[HN Gopher] Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash
___________________________________________________________________
Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash
Author : langitbiru
Score : 396 points
Date : 2022-08-12 10:05 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fiod.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fiod.nl)
| Tepix wrote:
| 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 often
| not or hardly checked by such mixing services. Users of a mixing
| service mostly do this to increase their anonymity.
|
| Note how they sneaked "criminal" in there. There are of course
| legitimate reasons to desire anonymity for financial
| transactions! It's one of the reasons people like to pay cash.
|
| Satoshi Nakamoto is wise to remain anonymous.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It doesn't have to "fly" if you can waste 10 years of his life
| in court and ruin his finances, relationships and
| employability. The effect on him and the deterrent to others is
| basically the same...
| baby wrote:
| That's quite the claim when we don't know anything about the
| arrest yet. Come on.
| preseinger wrote:
| Financial anonymity is _actually bad_. KYC and anti-money-
| laundering regulations and etc. are _actually good_. These
| positions are the result of thousands of years of human history
| and economic activity. Ignore them at your peril (shrug)
| sph wrote:
| 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.
| baby wrote:
| The most likely explanation to me is that it was hal finney,
| who is dead now (presumably).
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Or he\she\they\it just burnt the keys and forever gave up
| those early bitcoin when they were worth a few 100 or 1000...
| [deleted]
| 111111101101 wrote:
| > The only explanation is that he is dead.
|
| He might be dead but someone has control of his keys & logins
| as they used his accounts to defend Dorian Nakamoto.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/03/06/bitcoin-.
| ..
| nostrademons wrote:
| That message was sent about 6 months before Hal Finney
| died. (Who, incidentally, lived a couple blocks away from
| Dorian Nakamoto.) Personally my money is that Satoshi
| Nakamoto = Hal Finney, and he's cryopreserved and likely to
| come back in a couple centuries to sit on top of a few
| quadrillion-dollar Bitcoin hoard.
| theonlyklas wrote:
| And to advertise NFTs on December 24, 2021.
|
| http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-
| sour...
| sph wrote:
| Looks like that account on that website has been hacked.
| clay-dreidels wrote:
| I donated to Dorian's BTC address back in 2014 when he was
| falsely accused.
|
| https://blockchain.info/address/1Dorian4RoXcnBv9hnQ4Y2C1an6
| N...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ztjmg/andreas_im
| _...
| chaosite wrote:
| Or that he has lost the private keys.
| sph wrote:
| Although Bitcoin is resistant to the "charismatic leader"
| problem, his second coming would give him incredible fame,
| following but also personal danger.
|
| Yet I do not think any human would resist a moment in the
| spotlight, if not to renounce its child and its current
| direction.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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 that can be converted into billions of dollars is
| not a good position to be in if you are not already a
| highly powerful individual with tons of people looking
| out for you.
| sph wrote:
| 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 lost all their BTC, that the
| original project was a failure but they have an even
| better idea now, and starting a new cryptocurrency with
| his name attached. Overnight billionaire once again.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| sph wrote:
| 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.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| > I can't think of any person in history that has shown
| this level of restraint,
|
| You wouldn't _know_ about them, holy hell haha
| Fnoord wrote:
| i would be able to control myself. After all, if I had
| enough money to be rich I wouldn't require more.
| postalrat wrote:
| Why would you mine your digital currency and then just
| throw it away? That's not something he wanted others to
| do so why do it yourself?
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| I think it's likely when they started Bitcoin they used a
| "genesis" account which they never intended to keep the
| keys of
|
| They probably also had other keys that they mined early
| coins on that they did keep, this would be consistent
| with Satoshi being Hal Finney or Nick Szabo
|
| > I imagine one would just come out, say they've lost all
| their BTC, that the original project was a failure but
| they have an even better idea now, and starting a new
| cryptocurrency with his name attached. Overnight
| billionaire once again.
|
| 1. They probably made enough off BTC to retire rich
| already, why go through any trouble to make even more
| money (not everyone has the drive to accumulate billions
| when they already have millions)
|
| 2. If they've destroyed/lost the original keys there is
| no way to prove they are Satoshi and nobody would believe
| them, like Craig Wright who claims to be Satoshi and
| started a BTC fork which picked up very little traction
| cypress66 wrote:
| You are overestimating the odds of that happening.
|
| Vitalik Buterin is widely known, travels all the time to
| many countries, and although he might not be as rich as
| satoshi, still owns like a billion in crypto.
|
| Yet he hasn't been kidnapped.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| World Economic Forum = plot armour?
| sweetbitter wrote:
| I'm sure there are plenty of humans who don't care for
| fame/money/power. You just don't hear about them
| because... well...
|
| Though in this case Satoshi could have just kept a
| smaller number of coins not tied to him.
| chaosite wrote:
| Of course. Various people have claimed to be Satoshi over
| the years, but failed to provide any sort of proof.
| Satoshi could either actually be one of those people, or
| realize that without proof he would be subject to the
| same fate.
| m12k wrote:
| He could also very well have lost his wallet, no?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Not liked the direction and not actually seen the future.
| It took some time for those coins to be worth something.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| I doubt that would be the case given his history and method
| of working
| lottin wrote:
| He was a Windows programmer if I'm not mistaken.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Subtle.
|
| But seriously, wouldn't you grab the most off the shelf
| stuff for your throwaway persona to use?
| aqme28 wrote:
| My pet theory is that he's just one of the myriad of early
| developers who made hundreds of millions from crypto and keep
| relatively private. At that point he'd have nothing to gain
| and a lot to lose by revealing himself.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| myriad?
| Jensson wrote:
| Basically contribution laundering, by blending in with the
| first 10 or so contributors and killing off his old persona
| he would get most of the benefits but still not get
| targeted as the inventor of bitcoin.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Satoshi owns a huge hoard of bitcoin that has never moved.
| He has a lot to gain (and a lot to lose) by making use of
| that money.
| aqme28 wrote:
| If you have maybe 300MM from early investments, and are a
| private person who doesn't want fame, then what does
| Satoshi's hoard actually buy you?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| His unsold hoard is currently worth about 20 billion
| dollars.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Assuming he had some later money (in the Blockchain)
| that's maybe "just" a few dozen / hundred million worth.
|
| That's plenty money for one person without the liability
| and the publicity. You can live a life in pure luxury and
| fulfill all your material wishes.
|
| Maybe he lost the keys or threw away the machine after a
| year or two. There's nothing to be gained from going
| public in this case but a massive threat to your life.
| owens99 wrote:
| Selling this may ruin the story and crash the price. It
| would probably go against his values and mission. He
| could easily have other early wallets and have $B's. Most
| likely explanation though is that it was Hal Finney who
| passed shortly after Satoshi disappeared.
| klntsky wrote:
| > It would probably go against his values and mission
|
| He could have sent his BTC to zero address.
| joelthelion wrote:
| It's not. Trying to sell it would crash the market.
|
| Still worth a lot, obviously.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Can he just pay off some kind of smart contract with it
| that ignores the provenance of the Bitcoin?
|
| Like, get a loan for $20b in a stablecoin with the
| payback being $21b in btc in a year?
| mcast wrote:
| If any of the BTC founder's blocks suddenly became active
| it would crash the price because most people would
| suspect someone found an exploit in the contract/hash or
| the keys were stolen.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's fine when you've already locked the price into
| something else that's not-btc.
|
| While you could sign a message with your key, you would
| still need something that accepts the proof but isn't
| public, which _might_ be possible with a properly
| structured /constructed smart contract, maybe?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The issue is finding someone willing to loan you $20B for
| your bitcoin without doing the research of how that would
| tank the price of bitcoin.
|
| It would be a great deal for Satoshi, but no other party
| would accept.
| joelthelion wrote:
| It's not just about the provenance. I don't think the
| bitcoin market can stomach a 20 billion sell-off, no
| matter who does it.
| lysergia wrote:
| 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.
| invalidname wrote:
| If there's one person he's not it's Elon Musk. That guy
| can't shut up... We'd all know.
| rdbell wrote:
| 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.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Dude created a company that built a reusable rocket and
| you accuse him of selling vaporware.
| sph wrote:
| 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.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I often wonder what would happen if Satoshi's wallet
| would actively start selling.
|
| Not so much on the price but the principles that underpin
| Bitcoin
|
| I, for the record, remain a believer.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| It's easy to retain self control when you already want
| for literally nothing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Well, not for Elon Musk.
| LightG wrote:
| Your comment doesn't negate the vaporware comment.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| How? I'm no fanboy but delivering working products pretty
| much negates all accusations of peddling vaporware.
| arcticbull wrote:
| FSD. CyberTruck. Humanoid Robot. Semi.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| You're confusing marketing hyperbole for vaporware.
| arcticbull wrote:
| A man jumping around in a suit being sold as a robot
| isn't hyperbole, it's vaporware.
| root_axis wrote:
| Also: Neurolink. Boring Company. Twitter Acquisition.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Gwynne Shotwell created a company that built a reusable
| rocket. Elon gave his name and a pile of money to it.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Plenty of people with money in the world. Yet only Elon
| was willing to finance Shotwell.
|
| And last I checked, the company's name was SpaceX, not
| "Elon Musk's Rocket Company"
| MrPatan wrote:
| Yes! Plus Faketoshi most likely waited until the
| person/people he knew (or strongly suspected) were Satoshi
| were dead to launch his scams. Less chance of a forum post
| saying "I'm not Craig Wright".
| narrator wrote:
| Some people have alleged that Paul Leroux, who is sitting in
| prison right now, is Satoshi. That would explain why Satoshi
| hasn't moved any coins or sought fame.
| aaronax wrote:
| The Len Sassaman theory really does it for me. It's been a
| while since I read up on it, but the similarity of Bitcoin
| and his remailer tech was the main thing that I found
| pretty convincing. Plus of course the timeline of his
| death.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| For anyone interested, his bio is a fascinating read in
| itself. I will admit that for me he is likely the top
| contender.
| izzytcp wrote:
| I invested a lot of time on his identity, not for anything
| just because I was bored and curious. I highly suspect it's
| Adam Back and he currently sits in a tax haven, Malta.
| owens99 wrote:
| Very unlikely. Hal Finney is the more likely candidate.
|
| Adam is/was not a good programmer like Satoshi was.
| Satoshi was in favor of alt coins in Adam is notoriously
| against them. "Adam put enough effort into proclaiming
| that Bitcoin was based on the concept of HashCash that,
| if he was Satoshi, Satoshi would have given HashCash more
| credit." - Another HN User. Satoshi had a positive
| attitude and Adam is notoriously unpleasant.
|
| Hal is a great programmer, worked for Phil Zimmerman on
| PGP. Hal is the first person Satoshi contacted, first
| person to mine outside Satoshi (op sec). Hal was aware of
| all the prior works that failed, b-money, bit gold,
| hashcash, etc. Linguistic analysis of the Bitcoin
| whitepaper and Satoshi's forum posts most closely match
| Hal's writings. Hal lived in the same town for 10 years
| as did Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Hal died of ALS shortly
| after Satoshi disappeared (he knew it was coming and that
| he couldn't continue).
| MrPatan wrote:
| I also think living somewhere he could have seen Dorian
| Nakamoto's name is a very, very strong pointer towards
| Finney.
|
| It may seem like a dumb opsec mistake to pick a name from
| your town, but lets remember, at that point we're talking
| about launching a cool experiment about digital money
| worth $0, not about picking a pseudonym as the figurehead
| of a project worth a trillion dollars.
|
| After reading an article about it, I do wonder about Len
| Sassaman, who apparently fits Satoshi's timezone and
| "accent" better. It could even have been both of them
| collaborating...
| 14 wrote:
| That would be highly interesting. Not like you can get easy
| access to the internet inside a prison so he would have to
| either convince a guard to bring him a phone to access it
| or possible use his lawyer. Anyone who visits they would
| likely record his conversation with the exception of his
| lawyer. But what good will the money do him, he isn't set
| to be out until he is like 72 years old and looking at him
| he is not in prime shape and may not even last that long.
| Maybe he could wait until enough is at stake like other
| countries adopting bitcoin as a currency and when the time
| is right find a way to put all his coins on the table
| causing a crash in price. I can't imagine what end game he
| would choose if he truly is the creator and how he has had
| so much will power he has had up until now to not move any
| of his coins. One thing is for sure I really do hope I come
| to HN one day and see the top story with 2000 plus points
| saying Satoshi's coins have just been moved.
| [deleted]
| sva_ wrote:
| People getting arrested over crypto mixers is nothing new at
| all.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| US sanctions on mixers in the past have been associated with
| an individual, not a piece of code. This is the first
| sanction to target an open source and non-custodial mixer.
| sva_ wrote:
| A piece of code that has been actively maintained by a
| group of people.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Maintaining code is, in the US, likely a 1st Amendment-
| protected activity. Operating live services like a mixer
| (including any RPCs needed for Tornado) is not. (And yes
| I know this arrest was not made in the US, so that might
| be the distinction.)
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Maintaining code is, in the US, likely a 1st Amendment-
| protected activity.
|
| How did the 1A defense work out for sharing "Ghost gun"
| CAD files?
