, the same is not true of tornado cash. They are not remotely in the same ball park.

> Then, by assuming that any cash that the surveyed consumers do not fess up to holding must be held for nefarious purposes, he concludes that 34 to 39 percent of all currency in circulation is used by criminals.[1]

By contrast only 14% of Tornado Cash activity has been traced to illegal activity.

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#674

Post by ezoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:09 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…

Reminds me of the arrest of Isamu Kaneko, the developer P2P file sharing software, Winny, in Japan.

He was prosecuted for aiding copyright infringement for writing a software that can share any files including copyright protected files.

He won the case at supreme court but it costs a lot. Many Japanese free software developers lost their interest for publishing the software may lead to the arrest from police who don't understand any of the technology behind it.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#675

Post by mrkramer » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #612

mrkramer wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent. That's what Ross Ulbricht was arguing; the creator and the operator of the biggest Dark Web drug marketplace called Silk Road but it didn't work out for him. Because you as an operator of a platform have liability of what your users do or in another words you need to take action in order to prevent illicit activities. R…

And just like Ulbricht set a great example for future darknet market operators to take OPSEC far, far more seriously, so too will this overreach of authorities drive authors and operators of tumbler/mixer software/services to do the same. The authorities are stepping on their own dicks, here, in a manner of speaking. Most of the biggest darknet markets operate far better, and far more clandestinely, precisely because…

You can get away one hundred times but it only takes one time to get caught.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#676

Post by rank0 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

What the fuck. I’m a big time crypto hater but this is absurd.

Are we really moving back in this direction? Let’s just ban math because criminals use cryptography.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#677

Post by preseinger » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

akomtu wrote: post #663

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.

If reincarnation exists, I hope that such people who are busy restricting others freedoms get all assembled together on a big island where they all get to live a very long life restricting each other to the ground, and when their nation makes Orwell blush, they get to live another 1500 years, enjoying each others company in a zero-freedom society, until they finally learn that it's not their f-ing business messing wi…

The only place on earth where gun ownership is considered a freedom rather than a threat to civil society is America.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#678

Post by whatisweb3 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #632

whatisweb3 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A private key is a 256 bit integer. > If someone built something that said "Launder your [256 bit integers] here" and it took in a bunch of [256 bit integers], and then [encrypted] it sans fees to hide where it came from... they'd say it was [256 bit integer] laundering and arrest the person. When you compare this to encrypting 256 bit integers, text, or E2EE chat protocols, the shock is easier to understand. People…

Except the law isn’t talking about the private key or the encryption or the math, it is talking about what they are using those things for. You are focusing on the numbers themselves and the math, but that isn’t the important part. This would be like someone getting arrested for check fraud and then trying to argue, “they are just a bunch of lines on a paper in a certain format, how can that be a crime!” The crime is…

The sanctions apply directly to the protocol and it’s code, and this is the issue. It is not applying to persons, or criminal actions.

It would be like sanctioning the Matrix protocol and it’s code because it has facilitated terrorist communication. Obviously terrorists planning a bombing over Matrix protocol are engaging in criminal behavior, but this doesn’t mean the protocol itself is also a criminal entity.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#679

Post by ezoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

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?

Let's arrest Satya Nadella, Tim Cook and Linus Torvalds for they are responsible of the three major OSes that are used for the computer related crimes.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#680

Post by colechristensen » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #669

KyleJune wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it's like saying the developer of ransomware shouldn't get in trouble for making it if they just made it public instead of using it themselves. The fact that ransomware could be used for legal purposes(pen testing maybe?) isn't really a defense when you make it easily accessible to criminals by making it public.

By that reasoning, gun manufacturers are mass murderers? What about automobile manufacturers? They kill almost as many people as guns (in the US, quick google search)

Guns and cars have legitimate uses.

Money laundering, especially running a money laundering business which does not follow certain rules, is illegal regardless if some of the usage is legitimate.