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| Yes. Like putting a sanction on the open Matrix protocol,
| and blocking any user who has interacted with it.
| [deleted]
| ABeeSea wrote:
| 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.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| Please do remind me how many persons named in the Panama
| Papers have been arrested, or had their assets seized.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| So far about 1200, including 400 celebrities, three heads
| of state, nine former heads of state, and 150 sitting
| politicians worldwide.
|
| It's the third largest successful corruption sting in
| history.
|
| Also, edgelords online who don't know what's happening in
| the real world like to pretend there was no fallout, so
| that they can feel wise about corruption, and like to
| demand that other people look things up for them so they
| can feel like they made a point.
|
| In reality, it was about half of the names in the document
| base so far, and that's despite it being international
| prosecution with an unwilling nation.
|
| Things in the Panama Papers are going quite well for law
| and order, albeit slowly.
|
| Would you be kind enough to tell us what result you were
| expecting, and what point you were trying to make?
|
| In the future, would you please consider knowing the
| answers to your sarcastic questions before asking them,
| please?
| pjc50 wrote:
| You could do your own research?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
|
| I see at least https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-
| papers/20160425-c... and https://www.justice.gov/usao-
| sdny/pr/four-defendants-charged... ; the originators of the
| scheme, Mossack Fonseca, are wanted by multiple countries
| https://apnews.com/article/arrests-tax-evasion-panama-
| city-p...
|
| Jurisdiction is something of a problem, as we can see with
| the Panamanians being non-extraditable. That's why it was
| the _Panama_ papers in the first place! But if you 're
| going to facilitate money laundering, at least have the
| common sense to not do it under your own name in a
| jurisdiction where that is illegal or that will extradite
| you to the US.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Told by whom?
| alkonaut wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Does that really make a difference? I'd not worry about writing
| anything and putting it online saying "this can be used for
| evil so don't do that". But if I was approached by a criminal
| who asked me to write code for their criminal activity and I
| did so knowingly, then I'd expect legal consequences, possibly
| even if my code was never deployed at all.
|
| The difference must be in whether or not there was a conspiracy
| to commit crimes or if there wasn't?
|
| In this case I don't know whether this was purely open and no
| such contact between user and developer existed. But in
| principle I'd expect writing (almost) anything in the open to
| be safe.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| This is not a criminal hiring a contractor to work on Tornado
| Cash. It is an open source project on GitHub that many
| developers and researchers contributed to, in the interest of
| privacy.
|
| To use an analogy, see the open Matrix protocol, a tool for
| privacy that can facilitate encrypted communication between
| criminals.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| You seem to believe that if a tool is illegal, as long as
| it's open source and the people making it don't have a
| criminal background, and as long as you call it something
| like "privacy software," somehow it's suddenly not illegal
|
| But this is a tool whose specific purpose it is to make it
| difficult to track illegal transactions. Of course this is
| happening.
|
| Programmers get way too wrapped up in "but I called it open
| source! I called it privacy software!"
|
| What you label it has no actual power here. It was used in
| illegal behavior and that appears to be its goal.
|
| Of course it's going away.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| Matrix protocol's sole purpose is to obscure usernames
| and messages and enable privacy. Tornado Cash's sole
| purpose is to obscure blockchain addresses and enable
| privacy. Privacy is not a crime. Using Matrix to hire a
| hit-man would be a crime, but we don't sanction the
| Matrix protocol or it's developers just because it can be
| used by criminals to obscure their crimes.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What's the practical difference between the kind of
| privacy Tornado Cash provides and the kind of privacy
| offered by a local money laundering operation? If there
| is none, why should the latter be illegal while the
| former remains legal?
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| One exists to facilitate privacy, the other exists to
| facilitate money laundering.
|
| Compare with E2EE Matrix protocol: it does not exist to
| facilitate criminal communication, but it does facilitate
| criminal communication.
|
| TC is also different because it is an open source
| protocol, not a legal entity or group. You deposit funds
| into the protocol, and anybody in the network can help
| you withdraw them by relaying your transaction. It is a
| set of rules that any group of people can follow to allow
| for private transactions, and the same protocol can run
| on many blockchains.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Writing is used by criminals. Should writing be made
| illegal?
| balfirevic wrote:
| > But this is a tool whose specific purpose it is to make
| it difficult to track illegal transactions.
|
| What's the difference between that and a tool whose
| specific purpose is to make it difficult to track
| transactions in general?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| I don't see this as a meaningful split.
|
| I would react the same way to someone trying to get me to
| define the difference between an assault rifle and a
| hunting rifle.
|
| In the context of an AR-47, it's an irrelevant, time
| wasting question.
| notch656a wrote:
| >difference between an assault rifle and a hunting rifle.
|
| >In the context of an AR-47
|
| LMAO, please tell me this is sarcasm. This is the actual
| fudd meme of someone mixing up AK-47 and AR.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Same as Bitcoin is going away?
|
| Please.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, we're not seeing arrests of all the many developers
| and researchers who contributed to Tornado Cash simply in
| the interest of privacy as such (because that is not a
| crime), however, I presume that for this particular person
| there is some extra evidence establishing probable cause
| for the arrest.
|
| For example, if it can be shown in court that he
| contributed to it with a knowing intent to facilitate
| privacy of illegal deals, that might be considered aiding
| and abetting "the concealment or disguise of the true
| nature, source, location, disposition, movement, rights
| with respect to, or ownership of, property, knowing that
| such property is derived from criminal activity", which is
| a crime under EU/Dutch AML law.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yeah, in that case unless there are specific laws violated
| by the code (earlier DMCA violations come to mind) then it
| should be safe as I said.
|
| But as usual things are only legal until it's tried.
|
| A machine that prints counterfeit bills might be illegal to
| make or sell even without ever being used in some
| jurisdictions while not in others. And whether the machine
| has other, legal purposes, may or may not matter.
|
| The "dual use" thing is a common argument for most
| technical things when there is talk of bans and regulation.
| I think it's mostly a hollow argument in cases where the
| primary actual users are criminal users. That some
| technology can be used for illegal purposes should not be
| enough to ban it, but nor should whether there exists a
| legal use for a technology be enough argument that it
| shouldn't be outlawed.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Knowledge and intent seem important here. If the developer had
| specific knowledge of a someone using their service to commit a
| crime and did nothing to stop it, then they could be an
| accessory to that crime.
|
| If you sell a weapon to someone knowing ahead of time that they
| are going to use it to rob a convenience store, you are not
| innocent.
| jackmott wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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 used to launder
| money. If the developer kept working on it, they knew what they
| were doing. Again, I think that wouldn't _per se_ lead to
| criminal charges in the U.S. But we're sticklers about speech
| and privacy in ways most of the world is not.
| MrPatan wrote:
| 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!
| jshen wrote:
| 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.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Most cash transactions are legitimate, but are you 100%
| confident that most cash _volume_ is legitimate?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure if anything, but I'll go with 99% sure
| that most cash transaction is not money laundering.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > 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=...
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "We have no evidence this is tied to U.S. sanctions."
|
| Hmm, I suppose you are correct technically ( no direct
| evidence of connection ), however:
|
| 1. Sanctions are issued on 08/08/22 for Tornado Cash by OFAC
| 2. Guy writing software for Tornado Cash is arrested
|
| It does not take a large leap of faith. I will go a step
| further, given how much companies like to avoid OFAC issues (
| and that does include non-US companies ), I am all but
| certain the two are connected.
|
| Source: I used to work with sanctions in banking environment.
| carlosdp wrote:
| > 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?
| seanw444 wrote:
| As usual, it's an argument for harming people that produce
| legitimately useful things that criminals pervert. It's the
| same argument people make for banning guns in the US.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > It's the same argument people make for banning guns in
| the US.
|
| To be fair, I think most are arguing to restrict guns
| rather than ban. I'm not saying you did this, but many
| people deliberately distort that into "they wanna take
| all your guns" in bad faith.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Taking some leads to all. It's not something that should
| be compromised on. Gun restrictions won't end until
| ownership is so legally complex and time consuming that
| nobody can reasonably do it anymore. Of course it won't
| be an outright ban. That would never succeed. The frog in
| boiling water analogy applies here perfectly.
| alangibson wrote:
| > Taking some leads to all
|
| No it doesn't. Here in Austria, only cops have pistols
| and semiautomatic arms virtually don't exist. However
| most of the guys I know have at least one hunting rifle.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Ever growing restrictions start creeping in. In many US
| states where handguns are hard to acquire it is now
| difficult to buy small caliber rifle ammunition that can
| be used in some handguns.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Take for example California's "safe handgun roster". They
| added a new rule that for every one pistol that is added
| three are removed. It's hard to construe that regulation
| as anything other than a backdoor attempt at banning
| pistols.
| desperadovisa wrote:
| ribosometronome wrote:
| >Taking some leads to all.
|
| Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US led to
| the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US _is
| leading_ to the complete and total restriction of guns in
| the US.
| alangibson wrote:
| Laughable. Nearly 30 years later someone shot up a school
| with an AR-15. Yep, that government gun grab is riiight
| around the corner
| notch656a wrote:
| Gun ownership has a long-term downward trend. Part of
| this is non-government factors like change in population
| from rural to urban, changing demographics, occupations,
| etc. But we can't rule out that part of this drop may be
| contributed by the additional barriers placed, such as
| great expansion of who is a felon, expansion of domestic
| violence firearm restrictions including some local
| agencies charging someone every single time a policeman
| is called out for DV no matter what actually happened,
| NICS (which can wrongly deny people who then have to
| appeal), increasingly difficult to navigate carry laws
| such as the gun-free-school-zone act that can incriminate
| someone for merely being within 1000 feet of a school
| with a gun. The no-fault divorce era has also seen the
| weaponization of spousal restraining orders during
| divorce, which have the effect to disarm while also being
| a bargaining chip and ace during divorce proceedings and
| a way to beat down your spouse with the court by leaving
| them helpless and disarmed even in many cases where the
| spouse has done nothing criminal. And then there is the
| attack on anyone who happens to have guns and _gasp_ pot
| at the same time, as is seen in the federal charges
| against "FPS russia" who was disarmed because the feds
| didn't like he smoked a vape pen with his girlfriend.
|
| There seems to be a somewhat slow boil in the United
| States, starting with the NFA, then the GCA, the hughes
| amendment, and a myriad of state and local laws.
|
| https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%2
| 0Gu...
| croes wrote:
| I see nothing of a ban
| notch656a wrote:
| There is expansion of the ban every time they add new
| types of "felons." The government has focused the past
| ~60 years years on greatly expanding who is a felon, and
| then enshrining that they do not have the same civil
| rights as others after serving their sentence.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| No ban, just increasingly restrictive laws on ownership
| and use that end up resulting in something tantamount to
| a ban. Look at gun ownership in most countries in Europe
| if you want an idea of what the future could look like.
|
| Then give some thought to what Europe was like in the
| early 20th century!
| mulmen wrote:
| As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. It's not
| clear that gun laws themselves even enabled the rise of
| fascism or that they had any negative impact on quality
| of life. With widespread gun ownership early 20th century
| Europe could have been even worse.
|
| This argument is so tired it has it's own Wikipedia
| entry:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
|
| > "The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of
| the country's population. It is preposterous to argue
| that the possession of firearms would have enabled them
| to mount resistance against a systematic program of
| persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced
| by a well-armed police state, and either supported or
| tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr.
| Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had
| guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance
| against the regime simply does not comport with the
| regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite
| popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed
| the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing
| the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with
| Hitler early on."
| notch656a wrote:
| Events such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed some
| Jews really were willing to defend themselves with arms.
| The Jews were not cowards and the characterization as
| people who won't "mount resistance" is woefully wrong. It
| may be true they may have not been able to successfully
| overthrow the Nazis, but it is possible some of the
| oppressed may have survived another 10 or 15 minutes (in
| the Warsaw Ghetto, days) after initiating self defense
| and even if them being armed would have made things worse
| for them, that should have been their choice to make and
| not yours.
|
| There is some sort of fundamental honor as well to allow
| to allow someone the tools to at least maybe shoot a Nazi
| on their way out, as one last act of resistance before
| certain death. Arms are a right even when desperate
| circumstance make it almost only symbolic.
|
| Edit: also some may enjoy this amusing bumper sticker,
| created by a Jewish organization in America who
| themselves criticize Nazi gun control
| (https://store.jpfo.org/40-large_default/-all-in-favor-
| of-gun...).
| mulmen wrote:
| > The Jews were not cowards and your characterization as
| people who won't "mount resistance" is woefully wrong.
|
| Careful. I pasted a quote. Those are not my words. I
| didn't accuse anyone of being cowardly.
| notch656a wrote:
| Glad to know you're distancing yourself from the absurd
| opinion of this wikipedia article, which totally is a
| quote you never meant to support even though you
| intentionally framed it as part of your counterargument
| to the "tired" nazi gun control argument. I changed it to
| "the" rather than "your."
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| That argument is a bit of a straw-man though. Nobody is
| realistically claiming the Jews, or East Germans, or
| Soviet citizens, or Syrian citizens, could defeat their
| government with personal weapons.
|
| The more reasonable version of the argument is that the
| unofficial purges, before the evil becomes fully embraced
| by the government (the Nazis), or where hidden and
| unofficial (the KGB), can be deterred by armed civilians.
| If you know the Stasi are coming to take you away in the
| night to certain death you'll be willing to fight, and if
| armed you have a real chance at inflicting casualties.
| And if every raid leads to dead troops and PR disasters
| the state is less likely going to get to the point where
| the terrorists adopt the mantle of government (Nazi
| Germany) and can then bring the sum total of state forces
| to bear.
|
| tl;dr the argument is more about resisting unsanctioned
| or non-governmental terrorism so it doesn't become
| governmental.
| [deleted]
| alangibson wrote:
| As is typical, you know nothing of what you are talking
| about. Most guys I know here in the Austria boonies have
| a hunting rifle.
|
| You might want to actually look at gun ownership numbers
| before repeating tired and very wrong Right talking
| points
| [deleted]
| namecheapTA wrote:
| Austrians owning guns is only helping his point about not
| having guns during ww2 being a problem.
| rurp wrote:
| Laws so restrictive only a lucky _100 million_ americans
| have managed to purchase one legally!
| Brybry wrote:
| "Taking some leads to all" logic doesn't really follow.
|
| If that idea applied then the US would already not have
| guns as many types of firearms (ex. fully automatic) and
| weapons (explosive munitions) are heavily restricted (and
| have been for a very long time).
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > are heavily restricted
|
| They aren't. Just pay the $200 tax and wait for the ATF
| to process your transfer form. (3 months to a year,
| generally)
|
| Unless explicitly banned your state, if you can legally
| own a firearm, you can legally own an NFA item. Including
| explosives and automatic firearms.
|
| Which is why the NFA is generally bullshit. It's
| pointless extra bureaucracy that ultimately achieves
| nothing but delays.
| babypuncher wrote:
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| Here's a comedic piece by Awaken with JP, where he points
| out many historical events where within ~2-10 years of a
| government taking the guns away from the population then
| genocide occurred: "Why Guns Must Be Banned Now!" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkNIoJ-9jY
| SigmundA wrote:
| This is the same guy who didn't know the difference
| between Infection Fatality Rate and Infection Fatality
| Ratio, then compared the The IF Ratio of Covid to the IF
| Rate of the Flu and proclaimed the Flu was deadlier
| because math, and straight faced didn't realize he had
| two orders of magnitude error.
|
| Then he post a video making fun of his video getting
| removed due to misinformation that he never retracted or
| corrected.
| akomtu wrote:
| 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 with others freedoms.
|
| Edit. In this type of society, your freedoms are being
| gutted constantly for arbitrary reasons: one of your
| neighbors complains he's feeling unsafe around firearms
| so police comes and takes them all; another neighbor
| complains about cars making him feel uneasy, so you have
| to ride a bicycle; then a random passer-by complains
| about you using harsh words, so a court puts a non-
| removable collar on your neck monitoring your speech;
| then some worried activist complains about food and from
| now on you can get only approved food from the food-
| police. But you aren't wasting time: you complain about
| your neighbor's green lawn, then force him to live in a
| tent, restrict his water consumption for climate-
| concerns, make him reduce the size of his pets and so on.
| I'd argue the downward path of restrictions has no
| bottom.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It must feel liberating to view the world in such black
| and white terms
| preseinger wrote:
| The only place on earth where gun ownership is considered
| a freedom rather than a threat to civil society is
| America.
| babypuncher wrote:
| At best, gun ownership should be viewed as a regulated
| privilege not unlike driving on public roads.
|
| Everyone who drives has to be licensed to do so. There
| are different licenses controlling the use of larger
| vehicles on public roads. There are safety requirements
| vehicles must meet in order to be street legal. Every
| vehicle has a unique registration number tied to the
| owner.
|
| All of these regulations have made driving considerably
| safer today than it was 80 years ago.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| To be Fair, based on the History of " restrict guns " it
| is clear no amount of restrictions is enough to satisfy
| those that want to restrict guns, confiscation and total
| ban is the clear end goal
|
| it is NOT "bad faith" to say that, when there is clear
| evidence that no matter how many times compromise is
| reached they return the very next day asking for more and
| more restrictions
| MaysonL wrote:
| To be fair, banning guns seems to also ban mass
| shootings.
| pitaj wrote:
| At face value, it may _seem_ to, but whether it
| practically would, in the US especially, is a totally
| different question.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| At the very least the reduced access would reduce
| occurrences and fatality rates. UK and Australia are
| probably good comparable cultures/case studies.
| MaysonL wrote:
| Are there countries where guns have been banned, and mass
| shootings increase? Are there countries where banned guns
| have been allowed, and mass shootings increased?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Banning gun Free Zones, and allowing armed citizens will
| do the same thing
|
| See Indiana Mall Shooting
| vkou wrote:
| 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.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| 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
| peyton wrote:
| Only when you ignore all the countries it doesn't.
| Somalia banned guns.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Factually false, if you believe this you are in an echo
| chamber. Yes, there are a few who want to ban guns, but I
| know many people, some of whom are gun owners, who
| support reasonable restrictions.
|
| Trying to paint the entire movement with the views of
| it's most extreme members is absolutely bad faith
| communication.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| > I'm not saying you did this, but many people
| deliberately distort that into "they wanna take all your
| guns" in bad faith.
|
| Well, who is "they"?
|
| The majority of activist organizations arguing for
| restrictions _absolutely_ have an end-goal of banning all
| guns.
|
| Claiming "we just want common sense gun laws" is a far
| larger bad-faith distortion of the truth than "they wanna
| take all your guns".
|
| Gun laws proposed by these organizations only go one way:
| more restrictive.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Discussions on the internet are tons of fun and extremely
| useful when we just ascribe whatever secret end goal on
| to organizations that we want. May I try? Actually, the
| majority of activist organizations are fronts for gun
| manufacturers to create a fear of them being regulated
| away to help push a buy-now mentality. claiming otherwise
| is bad faith distortion of reality!
| teakettle42 wrote:
| Nobody (other than you, with that intentionally
| ridiculous claim) is ascribing a secret end goal; their
| goals are quite plainly articulated.
| alangibson wrote:
| Links? I need to know who to send donations to.
| optimuspaul wrote:
| donations?! you just buy guns and they get your money,
| and "bonus" you get a gun.
| spyder wrote:
| The closer analogy would be arresting the gunmakers
| because people used their product to commit crimes.
| eternalban wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour
|
| https://capitalpunishmentstudies.tumblr.com/post/17208707
| 639...
|
| "Iranian authorities arrested Malekpour during his visit,
| accusing him of designing and moderating pornographic
| websites. Malekpour had designed photo uploading
| software, and according to his supporters, that software
| was being used without his knowledge for the creation of
| an adult website."
|
| Good company there, Canada.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think this sort of question is being argued with youtube-
| dl and we can see where it goes. The entertainment industry
| argues the purpose of youtube-dl is to pirate content.
| Youtube-dl argues that there are in fact many legitimate
| uses for it and this argument has so far prevailed.
|
| In the case of WhatsApp, the app has many legitimate uses,
| notably speech, which is often protected as a right. In the
| case of Tornado Cash, the app's only use is concealing the
| origin of financial transactions, which some could argue is
| never a legitimate use (and which others would argue is a
| legitimate use). Maybe the final arguments will come down
| to this legitimacy.
|
| ianal etc.
| andai wrote:
| Many countries have strong privacy protections. Why
| should the same not apply to transactions?
| arcticbull wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Of course not, because intent matters.
|
| The team at WhatsApp works super hard to keep people who
| shouldn't be using it off the platform, so that everyone
| else can derive use and enjoyment. If WhatsApp was built as
| a platform to facilitate terrorist communication you're
| damn right you'd be held liable for working there.
|
| Tornado was built, and is operated, specifically to
| facilitate money laundering. It has no other purpose but to
| conceal the source of funds which only matters if the funds
| were acquired illicitly. They do not now, and have not
| ever, attempted to stop the service from being used for
| this purpose - after all that's why it was created.
|
| A shocked pikachu face isn't a defense.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| What if I don't want my employer knowing I spent my
| BTC/ETH/etc on a porn website -- so I want a way to
| disassociate the payment address they know from my
| spending account?
|
| ...or guns, alcohol, abortions, etc.
|
| People have a need for privacy and disassociating
| spending from receiving for perfectly normal and legal
| reasons.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Or you don't want your plumber knowing your payment came
| from your porn industry work.
|
| Or someone knowing you book a lot of hotels and flights,
| so your home must be empty a lot.
| acdha wrote:
| This seems like a better argument for using a system
| which is correctly designed. A public ledger is a bad fit
| for currency and layering kludges on top isn't as good as
| a better design, especially when that exposes you to
| being an accessory to criminal activity.
| leppr wrote:
| Given how arbitrary the Tornado enforcement seems, fully
| private ledger cryptocurrencies will probably be declared
| criminal too. While this won't deter criminals from using
| them, it will deter normal people, as publicly offering
| goods or services in that currency would be illegal.
|
| It's not hard to imagine that the end goal is CBDCs
| having a monopoly on legal privacy. (Privacy from your
| neighbor, not your government.)
| beambot wrote:
| That's some seriously circular reasoning: It only exposes
| you as an accessory to criminal activity because they've
| labeled it a criminal activity despite legitimate uses...
| acdha wrote:
| No, it makes you an accessory because you are mixing your
| traffic with criminals' to help hide all of your
| activity. Everyone trying to hide criminal activity needs
| to use a mixer but only a small percentage of other users
| are going to pay for an optional service so the odds are
| worse that you're more likely to attract attention to
| your transactions, too, just like you would if you were
| known to take home large quantities of cash from a mob-
| owned casino, too. Maybe you're just a really good poker
| player but it's more likely to make law enforcement
| curious than if you don't.
| nostrademons wrote:
| There are cryptocurrencies that are private-by-default,
| eg. Monero and ZCash. It'll be interesting to see how
| that evolves and whether governments go after them as
| well, particularly since (I suspect) Monero is used for a
| lot more illegal activity than Tornado.cash.
|
| The thing about Ethereum's public ledger approach is that
| it enables a lot of features - broadly advertised smart
| contracts, for example. Tornado.cash is literally an
| attempt to replicate the privacy benefits of ZCash inside
| of Ethereum's generalized blockchain. From a computing
| perspective that's quite interesting - you start with a
| public system and find a way to emulate a privacy within
| it.
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, I've been surprised to see so many people
| prosecuted after using Bitcoin for serious things long
| after the privacy concerns were well-publicized. I guess
| it shows how many people fall for marketing.
| tadfisher wrote:
| > It has no other purpose but to conceal the source of
| funds which only matters the funds were acquired
| illicitly.
|
| This doesn't feel sincere. Obviously money laundering is
| _one_ reason why anonymity matters, but you can 't think
| of any other reason?
|
| I'll give a prompt: Several threads ago, someone
| expressed their desire to pay for a VPN service in
| cryptocurrency.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Remind me why you need to launder your crypto to do that?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Because you don't want your crypto currency to be traced
| back to you... because then the VPN you paid for with it
| can be traced back to you... and sometimes the entire
| point of a VPN is so that connections cannot be traced
| back to you. The funds used to pay for the VPN were not
| acquired illicitly, but having it traced by to you
| _could_ be dangerous for you.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The VPN has every IP address you connect to it via. I
| fail to see how laundering your coins before paying for
| one is going to add any opsec. You are dependent on
| trusting the VPN for any security or anonymity it
| provides you.
| abxytg wrote:
| If you don't mix your coins I can see you have signed up.
| If you do mix your coins I cannot. When I say I, I
| literally mean I could check the chain and see you were a
| vpn user. After mixing I (me) can no longer see if you
| are paying for a vpn. Hope that clears it up lol.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Privacy is about much more than _whether_ your
| transactions can be trade back to you - it 's about _who_
| can trace them back to you. There 's a huge difference
| between "VPN who already has all my IP addresses knows
| that I did business with it" and "Everybody on the
| Internet knows that I did business with this VPN
| provider". If you disagree, let's see you post your
| credit card history and tax returns on Hacker News -
| after all, your bank and the IRS respectively already
| have this information, so you're not gaining any OpSec by
| keeping it private.
|
| For a lot of mixer transactions, your adversary is
| probably not the government - it's any hacker that you
| may want to prevent from knowing your Ethereum balance
| and the services you transact with.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which
| means you had to have criminal intent. So before they knew
| the Taliban uses it, not a crime. Now that they know? Well,
| kind of a grey area. I bet you could construct an argument
| that they commited a crime if any NEW feature/code commit
| somehow benefits the Taliban after they knew the Taliban
| uses it. It's legal for me to sell someone a car. It's no
| longer legal for me to sell someone a car if I know they
| are paying in drug money or they need it to have a new
| 'anonymous' car while on the run from the police.
|
| Funny story. Drug dealers try to do this with analogs. They
| will go to a lawyer and get the lawyer's opinion that
| whatever benzo/fentanyl derivative they are ordering from
| Alibaba does not fall under the Analogs rules. They then
| try to argue if arrested that this shows that they didn't
| have criminal intent and went to great lengths to make sure
| that what they imported was not illegal drugs and hence no
| Mens Rea. Don't try this. It doesn't work. You have not
| found that 'one secret the Feds hate'.
| carlosdp wrote:
| That makes no sense and I don't think that lines up with
| liability.
|
| Every hammer maker knows some people use hammers as
| murder weapons. Their continued manufacturing of hammers
| obviously does not constitute a criminal act.
|
| This argument makes no sense, and while I'm not a lawyer,
| I doubt it actually has legal basis (at least in the US).
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| _Mens rea_ isn 't some radical idea. If hitting specific
| sales targets on Bushmaster AR-style hammers is tied to
| your bonus you might end up settling for $73 million when
| you get caught pushing them too hard and they're used in
| a bunch of massacres.
| carlosdp wrote:
| The developers of Tornado Cash don't directly profit from
| its use (the article claims that erroneously), it's a
| fully permissionless immutable smart contract without a
| fee component.
|
| So this argument, while potentially valid, doesn't apply
| here.
| [deleted]
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| Whether or not the developers acted with criminal intent
| is of great importance, if not philosophically at least
| legally
| mrkramer wrote:
| >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. Ross argued that
| he created neoliberal free for all marketplace but that
| the bad guys invaded it and ruined it. Ofc that was BS
| argument just like not regulating who is mixing funds and
| what kind of funds at your crypto mixer is also BS.
| caeril wrote:
| 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_ Judge Forrest threw the book at Ross.
|
| And they're doing the same thing here. This really sucks
| for Pertsev, but going hard on him like this will set the
| standard for a brighter future in the fight against
| State-enforced financial tyranny.
| mrkramer wrote:
| You can get away one hundred times but it only takes one
| time to get caught.
| ezoe wrote:
| 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.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Yeah, this line of reasoning is exceedingly silly.
| Stethoscopes can be used to help crack safes, should the
| people who make them be in legal jeopardy as a result? Good
| luck convincing anyone to invest in innovation in that kind
| of legal environment, my friends.
|
| Demonstrating that there's one legitimate use should
| probably be sufficient in most cases. If you want to be
| uptight you can think about adding a requirement that the
| best fit use case must always be legitimate
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Cryptocurrency mixers exist solely to launder money. This
| is literally all they are useful for.
|
| WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.
| spyder wrote:
| Just because somebody doesn't want to share their
| transactions with the world it doesn't mean they want to
| hide them from the authorities too.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| False. Here is the definition of money laundering:
| 1. The act of engaging in transactions designed to
| obscure the origin of money that has been obtained
| illegally. 2. concealing the source of illegally
| gotten money
|
| Anyone can use a cryptocurrency mixer with legally
| obtained cryptocurrency.
|
| Tornado Cash has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.
| enlyth wrote:
| Anyone can, but realistically, it has probably been used
| almost exclusively for either laundering money or
| concealing the source of money used to purchase illegal
| goods. I can think of pretty much no cases where you
| would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency,
| then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then
| use it for something legal.
|
| I'm not advocating for the developer to be prosecuted,
| I'm just saying in the eyes of the law, they probably
| won't see it in the way you are describing.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| I can think of pretty much no cases where you would
| _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then
| conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it
| for something legal.
|
| See my other comment for a concrete, legal use case:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32443842
| iszomer wrote:
| I wonder how contrarians would argue against this..
|
| "Oh, because this blockchain isn't anonymous enough I
| must use a mixer!"
| unboxingelf wrote:
| Imagine for a moment that you wanted to buy an NFT with
| legally purchased Ethereum from an exchange like Kraken
| or Coinbase, but you don't want your friends to know you
| spent $2,000 on a jpeg. So instead of buying the NFT with
| your Coinbase wallet that is linked to your [ENS] name,
| you create a brand new, single-use wallet and use it to
| buy the jpeg. And instead of funding the single-use
| wallet from your recognizable wallet, you obfuscate the
| source with a mixing service.
| Akronymus wrote:
| I disagree with that, as there are things you may wanna
| buy without making public you bought, that is still
| legal. For example, some specialist hobby you'd rather
| not want others to know about.
|
| Still mostly money laundering though.
| saurik wrote:
| I feel like this can only be true because you must have
| defined "launder money" to be any private usage of money
| (which isn't a sufficient definition of money laundering,
| to be clear). If you claim otherwise, then you need to be
| more specific with your reasoning.
|
| To start: why would anyone need privacy--of communication
| or of shared resources (payment)--but for something
| illegal? If you have an answer for that for communication
| (which you claim to and of course should), then it also
| is the same answer for money.
|
| Do you believe someone should be able to keep secret that
| they have some medical condition, and that that knowledge
| should only exist between them and their doctor? Well,
| fat lot of good that does when the doctor specializes in
| some specific issue and there is a record of you paying
| them.
|
| Think it is sufficient to trust the bank, because you
| think their security and privacy are awesome? Well,
| that's the same argument for WhatsApp vs. something like
| Facebook Messenger: no need for end-to-end communication
| if you are willing to trust people.
| saghm wrote:
| > If you have an answer for that for communication (which
| you claim to and of course should), then it also is the
| same answer for money.
|
| Not everyone believes that money is a form of speech,
| current US Court rulings on campaign finance
| notwithstanding.
| ezoe wrote:
| 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.
| throwoutway wrote:
| I think the only real case the gov would have is if he
| 'knowingly' supported laundering for sanctioned nations, like
| if he noticed it, and commented on Twitter or discord to a
| friend like "Ha! Look, DPRK used my tool".
|
| However, if that did happen, the gov also just gave him threee
| days lead time to delete any evidence of that, which is
| extraordinary. I'm surprised the arrest and sanction did not
| happen on the same day
| dannyw wrote:
| They were waiting for the reactions from the community.
| There's a low chance there could have been extreme and
| unified non-compliance, e.g. everyone depositing funds to
| Tornado Cash (which is still up and operating at
| https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/tornadocash.eth/ )
| PeterisP wrote:
| I don't think there's any causation from the USA sanctions to
| the arrest, possibly even vice versa, with some investigation
| before this arrest leading to some part of the sanctions.
|
| The specific USA sanctions are not retroactive, it's not a
| crime to have violated them before an entity was sanctioned;
| and I doubt if it's a Netherlands crime to violate USA
| sanctions.
|
| In any case, the article seems quite clear that he was
| arrested for facilitating money laundering, not for a
| sanctions-related offense, the sentence about sanctions was
| just extra information for context. And for this part, the
| big issue is intent - if it turns out that he developed this
| mixer with the intent to facilitate hiding illegal
| transactions, that would be facilitating money laundering.
| And looking at some comments here I wouldn't be that
| surprised that he might have explicitly admitted it in
| writing.
| caeril wrote:
| > this is not going to fly if all he did was write some
| software
|
| Stephen Watt had his life destroyed because he wrote some
| software. He didn't use it, he didn't directly victimize
| anyone; he just wrote the software that other people used[1].
|
| Case law already exists that simply writing software can be a
| crime, so let's not fool ourselves that
| prosecutors/judges/juries will even remotely consider this line
| of defense valid.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/2009/12/stephen-watt
| jasonlotito wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "He is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal
| financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the
| mixing of cryptocurrencies through the decentralised Ethereum
| mixing service Tornado Cash."
|
| This does not read as "all he did was write some software."
|
| Yes, he might have written software, but if it was with the
| purpose of money laundering, for example, and that can be
| proven, that's not just writing some software.
|
| We do not have enough information to decide either way, but
| what information we do have now (which has yet to be verified,
| of course) is that he did not just "write some software."
| egorfine wrote:
| This is perfectly going to fly if they find one small chat
| where he admits he merely knows that his code was used for
| money laundering.
|
| If memory serves me correctly, the ground for convicting
| Phantom Secure was the fact that one of the founders admitted
| that he knew that his service caters to criminals, although the
| service itself is not illegal.
| closewith wrote:
| Anonymous cash transactions in the Netherlands over EUR10,000
| are already illegal (https://www.amlc.eu/cash-limit/). The
| government intends to ban cash transactions over EUR3,000.
| hansvm wrote:
| The way I read that, large anonymous cash transactions in a
| non-professional capacity are still fine? Could I not gift
| somebody a million cash euros or buy a home with cash?
| oneplane wrote:
| I doubt any company wil accept that, and suddenly owning a
| new house with no data on where that money might have come
| from will raise so many red flags, you'll be able too start
| a new flag company.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| In cash? Anonymously? Probably not, even without
| regulation.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Ahh... Gift tax (in all advanced countries in the world)? I
| am confused. Is this a serious post?
| PeterisP wrote:
| IIRC you can't buy a house anonymously in Netherlands, no
| matter if you pay with cash or not, you'd be required to
| register the transfer of ownership in the cadastral system,
| and any real estate deals must be with a written contract
| that identifies both parties.
|
| And I believe the NL tax reporting for large gifts also
| requires you to identify the donor.
|
| In essence, the limitation is not on the method of payment
| but on the core activity, that any significant income from
| contracts, deals, trades, barters, transfers, gifts,
| settlements etc need to be non-anonymous in order to be
| legitimate, so if the method of payment does not identify
| the payer (i.e. cash) then simply it's your duty to
| identify who you're dealing with, from whom you are earning
| money.
| wolongong942 wrote:
| I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the
| west. Typically all large transactions get auto reported
| to the financial intelligence unit, with the tax man
| getting access to the data set as well. If paid via
| crypto they'd find out when the recipient cashes out,
| forcing him/her to do source of funds.
| akimball wrote:
| This is accomplished every day in every country in the
| western hemisphere by means of shell companies.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Current EU AML laws are full of requirements for explicit
| registration of the true beneficiaries for all these
| companies (including chains of companies); anonymous
| ownership of companies is becoming illegal in the last
| couple years.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Looks like the Dutch are just now catching up on that
| other structure to hide assets: trusts:
|
| https://www.loyensloeff.com/insights/news--
| events/news/bill-...
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in
| the west.
|
| In New York, properties are commonly held by LLCs.
| Transferring ownership of the LLC can be done without any
| public or auditable record of the transaction.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| At least in the US, house purchases are by default
| anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house
| is because they put in their trust name their full legal
| names.
|
| Last time I sold a house, the only reason I met with the
| buyer directly was because I didn't use an agent for the
| sale.
| trebbble wrote:
| > At least in the US, house purchases are by default
| anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house
| is because they put in their trust name their full legal
| names.
|
| But most homeowners don't have the house in a trust.
| That's mostly a rich-people thing. The _default_ is that
| it 's your personal name(s) on the documents, including
| in e.g. county tax records.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Are you staying that the state/county doesn't know that
| you are the person owning that house, or doesn't know who
| the previous owner was?
|
| This thread is not about privacy from other private
| citizens/companies, but privacy from the state
| authorities. For example, my bank account is private in
| the first sense (even my parents couldn't find out how
| much money I have unless I tell them), but it's not
| private in the second sense (financial authorities have
| the right to ask my bank how much money I have).
| djbusby wrote:
| If it's anon, how does the government get their property
| taxes?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Property taxes are between the owner and the county where
| I live. They are paid in advance, so you can't sell a
| house without paying the property tax first. It'd be
| liened by the tax authority to prevent the sale.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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?
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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 each building, so when they want to sell
| it, the title to the real estate doesn't change hands (it
| still belongs to the same company) but rather they sell
| the whole "company" instead with the building as its
| main/only asset.
| mindslight wrote:
| <thumbsup> Proposition 13 likes this.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| They don't need to know. If the property tax isn't paid a
| local judge just writes up a new deed to whomever pays
| off the delinquent property taxes. It is literally
| property in their jurisdiction. They can take possession
| any time.
| raverbashing wrote:
| But you have the seller and buyer's name in the title no?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| No, it just lists the trust name.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Kind of yes, but if the buyer technically is a trust or a
| shell company, then the title lists that, and not any
| person.
| closewith wrote:
| What about 1099-S reporting?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Home sales do not universally count as income. Also, it
| is important to realize that 1099-S reporting applies to
| individuals like a licensed realtor. Which I am not.
| bathory wrote:
| Wrong. Germany for example is known [0] for money
| laundering through properties, because big cash purchases
| hardly ever get reported.
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/ge
| rmany-t...
| closewith wrote:
| When buying a home, the transaction has to be reported
| anyway irrespective of value. The same is true for gifts.
|
| The Dutch Government also asked for a blanket ban on cash
| transactions above EUR5,000 to be included in AML 6/7
| (although there wasn't wide support).
| biglearner1day wrote:
| > Anonymous cash transactions
|
| So not crypto.
| closewith wrote:
| The law also applies to barter with equivalent Euro
| thresholds, so cryptocurrencies aren't excluded. Anyway,
| the point stands, financial privacy (from the State, at
| least) is not a feature of life in the Netherlands (or
| anywhere in the EU, with AML3/4/5/6).
| neuronic wrote:
| It's perfectly fine to pay off your 900kEUR house with
| cash in Germany which is why it is considered a financial
| haven for all kinds of organized crime.
|
| > Germany No limit on cash payments for the purchase of
| goods.
|
| Consumers who want to pay amounts which are higher than
| 10. 000 Euro in cash, have to show their ID card. And the
| trader has to document the surname, first name, place of
| birth, date of birth, the home address and the
| nationality.
|
| https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/shopping-
| internet/cas...
| april_22 wrote:
| But wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies to be
| anonymus? or am I missing something here?
| haakon wrote:
| No, the point (if we go by Bitcoin's whitepaper) was to
| be digital cash transactable without middle-men.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Non-privacy coins are about as anonymous as an IP
| address. Use monero.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| 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.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| How often are cryptocurrency projects developed with no
| interest in personal gain? This isn't the DeCSS days of hackers
| just wanting to stick it to the RIAA and MPAA. Chances are that
| the developer was involved in running a for profit service
| based on their software.
| parasense wrote:
| > The (criminal) origin of the cryptocurrencies is often not or
| hardly checked by such mixing services.
|
| Even omitting the "criminal" implication, that sentence has a
| big problems.
|
| > The origin of the cryptocurrencies is often not or hardly
| checked by such mixing services.
|
| Let me rephrase that:
|
| > The origin of cryptocurrencies is not checked by
| cryptocurrencies services.
|
| The idea is ridiculous at face value.
|
| However, it does illustrate the best & worst part of
| blockchains -- everything goes on the blockchain. The
| government loves that audit trail. But how is an ordinary
| person to know some wallet addr is a pedophile, or terrorist,
| or druglord, or whatever? I mean that as an honest question. Is
| there some public crypto-wallet watch-list everyone is supposed
| to be referencing prior to doing p2p transactions?
|
| Like you, I wonder how this person could be prosecuted? In the
| free-world, writing software is considered free-speech, at
| least in the USA, but I'm not sure in the Netherlands or
| wherever this person was apprehended? There are of course
| exceptions... like writing malware or viruses, etc.. So like
| you, the situation seems to entail something more.. like
| perhaps running an operation with clearly articulate facts
| indicating criminal activity. You know, the old saying goes
| "it's what you know, and when you knew it". So like, if the
| person was aware of criminal activity, taking part in criminal
| activity, etc.. I suppose an argument could be made.
| gfodor wrote:
| I think the question of "deployment" is an interesting one when
| it comes to smart contracts. When you deploy a contract, you're
| publishing the code to the network to run, not deploying it to
| a server you operate. I think we are going to need to have a
| much better legal framework around what exactly a person is
| doing, legally, when they deploy a smart contract to the
| blockchain.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > 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?
|
| No. That's what all the coin people are thinking.
|
| Everyone else is thinking "gee, someone made a tool to try to
| prevent the financial regulators from regulating, I'm surprised
| this took this long."
| seanw444 wrote:
| Everyone keeps mentioning how "it's why criminals use cash, so
| there's no point in banning this, as they'll just resort to
| using cash." But they must fail to notice that various
| governments of the world are trying to implement a trackable
| digital currency to replace cash. They don't even like cash
| either.
| akimball wrote:
| Halting grey and black market transactions would destroy ~15%
| of global GDP, causing mass disruption, poverty, starvation,
| global unrest. Bad idea.
| yuan43 wrote:
| The effect of all of this nonsense will to drive developers into
| pseudonymity. It won't solve the "problem" of developers building
| privacy tools. It won't stop experimentation with shitcoins. But
| it will eliminate the phenomenon of the Buterin-style project
| lead and "core developer".
|
| The bullseye has been painted. And now those who have reaped the
| benefits of fame will come to know why Satoshi concluded that it
| was a trap to be avoided. The legal pressure that will be brought
| to bear on the Ethereum foundation to enact various changes will
| be enormous and never-ending.
|
| It doesn't matter whether or not this case flies. That will take
| many years to sort out. In the meantime, rational actors will do
| the rational thing. Everyone else will receive summons and
| indictments.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| 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?
| Rackedup wrote:
| I think that they are doing this purely to hurt crypto. They
| keep adding new laws when they see an opportunity where crypto
| could become more useful... it's like a frog in a warming pot.
| tgv wrote:
| The people who write viruses/trojans/RATs/malware, are they
| just making a product? What if they sell it?
| dannyw wrote:
| Or a more pressing question: if you create an encrypted
| messaging app, and people use it to do illegal stuff, can you
| be charged for facilitation?
|
| Let's cut to the chase: it's virtually guaranteed that Signal
| and Matrix are used for sharing child porn.
| salawat wrote:
| Always remember Alfred Anaya.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
|
| Also remember, that if you wish to walk around and brand
| yourself as an Engineer, that comes with baggage.
|
| https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
|
| I am not saying that governments automatically get the
| benefit of defining what "Good" is, but if you're going to
| make the claim they're wrong, you have a very hard, uphill
| battle ahead of you. If you believe in it, stick to it. Civil
| disobedience, comes bundled with accepting that the system
| will blow back against you.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Governments define the line.
|
| Relevant questions would include:
|
| - How core to the illegal money laundering is the use of your
| product? (For a leather wallet, probably not very).
|
| - did you target illegal money laundering in the design of your
| product, or market your product so as to specifically attract
| illegal money launderers? (Almost certain not for your leather
| wallet).
|
| - is the use by criminals to launder money a significant
| portion of your sales (or use of your services) (probably not).
|
| - are you actually aware of your product/service being used for
| money laundering? (Maybe?)
|
| - if you are aware and there is significant use of your
| product/service for illegal money laundering, have you taken
| reasonable steps to prevent or discourage such use? (Given you
| flagged North Korean money laundering as your example, such
| steps could include: Blocking access to your site from North
| Korea, refusing to ship to countries that don't enforce
| sanctions against North Korea, investigating if small tweaks to
| the design are possible that would make your product/service
| less useful to money launderers without significantly reducing
| its usability for other people).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| My comment from 2 days ago:
|
| > The US sanctioning Tornado Cash and the resulting repercussions
| is deeply concerning. Whether or not you like crypto, you should
| not be supporting this if you are a researcher, academic,
| technologist, cryptographer, or privacy advocate. The code for
| Tornado Cash is a series of cryptographic and mathematical
| functions that can be repurposed for a variety of applications
| unrelated to privatizing user wallets. The protocol itself is
| designed for one reason: to give users privacy through end to end
| and zero knowledge cryptography.
|
| > Allowing it to remain open source and accessible as a tool for
| blockchain privacy and codebase for cryptographic research is a
| net benefit for the entire world.
|
| > A comparison would be that US decides to sanction the open
| Matrix protocol along with any user, developer, source host, or
| sponsor that has ever contributed to it in the past - because it
| can facilitate end-to-end encrypted terrorist communication.
|
| Discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32404966
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US sanctioning Tornado Cash_
|
| Zero evidence this is connected to U.S. sanctions. Dutch law
| protects even cash transactions less than American law.
|
| When the investigation started, in June, the U.S. had already
| released evidence Tornado Cash was used to launder money. If a
| Dutch person kept working on it, it might be trivial to show
| they broke Dutch criminal statute.
| mr_beans wrote:
| The NL government org that arrested him specifically mentions
| the US sanctions in their press release
| https://www.fiod.nl/arrest-of-suspected-developer-of-
| tornado...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _org that arrested him specifically mentions the US
| sanctions in their press release_
|
| I'm not arguing it's irrelevant. Just that this doesn't
| look like a sanctions arrest. Tornado Cash was sanctioned
| on 8 August. There hasn't been enough time for someone to
| violate the sanctions and produce enough evidence to get
| arrested. More likely: the same alleged crimes that got
| Tornado sanctioned prompted this arrest.
| yomkippur wrote:
| it sure looks like US sanctioned, just going by the
| article here
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| The first time a developer of open source, non-custodial and
| autonomous smart contract code has been arrested comes days
| after the US sanctions the same smart contract.
|
| Probably just a coincidence.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I often wonder if people are aware that the US is basically
| a one world government. You cannot run. If you believe you
| are innocent, and you run to any other "somewhat free"
| country, they will send you right back to get railroaded
| through the "justice" system. If you do something outside
| the real jurisdiction of the US, they _will_ find a way to
| put you in their jurisdiction.
|
| The US has significant control over European countries.
| They're nearly vassal states to a degree.
| tinco wrote:
| It says in the article that the person has benefited
| financially from this. It's not about making open source, I
| don't know why people are raising that red herring.
| Implementing a mixer is (probably) not illegal in The
| Netherlands, putting one in production and setting it up in
| such a way that you benefit from it absolutely is.
|
| I don't believe it's a coincidence that the sanctions and
| the arrest happened close together, there's likely some
| coordination there. But it's really unlikely the sanctions
| somehow are relevant in this case.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| But it WILL be about open source and dec networks when
| someone forks it.
|
| Same as the Silk Road/darkmarkets argument.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _first time a developer of open source, non-custodial and
| autonomous smart contract code has been arrested comes days
| after the US sanctions the same smart contract. Probably
| just a coincidence_
|
| Zero chance this is solely on account of U.S. sanctions. It
| takes time to build an arrest case under domestic law, as
| well as for sanctions to percolate across legal systems.
|
| There was likely coordination. Maybe the Dutch waited, to
| bolster their arrest case. Maybe the evidence that Tornado
| was used to launder money processed under similar time
| frames at OFAC and the FIOD.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is the second comment of this type I am seeing on HN
| following this story. I find this line of defense odd. There
| is no direct evidence, but anyone even somewhat familiar with
| OFAC sanctions knows how far they can reach.
| from wrote:
| Kind of unrelated but in a lot of ways I feel like an OFAC
| designation is a bill of attainder that is only legal because
| it's used exclusively against foreigners.
|
| 1. Designate a businessman as an SDN
|
| 2. Wait for them to conduct some transaction that uses dollars or
| involves any American company in some way (if you know about
| correspondent banking you know this will almost inevitably
| happen)
|
| 3. Wait for them to travel to country friendly with America
|
| 4. Extradite for conspiring to violate IEEPA
|
| This has happened before (see US v. Tajideen). It seems like
| there should be some kind of legal case against this which may
| happen now given all of the rich Russians that are having their
| stuff seized on this basis.
|
| Edit: And the interesting thing is that the Treasury Department
| accused Tajideen of being a Hezbollah financier which they could
| have charged him with when he was extradited from Morocco but
| they didn't which to me makes it seem like there wasn't much of a
| basis for his designation to begin with.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| diogenes1 wrote:
| one of the most shameful moments in digital human rights after
| the arrest of pgp creator in 1993. Code is speech, it is not a
| weapon. Banning maths is fascist
| diogenes1 wrote:
| even more shameful is the tone of conversation regarding this
| in internet forums now vs in 1993. How the hell can you be pro
| arrest of developers
| pjc50 wrote:
| I don't think the cryptobros realise quite how much they've
| made the general forum public hate them, which is why
| everyone's cheering this arrest.
| sph wrote:
| You make it sound like righteous people rejoicing, to me it
| feels like those medieval citizen cheering at a public
| execution or the burning of a witch.
|
| Both thought they were right and the evil people got what
| they deserved. The fact that you divide the tech world into
| evil cryptobros vs good citizens is telling.
| codehalo wrote:
| The opinions being expressed regarding cryptography,
| cryptocurrencies, freedom, and privacy has been absolutely
| depressing. The state and corporations have exerted their
| influence, particularly in the last fifteen years or so.
| matteopey wrote:
| It helps the fact that the vast majority of people on HN
| are against any project that use cryptocurrencies.
| dannyw wrote:
| People don't seem to realize that there is little fundamental
| distinction between a crypto privacy service, and encrypted
| messaging apps like Signal and matrix.
|
| A bitcoin private key is just
| "KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM" after
| all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _People don 't seem to realize that there is little
| fundamental distinction between a crypto privacy service,
| and encrypted messaging apps like Signal and matrix_
|
| A dollar in a bank account is similarly abstractable.
| Anyone equating crypto to speech is undermining actual
| privacy rights.
| dannyw wrote:
| There's a distinction, you can't transfer a dollar in a
| bank account by sending text messages. You could instruct
| your bank to transfer; but the actual irreversible
| _movement_ happens out of band.
|
| You _can_ transfer a cryptocurrency by sending its
| private key on an encrypted messaging app.
|
| What happens if someone makes a mixer that operates over
| Signal messages? This is not a bad-faith argument: The
| entire CoinJoin protocol used to operate over IRC; before
| they developed their own communications system for
| increased efficiency.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What happens if someone makes a mixer that operates
| over Signal messages?_
|
| Honestly, if someone just develops a mixer and publishes
| the code they're probably fine. That's speech. GitHub or
| a journal, it is protected.
|
| Tornado's developers didn't do that. They made a token
| that with monetary value that they get paid; they hired
| people and had a website promoting the service; _et
| cetera_. If this were just a GitHub repo, yes, the
| comparison to speech would be apt. It's not. And I'm none
| too thrilled about folks throwing actual free speech and
| privacy under the bus to defend crypto.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can call it money laundering speech if you want, but that
| doesn't change the fact money laundering is illegal. Selling
| skimming services is illegal even if you don't skim people
| yourself.
|
| Nobody is banning technology or math, only specific, usually
| criminal, uses of technology and math are banned.
| tzs wrote:
| > Banning maths is fascist
|
| What about banning chemistry and physics? If I fire a gun and
| the bullet hits someone I get arrested (and maybe even if it
| doesn't hit anyone if I am somewhere were shooting guns is not
| illegal), yet all I did was use some levers (physics) to add
| compress a spring adding potential energy to it (physics) which
| then got converted to kinetic energy (Hooke's law, more
| physics), which imparted energy to some chemicals starting a
| reaction (chemistry) that produced expanding gases that caused
| the bullet to rapidly leave the barrel of the gun, where it
| followed a ballistic trajectory (physics).
|
| Or what about banning biology? Look closely at other animals
| sometimes. Things that in humans we'd call rape and murder and
| robbery are quite common. Millions of years of evolution have
| selected for animals that do those things. Humans too have the
| same propensity to do many of those same things, and would do
| so more often if they were not illegal. Just look at what
| happens when people find themselves in situations where those
| laws do not apply or where they have no chance of being
| punished, such as when a country successfully invades another
| country.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| you fired the gun, not the manufacturer. why would they
| arrest the manufacturer/inventor/etc for something that was
| done by you?
| Vespasian wrote:
| Manufacturers carry liabilities for the products the make
| all the time.
|
| That's true for consumer products and even more significant
| for things like guns.
|
| In most places you're a not even allowed to manufacture
| guns not to speak of Marketing and selling them.
|
| Offering a service like tornado cash (e.g. getting
| financial benefits from transaction fees) would be just as
| illegal if they used potatoes instead of cryptocurrency.
| There are laws dealing with money laundering specifically
| and "doing it on the Blockchain" doesn't circumvent them.
| ehathaway wrote:
| This isn't just the arrest of a developer expressing his freedom.
| Its the arrest of a developer who was knowingly part of a group
| of people who had the intention of deploying code (via smart
| contracts). The deployment of the code facilitated activities
| that were claimed to be illegal.
|
| The issue isn't owning or writing viruses or malicious code, the
| issue is distribution and deployment of such code.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Is distribution of code substantially different from
| distribution of a book? Does something about uploading code
| become different when we call it "deployment"? I'm really
| asking here, because there are some pretty fine lines that need
| to be drawn.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| A message is circulating in russian crypto groups, that two more
| developers were arrested: Roman Panchenko in Seattle, and Nikita
| Dementyev in Tallinn.
|
| (I can't verify the veracity of this report, but if true, this
| looks like it was a coordinated international police operation)
| dutchbrit wrote:
| Roman Panchenko, interesting.. he also lives in Amsterdam
| according to LinkedIn. Also, both the names you mention, their
| Instagrams have both been taken offline.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Can anyone explain why Tornado cash dev was arrested but Zcash
| has been operating for years?
| flarex wrote:
| North Korea didn't use them yet to layer stolen funds. Just a
| matter of time before ZCash and Monero developers are all
| arrested if this is the precedent.
| dannyw wrote:
| For those who think this is good:
|
| Private keys can be represented in text. Like this:
| KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM
|
| Encrypted messaging apps like Matrix or Signal, can be used to
| send strings with private keys, anonymously.
|
| It's very difficult to hold a position that financial privacy
| tools are bad, but encrypted messaging apps are good; because
| they are really not that different.
| catchclose8919 wrote:
| Ppl work hard to make sure they remain different for 99.9% of
| non-technical people (eg. banning anonimous cryptocurrency)...
| once this is done, you become and outlier by using different
| tools than average people, and special means of surveilance can
| be deployed against you personally at much lower cost...
|
| Ofc this is bad, but the bigger purpose is always "power over
| the proles".
|
| You can let most people have most of their privacy as long as
| you don't touch the "power distrubution tools" (money) - eg. if
| messaging is private, but money is on a blockchain where all
| wallets are mandatory to have an associated human identity, it
| doesn't matter that some sketchy transactions happen on the
| edges. Bitcoin would be targeted too if it were used to eg. pay
| wages and fund companies on a large scale.
|
| Probably Tornado Cash enabled some activity that was large
| scale enough to not be considered just "on the fringes"
| anymore...
| cortesoft wrote:
| You are thinking like a computer programmer and not a lawyer.
| There is a classic article that demonstrates the difference
| called "What colour are your bits?"
| https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
|
| The law isn't actually talking about math or numbers or
| encryption, even though it seems like it is to computer
| programmers. The math doesn't matter to the law, what you use
| it for does.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Messenger application are not (yet :( ) required to comply with
| anti money laundering regulations. Financial systems do. The
| two are not the same.
| lottin wrote:
| I don't find it difficult.
| bsima wrote:
| Please elaborate
| lottin wrote:
| The fact that two actions are achieved by similar (or the
| same) means doesn't make those actions ethically
| equivalent.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Sad to see the EU bow down to the criminal racket that is the US
| financial system.
|
| Even if this developer is not extradited, the US has again
| succeeded in maintaining the culture of fear, where they can get
| their slimy hands on anyone anywhere for any reason they want.
| omginternets wrote:
| Where did you see that this was connected to the US financial
| system? They mention in passing that the US has sanctioned
| Tornado Cash, but I didn't get the impression that this was the
| reason why this person was arrested.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| there have been multiple coordinated attacks being made, it's
| quite naiive to assume US is not involved here
| omginternets wrote:
| I'm very open to the idea that they are. I'm asking whether
| there's evidence.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| I don't think it is related. Maybe just the increased publicity
| quickened the arrest, but I don't see any hope of extradition
| of a Dutch national to the US for sanction violations announced
| just a few days prior.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow. Is this not an arrest for violation of
| laws in place in Netherlands? Their criminal investigation
| started two months ago, not because of the US sanctions. How is
| this the EU bowing down to the US financial system?
|
| The timing of the arrest could be a reaction, if they thought
| it might spook the suspect into fleeing or something along
| those lines. But that doesn't equate to bowing down either.
| jacooper wrote:
| > Sad to see the EU bow down to the criminal racket that is the
| US financial system.
|
| The EU in general is extremely hypocritical when it comes to
| privacy, its probably an opportunity to crack down on crypto
| while it's down.
|
| You see all the laws that aim to put a stop to big tech, and
| rightly so because their government won't do anything.
|
| In the same time, when privacy protections are against the EU
| itself, it suddenly doesn't work, or it needs monitoring like
| their horrible attempt using the chat control law, which even
| faces backlash from inside, like from Germany.
| stalinford wrote:
| You'll never find Satoshi Nakamoto
| wendizo wrote:
| greatgib wrote:
| It is said that they are prosecuted for:. "environmental crime"
|
| Good example again of low profile laws that are abused by
| government and police forces to get to their objectives.
| polytely wrote:
| Read it again, that's not at all what it says.
|
| >Public Prosecutor's Office for serious fraud, environmental
| crime and asset confiscation.
|
| The arrest comes from the department that covers 1. serious
| fraud, 2. environmental crime, 3. asset confiscation
|
| There is nothing in that release that indicates that this
| arrested was because of environmental crime. You should retract
| your post.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Thanks to government bloat. Have less minute laws, have less
| agents to enforce minute laws, have less funding to hire agents
| to enforce minute laws.
| labrador wrote:
| At least in the US, providing tools that you know will be used to
| commit a crime is a crime
|
| Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him
| in Prison
|
| https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
| rklaehn wrote:
| There are many non criminal use cases for private electronic
| transactions - just as there are for cash.
|
| So why is it a crime to build a thing that has both legal and
| illegal applications, like knifes, guns, dollar bills, gold
| coins, ... ?
|
| And don't get me started with "Most activity on tornado is
| illegal". It is a privacy service. So unless it is broken we
| don't know this. Are we going to take the word of the
| "Authorities" for this?
| labrador wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me if he can be connected
| to a single instance of illegal activity on Tornado then he's
| toast
| matteopey wrote:
| rank0 wrote:
| 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.
| nootropicat wrote:
| Governments started the offensive. Now decentralization actually
| starts to matter.
|
| Ethereum is switching to PoS at the last minute, PoW miners are
| very easily forced to enforce sanctions because they can't hide
| due to enormous physical and legal presence. Home stakers can
| easily hide and break the law.
| dannyw wrote:
| Decentralization really is starting to matter. It's a wake up
| call for a lot of developers in this space, that pragmatic
| shortcuts (e.g. centralized RPCs, centralized stablecoins like
| USDC) have disadvantages that may no longer outweigh the
| advantages.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| true. none of smart contract blockchains today are actually a
| practical tool till lightclients that run on smartphones are
| mainstream
| flarex wrote:
| Some ecosystems have made significant progress on in
| browser and mobile light clients. For example:
| https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/
| codehalo wrote:
| The problem is that Apple and Google have a kill switch.
| yokem55 wrote:
| The light clients that the parent envisions could
| potentially run entirely in javascript within a browser.
| No app store needed unless the browser engines start
| blacklisting bits of js.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Doesn't that leave them WIDE open to malicious code?
| nootropicat wrote:
| I don't think they are going to ever be mainstream. Even a
| lightnode that only downloads headers is going to eat up
| battery fast. If a centralized service works for you,
| what's the point? What's necessary is to allow actually
| persecuted people to run nodes on their computers.
| flarex wrote:
| Modern light clients don't use that much battery and are
| optimised for mobile usage. They even have very short
| start times making use of snapshotting and back filling
| headers i.e. you ask all nodes on the network that latest
| snapshot header close to the head and start from there
| working back towards genesis. This can be even faster
| than using an RPC and is far more decentralised.
| [deleted]
| dcolkitt wrote:
| A lot of the apologists for this are making arguments along the
| lines of "being decentralized doesn't make you exempt from the
| rules" or "imagine if a bank laundered this much money".
|
| The problem is it doesn't make sense to treat protocols like
| companies. And it _definitely_ doesn 't make sense to treat
| protocol devs as if they were the executives of those companies.
| The CEO of a bank and the lead dev of a protocol have very very
| different powers and responsibilities, and we can't just throw
| our hands up in the air and say "the law's the law, and you gotta
| follow it" (even when it's literally impossible given the
| decentralized and autonomous nature of the protocol).
|
| Analogously when joint-stock corporations first entered the scene
| it required the development of whole new branches of Western law.
| That law had to be tailored to reflect the realities and nature
| of joint-stock corporations. What would have been very dumb is
| simply to pretend like nothing changed and say "same rules apply"
| and make individual shareholders liable for the action of the
| corporate entity the same way we're trying to make software devs
| liable for the action of the decentralized protocol.
| beeboop wrote:
| Let's be clear - this isn't money laundering. Money laundering
| is taking illicit funds and making them look legitimately
| sourced. Tornado Cash does not do this, it is clear that the
| source is Tornado Cash, and it does nothing to legitimize
| funds. To spend crypto you still most likely need to convert it
| to fiat and that fiat money will still be under scrutiny for
| its source.
| dylkil wrote:
| Exactly, everyone is missing this. If anything using tornado
| cash is analogous to converting debit into cash.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| It absolutely is money laundering- which has three phases.
| Placement, Layering, and Integration.
|
| The Layering phase is when the original source of money is
| concealed through transactions or bookkeeping tricks.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp
| dereg wrote:
| Do you believe that financial or transactional privacy
| should be illegal? Obfuscation is used for many things not
| exclusive to money laundering.
| beeboop wrote:
| "Placement surreptitiously injects the "dirty money" into
| the legitimate financial system."
|
| Tornado Cash doesn't move the funds between financial
| systems at all
|
| "Layering conceals the source of the money through a series
| of transactions and bookkeeping tricks"
|
| The source of the coins is in plain sight - it's clearly
| from Tornado Cash, and when converted into fiat currency
| the source is very likely also obvious (some exchange)
| unless you do some in-person exchange of cash for coins, in
| which case this has nothing to do with Tornado Cash
|
| "Integration, the now-laundered money is withdrawn from the
| legitimate account to be used for whatever purposes the
| criminals have in mind for it"
|
| Again there's no legitimacy for the coins after going
| through Tornado Cash and the fiat currency is still under
| scrutiny.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Tornado is absolutely money laundering. You're moving the
| coins from a dirty wallet that is being watched by the
| government to a clean one that has plausible deniability.
| It's not the end of the process though, you still need to
| sell something to the wallet to make it look like you earned
| the coins legitimately. That's where NFTs come in.
|
| If you just go dirty wallet -> clean wallet -> exchange it's
| trivial to see that the exchange coins came from the dirty
| wallet. If you mix the coins from the dirty wallet to the
| clean one there's no way for the exchange to say the coins
| came from the dirty wallet, all they know is the coins came
| from the mixer.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| It's maybe not making them look "legitimate" but it's
| definitely making some funds look a lot less illicit than
| they are.
| 3np wrote:
| There also seems to be a lot of conjecture all over here.
|
| We know that the person arrested "is suspected of involvement
| in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money
| laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through the
| decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash."
|
| The general interpretation is that they were arrested for
| development of the protocol and software. It may be that they
| have them on the hook for other actions, such as assisting
| particular individuals or directly handling funds. Let's see
| what comes out of this.
|
| We don't yet know which specific acts they are suspected of.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _The problem is it doesn 't make sense to treat protocols like
| companies. And it definitely doesn't make sense to treat
| protocol devs as if they were the executives of those
| companies._
|
| If the state can arrest people and cause activity to stop, it
| makes sense in the way states think.
|
| The approach of bitcoin and crypto process in general hasn't
| been to ask permission but aim for a protocol that states can't
| stop. Neither governments nor "society" "signed off" on crypto.
| People just started doing it with the principle "this is too
| distributed to stop". Well, if states can stop it, that
| approach failed, right?
|
| _Analogously when joint-stock corporations first entered the
| scene it required the development of whole new branches of
| Western law._
|
| Limited-liability enterprises still aren't very popular. But
| these were legitimized by courts and legislation based on them
| provide (alleged) benefits. Crypto generally hasn't been
| legitimized by society, crypto advocates often act like they
| don't need such legitimization and by that token, the state has
| no obligation not to treat crypto activities as being within
| it's existing categories - especially it this work: they don't
| like money laundering and fraud through crypto and hey, a lot
| of people going to jail.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| >If the state can arrest people and cause activity to stop
|
| We shall see if that's the case here. My guess is the state
| can't stop it
| colechristensen wrote:
| Starting a money laundrymat and expecting not to get charged
| with a crime is a bit absurd. Pretending that it's totally fine
| because it's "privacy" not money laundering because crypto is
| special... is likewise absurd.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It's more like you gave away a DIY laundromat kit for free,
| which some people used to make laundromats, and other people
| used to launder money.
|
| Example of a "legitimate" use case for tumbling: your
| employer pays you in Bitcoin and you don't want them to know
| where you spend the money they give you.
|
| A public ledger means anyone can read it, not just the
| government. And so anonymizing your transactions means hiding
| them from everyone, not just the government.
|
| It's fine if you believe the government and your bank should
| be able to read your transactions. But what about your crazy
| ex girlfriend or the guy you fired last week?
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you don't want your transactions to be public, don't use
| a public ledger. You don't get to launder your money
| because you chose to use a ridiculous tool that made your
| transactions public and readable by anybody who has ever
| transacted with you or who can convince someone who did to
| tell them who you are.
|
| Tornado Cash wasn't free, there was a fee which as I
| understand it was sent back to various developers.
|
| Money laundering doesn't get to be something else and
| totally fine just because it's covering for a weakness of
| cryptocurrencies.
| KyleJune wrote:
| 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.
| pitaj wrote:
| > 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
|
| They really shouldn't.
|
| Neither should any other security researcher who publishes
| exploits.
|
| Neither should any other developer of cryptographic
| technology.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Big difference between writing a report on a
| vulnerability and writing malware that exploits it.
| KyleJune wrote:
| I think there is a difference between identifying an
| exploit exists and making a tool that makes it easy for
| anyone to exploit. I think if you are releasing a tool to
| act on security vulnerabilities it should be done so very
| carefully so that it can't be easily used to commit
| crime.
| conductr wrote:
| 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)
| colechristensen wrote:
| 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.
| phyalow wrote:
| Starting a gun manufacturing company and expecting not to get
| charged with a crime is a bit absurd. Pretending that it's
| totally fine because it's "for hunting" not "murder" because
| guns are special... is likewise absurd.
| sangnoir wrote:
| You're unironically correct. I suspect you were aiming for
| sarcasm, but gun manufacturers being sued is an actual
| thing now.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Having a tool to shoot someone is a right written into the
| US constitution. There are a variety of circumstances where
| you are within your rights to use this deadly force.
|
| Tools to hide the source or destination of funds, i.e. to
| launder money, are not legal anywhere and explicitly
| illegal in various ways. Providing them as a service to
| others is explicitly illegal.
|
| Building, selling, owning, and using a gun are all legal in
| general, only specific ways of doing those things are not.
| mehlmao wrote:
| My understanding is that the developers get a cut of the money
| that's laundered through tornado.cash
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Isn't this kind of like the dev of SMTP getting arrested
| because two people committed a crime by communicating through
| email?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Or arresting Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, or Leonard Adleman for
| helping criminals hide their communications from law
| enforcement.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| this right here, is the crux of the argument
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If they were getting a cut from whenever illegal
| activities were done.. maybe.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| You do know RSA is a company too, right? What are the
| odds that RSA SecurID has been used by bad actors before?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Security
| probably_wrong wrote:
| In my opinion, this (very popular!) line of reasoning is
| missing the forest for the trees.
|
| A knife is widely regarded as a tool that's legal to own and
| that, save a few precautions, you can carry with you.
| Switchblades, despite being also knives, are widely
| considered dangerous and their sale and possession is overall
| restricted (presumably) due to a strong correlation between
| the presence of a switchblade and stabbings.
|
| Just because SMTP and Tornado are protocols it doesn't mean
| they are the same - one is a protocol enabling a wide range
| of activities (some of them criminal, some not) while the
| other is literally designed to hide the origin of money, an
| activity that most governments frown upon.
| akimball wrote:
| That presumption would be incorrect
| smashah wrote:
| This whole situation gives crypto more utility/validity.
| Arresting open source devs for such a simple smart contract?
| Insane!
| clippablematt wrote:
| 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 is because they don't like money that is independent from
| state control. They hate the idea of bitcoin and eth not being $
| or EUR. The large majority of money laundering happens through
| banks, who just pay a fine and sweep it under the rug.
| epolanski wrote:
| 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.
| akimball wrote:
| 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 loopholes in
| its contract to be proof against a concerted attack in
| typical practical applications - they usually leak too much
| partial information.)
| Supermancho wrote:
| > 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).
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I've honestly given up believing in anything like rights.
| Everybody seems to have different opinions on what they
| are, and they never seem to match up with what governments
| actually do. I'm not sure it's actually a useful word.
| akimball wrote:
| Authors who have given robust analytical treatments of
| rights include Rawls, Habermas, and Kant.
|
| I think the concept is at least useful if you want to
| protect a right. Without it, in practice, it would be
| much more difficult to defend against the controlling
| capacity of raw force.
| epolanski wrote:
| > Financial privacy is definitely a right.
|
| Unless you prove it is, it's not. It's not encoded in the
| UN's human rights charter, nor in pretty much any legal
| system out there.
|
| Governments _should_ protect you from other individuals
| accessing your financials except the government itself, but
| that 's it.
|
| > Cryptography allows individuals to use the force of
| mathematical law, superior to all other law, to enforce
| their privacy rights.
|
| I am absolutely against the use of "cryptography" (which by
| the way any transaction system uses) and cryptocurrencies
| as there is one and only one purpose for such a thing: tax
| evasion and money laundering. There's literally no other
| purpose except far fetched arguments.
| highwaylights wrote:
| or the purposes of funding terrorism, narcotics, human
| trafficking, weapons, uranium, endangered wildlife and/or
| biohazardous material.
|
| There's a point at which if you undermine law enforcement
| enough there's no point in continuing to try to enforce laws,
| which means there's no point in having laws at all. The hype
| mob either doesn't see this or doesn't care, which is
| incredibly naive either way.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Counterpoint: bring back the wild west.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| In my capacity of unofficial spokesperson for the hype mob,
| I would say that if a tool can be created that has
| legitimate and nonlegitimate purposes, criminalizing its
| creation or possession is the worst possible action to
| take, because it ensures that all talented people who are
| interested in developing it for legitimate purposes become
| disaffected at worst or aligned with your enemies at best.
| Setting aside the moral argument, the NSA's treatment of
| Snowden, Manning, et al. makes it much more difficult for
| the NSA to attract the best talent in its field.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _criminalizing its creation or possession is the worst
| possible action to take_
|
| Sure. That's not what's happening.
|
| Tornado was used illegally. Its leadership kept
| developing it, kept getting paid, and made no apparent
| course corrections. This wasn't simply a GitHub repo; it
| was a remunerated enterprise.
|
| When I've brought up the legal issues around mixers, a
| common response involves the impossibility of governments
| to enforce their Will on blockchains. If these guys
| messaged similarly they're justifiably boned.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Justifiable by what, exactly? International trade in a
| multipolar world requires a money supply that no single
| government can arbitrarily enforce its will on. Is the
| argument that every government _should_ have an unchecked
| ability to enforce its will on the medium of exchange?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _International trade in a multipolar world requires a
| money supply that no single government can arbitrarily
| enforce its will on_
|
| Do we have such a money supply? If not, do we have
| international trade? Is the world not multipolar?
|
| This claim fails on face value. Most of history was
| multipolar, international trading and reliant on money
| states _de facto_ controlled. (You're not moving tonnes
| of gold without the state's permission and not being
| chased by them.)
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| >Is the world not multipolar?
|
| An argument could be made that the US stopped being the
| arbiter of last resort wrt the medium of trade since the
| Ukraine war, but before that point, it was certainly not
| multipolar. There was one political entity that, along
| with its allies, controlled the value of money, and they
| were disincentivised from cheating too hard by the fact
| that they could dictate terms to the rest of the world if
| it was important enough to them.
|
| But I grant you, heavily-guarded ships full of physical
| gold would still work today. If that's a future you're on
| board with you may want an answer for how the piracy
| problem will evolve if trends around the cost of kinetic
| weaponry continue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that 's a future you're on board with_
|
| I'm rejecting the premise that we need a neutral money
| supply. (I reject the notion such a thing can exist.
| Money--monetary value, even--are social constructs.)
|
| International trade in a multipolar world with sovereign
| currencies and commodities works. It has since at least
| the Bronze Age. So yes, if someone wants to cart around
| gold or use crypto, that's fine. But it doesn't magically
| exempt them from the law. A Dutchman committed crimes
| under Dutch law. They were arrested in the Netherlands.
| This isn't some Kim Dotcom bullshit. It's the law being
| applied plainly.
| akimball wrote:
| Bronze age? No. Once gold leaves the sovereigns borders,
| it is a neutral money.
|
| Since 1971? Yes. That is a very brief experiment in
| monetary history, and quite Lindy. It can be validly
| estimated to have 51 years of life left in it (albeit
| with vast error bars, difficult to calculate).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Bronze age? No. Once gold leaves the sovereigns
| borders, it is a neutral money_
|
| "Neutral money" has no meaning in an era when information
| travels at the same speed as trade. (It arguably lacks
| any meaning today.)
|
| Bronze Age civilizations didn't have the surplus labor to
| haul around gold. (Nor to test it.) Though they didn't
| have coins, they used token money--from engraved clay and
| stone markers to shells and beads. Commodity money was
| traded in representative form locally and physically over
| long distances. Commodities, not bullion, were used
| because they preserved value over distance--a Hittite
| trader couldn't know what a gold bullion would exchange
| for in Hispania or Egypt when they got there.
| akimball wrote:
| The attachment of provenance to an item makes it non-
| fungible, removing it's moneyness, until and unless that
| history can be removed.
|
| Just-so stories based on implausible premises -"didnt
| have surplus labor" lol- are conspicuously unpersuasive.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _stories based on implausible premises -"didnt have
| surplus labor " lol- are conspicuously unpersuasive_
|
| Versus stories about neutral money?
|
| Insufficient labor is a hypothesis. The archaeological
| evidence is engraved clay and stone markers. Long-
| distance trades settled with commodities. Bullion being
| traded between kings and kingdoms, seldom by merchants,
| and abandoned stores of value holding jewelry, precious
| stones and spices.
|
| International trade in multipolar worlds does fine
| without a "neutral" money.
| rocqua wrote:
| We currently have a lot of international trade that does
| just fine being USD based. Are we not in a 'multipolar'
| world? I don't know that term.
| akimball wrote:
| ...and the USD is used for far more illicit transactions
| than any other exchange medium. This will predictably
| change as privacy technologies become more widely
| adopted. For example, transactions on the Monero network
| have been growing at an exponential rate for several
| years.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _will predictably change as privacy technologies become
| more widely adopted. For example, transactions on the
| Monero network have been growing at an exponential rate
| for several years_
|
| The posts keep shifting for what governments cannot
| enforce. I suppose this is a natural endgame; crypto
| enthusiasts setting precedents for, and giving popular
| cause to, state expansion.
|
| AML has never been even close to perfect. But it's
| enforced. Hopefully, the Monero community learns from
| Tornado. Instead of thumbing its nose at the law, it
| could try to not encourage illicit transfers in the name
| of some convoluted (if entirely unoriginal)
| interpretation of financial privacy. Then it could
| survive and become something novel, like Bitcoin.
| highwaylights wrote:
| IANAL but if your website has indicated that the software
| is useful for circumventing the law (I don't know if they
| did this) then I imagine it could be possible to make the
| argument that you've induced a lot of people to commit
| felonies while profiting from it directly.
| antiverse wrote:
| >Are we now gonna start arresting all cryptographers?
|
| There are more cryptogrifters than there are cryptographers.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Helping criminals launder money is not a human right.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| I would challenge you to prove that they actively advertised
| their service as such. Stop spreading misinformation.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Being a money mule makes you complicit in fraud or
| financial crimes. Running cryptocurrency code and using
| your own cryptocurrency wallet to help launder stolen money
| is a crime. People are expected to know better than to lend
| their wallet for "temporary storage" of money for a reward,
| especially if they don't know who the source or destination
| of the transaction may be.
|
| No company will advertise themselves as a criminal
| operation, even the dumbest thieves aren't that stupid.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| If our legal system was as dense as this statement, the
| world would be ran by criminals.
| lottin wrote:
| Google "bitcoin financial oppression", and you'll find that
| cryptocurrencies are being advertised left and right as a
| tool to escape "financial oppression", or as someone less
| cynical would say, to evade financial regulations.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| You don't have to actively advertise your criminal
| conspiracies for them to be criminal conspiracies. They
| knowingly facilitated illegal activities.
| vsareto wrote:
| Oh wow, I guess if I don't advertise I'm doing a crime then
| I'm not guilty
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Guess that makes every government money printer complicit in
| money laundering, seeing how the majority of it happens
| through cash.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| It's weird the crypto people think this is a valid
| argument.
|
| If someone did what tornando is doing with physical cash,
| they would also be committing money laundering.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Tornado Cash is an anonymizer. Same as every cash drawer
| in every business. All kinds of money goes in -
| legitimate as well as illegitimate - and is mixed up
| together.
|
| Does shuffling a bunch of currency notes together - some
| of which might be from a drug dealer - make you a
| criminal?
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| You've obviously never heard of the Fifth Amendment. It's
| actually quite the opposite, the Constitution _enhances_ your
| right to privacy (by refusing to talk about something) when
| doing so could be used to prosecute you for a crime.
| kube-system wrote:
| The 5th doesn't give you privacy to anything outside of
| your thoughts inside your head, which isn't related to
| anything being discussed here. Everything else in the US is
| covered by the 4th.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Wrong. For example courts have consistently ruled that
| you can't be compelled to unlock your phone or decrypt
| your hard disk if you're invoking the 5th
| [deleted]
| emkemp wrote:
| "courts have consistently ruled that you can't be
| compelled to unlock your phone ... if you're invoking the
| 5th."
|
| This is demonstrably false.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/nj-supreme-
| court...
| dcolkitt wrote:
| That's NJ Supreme Court, not federal court. They're
| notorious for getting overruled at the federal level.
| kube-system wrote:
| That is a perfect example of how my statement is 100%
| correct. (many/most) Courts in the US have ruled that you
| can't be compelled to provide a decryption key _only_
| when it is, as I said:
|
| > inside your head
|
| If it is written down, biometric, etc it does _not_ get
| protection under the 5th. Those realms are not inside
| your head, and so they are protected by the 4th, and
| subject to warrant.
| dlubarov wrote:
| Encrypted communication protocols are also useful for evading
| the law; do you think they should also be banned and the
| developers arrested?
| lbriner wrote:
| No, that's not what they said. They said if you are using
| it to break laws, then you can't not expect to be arrested.
|
| A money laundering operation can hardly been seen as
| fundamentally a way to provide privacy but as a way to
| change dirty money into clean. It's like claiming that an
| illegal brothel provides employment services as well as
| anything dodgy that people might use it for!
| eric_cc wrote:
| > A money laundering operation
|
| Tornado Cash is not a money laundering operation. It is a
| privacy tool.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The local mob-owned laundromat is also a privacy tool.
| Both are meant to hide the provenance of money from
| others. What's the difference besides the implementation
| details?
| dlubarov wrote:
| The difference is that one provides privacy exclusively
| to money launderers, while the other is a generic tool
| which anyone can use to obtain financial privacy.
| kube-system wrote:
| Nobody has said it is not a privacy tool. It is a privacy
| tool that has documented use in money laundering.
| Building tools is generally legal, using them to commit
| crimes is something different. The developer here is not
| accused of building privacy tools, they are accused of
| knowingly being in on the money laundering and profiting
| from it.
| dlubarov wrote:
| It's not clear from their vague, weasely language whether
| they're accusing him of any involvement beyond building
| the privacy tool. If they had any evidence of that,
| presumably they would have said so.
|
| > suspected of involvement in concealing criminal
| financial flows and facilitating money laundering
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| Press releases are usually summaries, not all
| encompassing dumps of evidence.
| dlubarov wrote:
| Of course; what I'm suggesting is that they would have
| simply used less ambiguous language like "working with"
| or "providing support to". Their weasely language
| suggests that they need plausible deniability because
| their insinuations may turn out to be baseless.
| glennvtx wrote:
| It absolutely protects your privacy in a system where the
| movement of money is public. Donations to politically
| sensitive organizations can be used against you, this
| technology limits that possibility, just as the
| traditional banking system does not make your
| transactions public. Many places in the world people do
| not enjoy your privilege of immunity from state violence
| due to support for activism.
| kube-system wrote:
| Nobody said it didn't protect privacy. Obviously, that is
| the technology's function.
|
| Above, we were talking about whether one has a right to
| that privacy. That right is observed differently by
| location, but it is commonly accepted to have at least
| some exceptions.
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| Except the Seychelles. There is a reason why dirty money and
| shell companies make the Seychelles their home as well as the
| wealthy elites mentioned in the Pandora Papers.
| gfodor wrote:
| That's not how universal rights work. You can say privacy is
| not a universal right. But if it is, governments have no say
| on if it ever "ends."
| kube-system wrote:
| Technically correct, I was just supporting my argument with
| evidence. The UDHR also doesn't recognize a right to
| absolute privacy. They only recognize a right to be free
| from _arbitrary_ interference with privacy. The idea that
| privacy is absolute and has no exceptions is very
| extremist, and not really supported by anyone other than
| absolutist internet commenters.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| > The right to privacy ends at the moment that it is used as
| an excuse to evade the law.
|
| Sufficiently good use of sufficiently good privacy technology
| would make this judgement impossible. What happens then? Good
| luck not becoming a police state.
| kube-system wrote:
| You might be able to encrypt some information associated
| with a crime, but you can't encrypt the real world
| manifestation of crime. https://xkcd.com/538/
| programmarchy wrote:
| The comic proves the parent's point. Drugging and hitting
| people with a wrench (i.e. torturing) to extract
| information is exactly what police states do.
| kube-system wrote:
| The comic has a non-literal meaning as well. (i.e. see
| the alt-text) The wrench can be a warrant, a confidential
| informant, or it can be a security camera, etc.
| Obviously, the world consists of more sources of
| information than encrypted data on your laptop and the
| information inside of your head.
|
| Crimes happen in the real world, not behind a cipher.
| _Some_ element of _any_ crime is unencrypted and
| unencryptable.
| programmarchy wrote:
| I have to disagree with the alt-text. (For me it says,
| "In actual reality, nobody cares about his secrets.")
| It's flippant and out of touch. Because somebody does
| care about his secrets, otherwise mass surveillance
| wouldn't have reached totalitarian levels along with
| privacy becoming increasingly criminalized. So the more
| resource-intensive using the "wrench" is, the more
| privacy is protected.
| duncan_idaho wrote:
| Fuck the law when civil asset forfeiture and qualified
| immunity exist.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > 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 law?
| kube-system wrote:
| 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!
| clucas wrote:
| 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 like... if two dozen people were picketing outside
| of a big corporation, and the police came and arrested one
| dude. You would be the guy saying "they're coming for the
| protesters!" and I'm the guy saying "Well, if they're really
| after protesters why didn't they arrest all of them? And isn't
| that the guy they were investigating for a bank robbery?"
|
| Defending _literally every crypto guy_ is short-sighted if you
| 're a true proponent of the tech. It's possible that there are
| bad people involved in crypto, and you'll be a lot more
| credible as an advocate if you acknowledge that possibility and
| wait for the facts.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > 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 why slippery
| slope is such a big deal in civil liberties and
| constitutional law.
|
| When drug prohibition started, they started by arresting
| kingpin gangstas not students with dime bags. As abortion
| laws restart, states won't begin by arresting anyone who's
| ever donated to Planned Parenthood. But if left unchecked,
| some will eventually get there.
| chitowneats wrote:
| "Some will ... arrest anyone who's ever donated to Planned
| Parenthood"
|
| This is a hysterical prediction.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Yeah, you can't make postfacto laws.
|
| Sure, the government might make it illegal to donate to
| Planned Parenthood in the future but per the constitution
| they can't make prior donations illegal.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The sentencing guidelines (which direct the sentence a
| judge will give you) get changed ex post facto all the
| f'ing time. So yes, you can be given an ex-post facto
| sentence, it's just that it's been 'lawyered' to be
| constitutional (we didn't change the criminal law, just
| the sentencing guideline that dictated the sentence you
| were given for commiting the crime) even though the rule
| is 'Every law that makes criminal an act that was
| innocent when done, or that inflicts a greater punishment
| than the law annexed to the crime when committed, is an
| ex post facto law within the prohibition of the
| Constitution'.
|
| The sentencing range wasn't changed, just the sentence
| the judge was required to give, but the range isn't a
| rule so it's ok. And if the judge sentences outside the
| guideline the prosecutor can challenge for 'sentence
| outside guideline range'. The constitution has been
| lawyered into oblivion.
| RavingGoat wrote:
| You sound like a white person from a middle class or
| better upbringing.
| notch656a wrote:
| Unless you find that abortion was _never_ legal because
| the state statute on "murder" is vague. For instance, if
| the court re-interprets a murder statute then I believe
| that would apply to prior cases and then prior donations
| to any establishment assisting in abortion could be
| pursued as conspiracy.
|
| There's a lot of room to re-interpret laws that were
| already on the books in ways that make prior "crimes"
| illegal today when they wouldn't have been interpreted
| that way when they happened.
|
| There's other things that can be done as well, like
| searching their residence for every single code violation
| possible, daily police visits, civil asset forfeiture,
| fine-comb tax auditing, etc. It's a pretty well oiled
| machine for finding ways to convict people or make their
| life hell through the legal system if that's the goal.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| That's not how our constitution works. Roe v Wade is
| binding for any actions a person carries out before it
| got overturned in Dobbs.
|
| Even if a court ruling or legal interpretation gets
| overturned later, that doesn't allow you to prosecute
| people who were relying on that legal interpretation.
|
| Judges aren't mindless machines and they realize the
| importance of avoiding postfacto prosecutions.
| notch656a wrote:
| You have more faith in judges than I do. I've seen judges
| act as mindless machines.
|
| and below still stands:
|
| >There's other things that can be done as well, like
| searching their residence for every single code violation
| possible, daily police visits, civil asset forfeiture,
| fine-comb tax auditing, etc. It's a pretty well oiled
| machine for finding ways to convict people or make their
| life hell through the legal system if that's the goal.
|
| If the powers that be want to punish those who contribute
| to abortion, they will find a way to do it, even ex-post-
| facto.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the powers that be want to punish those who
| contribute to abortion, they will find a way to do it,
| even ex-post-facto_
|
| In that case there is no room for crypto. Totalitarian
| regimes can execute anyone suspected of holding it.
| notch656a wrote:
| You're right, I should have said if the powers that be
| want to punish those who _they find out_ contributed to
| abortion. I thought that was obvious, but leave it to HN
| for me to actually have to explain if privacy and crypto
| prevents a regime from finding out someone has it, then
| they won 't be able to punish them for it (although of
| course they could always punish for the mere possibility,
| just as a totalitarian regime could execute their whole
| populace).
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Various states already prohibit using public money to
| fund abortions, a prohibition on private funds for an act
| they consider extremely illegal and equivalent to murder
| is not a stretch.
|
| "12 states prohibit state family planning funds from
| going to any entity that provides abortions."
|
| https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-
| family...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You can prohibit public money for any reason - and we do
| all the time, eg forcing the state to buy only US made
| cars.
|
| You can't prohibit private money use in a situation like
| this - especially not for a political funding thing. That
| is actually a freedom of speech issue.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If planned parenthood isn't performing any abortions in a
| state where it is illegal, how could funding them ever be
| made illegal? None of this makes sense.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| People from illegal states already cross state lines to
| get abortions and then return to their home states. While
| it's not presently illegal, without Roe v Wade, I think
| that may quickly change.
|
| > No state has yet enacted a law to ban this travel. But
| it has been attempted: In Missouri, a bill is pending
| that would enforce abortion restrictions through civil
| lawsuits if the abortion is administered outside the
| state.
|
| https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/can-states-
| punish...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > enforce abortion restrictions through civil lawsuits
|
| I wonder how long it will be before SCOTUS kills off
| these attempts to use civil litigation to end-run the
| Constitution. The Texas law matched the court's ideology,
| so they let it stand, but now that Roe is overturned I
| expect the court to dispense with the law before places
| like California can use it to render the 2A moot.
|
| If they let this continue, the court will become
| irrelevant in a hurry. They may have granted themselves
| sweeping authority a long while back, but that can be
| changed easily via legislation.
| chitowneats wrote:
| And you believe it will be legal for them to arrest you
| for donations you made before those laws were in place?
|
| That's assuming you're correct they would try to ban
| private funds. A big assumption.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| IANAL.
|
| No, ex post facto laws aren't legal.
|
| If the state law says so, yes, you could get an out-of-
| state charge for providing financial aid to an abortion
| operation after contributing to an organization that
| funds them. With Roe v Wade gone, I am not sure there is
| a federal precedent for how to handle crimes relating to
| committing a murder in one state that is not considered a
| murder in another state.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| a) Interesting choice of words b) Donating to PP is
| aiding murder (nee abortions), it's a small step to
| abetment.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Personhood is a prerequisite to murder. No jurisdiction
| has granted this to the unborn, but it's an interesting
| thought experiment if some chose to: thinking up
| "unforeseen" second- and third-order effects is a fun
| exercise (life insurance, HOV lanes, tax deductions,
| censuses & electoral maps, broken websites which assume
| all persons have names, birthdates in the future, null
| birthdays on death certificates)
| chitowneats wrote:
| It's hysterical in both senses of the word.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > As abortion laws restart, states won't begin by arresting
| anyone who's ever donated to Planned Parenthood. But if
| left unchecked, some will eventually get there.
|
| First thing, you can't arrest people for prior donations as
| postfacto laws are unconstitutional.
|
| Second, if abortion is considered murder, why should it be
| legal to fund illegal abortions? We generally don't allow
| people to fund criminal activity for good reasons.
|
| Do you think it should be legal to donate to criminal
| organizations?
|
| What are your thoughts on donations to Al-Qaeda?
| [deleted]
| ROTMetro wrote:
| TLDR: You have no rights in America other than the ones
| you can afford to pay a lawyer to force to be enforced.
|
| Dude, as someone in the system, ex post facto happens all
| the time. In my case I can challenge it, but if I get
| slapped with lets say a completely 'theoretical' $5000 ex
| post facto "fine" it's going to cost more in lawyers to
| challenge, plus piss off my judge/PO for wasting time. As
| someone who can't get a job due to my record and can't
| afford a lawyer I have 'access' to the court for remedy,
| but I don't have access to a lawyer for remedy. The
| Constitution and our government are two different things.
|
| If something gets ruled unconstitutional, that doesn't
| suddenly free prisoners in the USA. Each prisoner needs
| to then challenge their conviction in court, and get past
| the high procedural bar (as a Fed prisoner, do you submit
| to the circuit in which you are now unconstitutionally
| imprisoned, or the circuit that convicted you
| unconstitutionally? Depends on the argument you are
| making, either could be right or wrong. Pick the wrong
| one and you waste three months minimum (so much for
| speeding trial, that only applies to your initial trial
| according the the supreme court) for the court to come
| back and say 'they don't have jurisdiction'. Not forward
| to the correct court, just denied for lack of
| jurisdiction. For you challenging something already found
| unconstitutional that should just be immediate release
| upon Supreme Court ruling. And don't forget, you have a
| time limit to challenge something found unconstitutional.
| You took too long? To bad, you're now stuck in prison for
| something found unconstitutional because you didn't
| understand your rights and navigate the bar placed in the
| form of the court system in a timely), nevermind hurdles
| placed in prison (mailroom only open from this time to
| this time, mail room not certifying your mail or 'losing'
| it, law library copyers broken, commissary 'out' of law
| library typewriter ribbons for sale), etc. If the
| Constitution was law, those people held
| unconstitutionally would be released upon Supreme Court
| findings. The fact they aren't and can be kept in prison
| for 'taking to long' to challenge their Supreme Court
| determined unconstitutional conviction shows the
| Constitution is just a 'guideline' in the USA.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > ex post facto happens all the time
|
| Can you give an example of one such time?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I did above. Fees/assessments that were not part of your
| sentence get added/imposed after the fact. The sentencing
| guidelines get changed AFTER what you are sentenced for
| occured, yet you are sentenced to the 'new' sentencing
| guidelines sentence, not the sentence that was called for
| at the time of your offense. There is a whole legal class
| called 'collateral consequences' that are punishments it
| would be inconvenient to be called punishments. They are
| instead 'collateral consequences' that don't fall under
| ex post facto and are then 'legal' to apply after the
| fact. Imagine that, an entire type of punishment defined
| as not a punishment to skirt the Constitution. The courts
| don't see the constitution as their guiding principle,
| but as bugs to try find workarounds for.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Caveat needed here: This does not apply if you took a
| plea for lesser time instead of accepting the 'trial tax'
| (which normally quadrupoles your sentence from say 2-7
| years to 20-40) which removes your constitutional right
| as you agree "not to make any collateral attacks on your
| sentence" in the plea agreement in addition to your right
| to trial. (Yes the higher courts will probably override
| this but most guys give up when the district rejects
| them. It's scary as hell challenging the prosecutor/judge
| on your own from prison, dealing with the harassment from
| the mailroom cops, one out of maybe every 4 months being
| able to buy new typewriter ribbons in commissary, copiers
| down, high copier fees. The entire process is designed to
| discourage you from pursuing your rights.)
|
| The system shouldn't work like insurance claim
| submissions that if you fight long enough/hard enough or
| can pay someone to fight for you ultimately grudgingly
| your constitutional rights are recognized. Remember,
| China's constitution includes democracy and free speech
| too, but just like our rights they enacted 'reasonable
| rules that happen to be barriers to those rights as an
| unfortunate side effect'.
| thebradbain wrote:
| > Second, if abortion is considered murder, why should it
| be legal to fund illegal abortions? We generally don't
| allow people to fund criminal activity for good reasons.
|
| Because it's not murder. Legislating that it is does not
| make it so. Full stop. That's like a government trying to
| legislate that the sky must always be blue, or that it's
| illegal to frown, or that 2+2=5. Just because it's a law
| does not make it just or sensible, and I would hope that
| in modern society we would not blindly obey
| unjust/unnecessary/unwelcome laws without questioning.
| pas wrote:
| Murder is a legal category, it can be whatever we define
| it to be, so if legislation makes abortion murder then it
| is.
|
| Is it intentionally ending the life of a human being?
| Well, what life, what is a human being?
|
| It's intentionally terminating a pregnancy? Yes. Is that
| bad? Well, if the would-be-mother doesn't want it it's
| definitely bad, and if the would-be-mother wants it then
| it definitely seems cruel to not do it, but when society
| tries to impose whatever morals on these people the
| arguments start to look very silly very soon.
|
| The main argument against abortion is a strange begging
| the question fallacy mixed with consequentialism: if the
| abortion would not happen then things would go great and
| a human would born (the implied assumption is that it's
| somehow unquestionably good).
| altairprime wrote:
| The standard playbook for arresting specific criminals
| overlaps with the more extreme playbook you described.
|
| Whether it's the former or the latter cannot be determined
| from this arrest alone.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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]
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > It would be like... if two dozen people were picketing
| outside of a big corporation, and the police came and
| arrested one dude. You would be the guy saying "they're
| coming for the protesters!" and I'm the guy saying "Well, if
| they're really after protesters why didn't they arrest all of
| them? And isn't that the guy they were investigating for a
| bank robbery?"
|
| Weird take because taking one or a few persons out of a large
| crowd is a standard LE tactic for attacking protests and
| similar stuff.
| clucas wrote:
| OK, fine, change the example to... imagine there are a
| hundred restaurants in town, and the police come and arrest
| one restaurant owner. OP is the guy saying "they're coming
| for the restaurant owners!" and I'm the guy saying
| "Well..." etc.
|
| My point is, there are a lot of people on HN who seem to
| think any arrest or prosecution of anyone who is involved
| in crypto is due to a shadowy push by the establishment to
| maintain control of the money supply and thus our lives.
| I'm trying to point out (1) there are simpler explanations,
| and (2) if you keep trying to defend everyone involved in
| crypto without knowing the facts, you're going to get
| burned and normies are going to be a lot more skeptical
| about crypto in the future. Just... be careful, guys.
| Kiro wrote:
| No hacker should support this. Period. Don't let your hate
| for crypto blind you.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| If that were true, it would be _so easy_ for them to swing
| public opinion in their favor by saying so.
|
| Headline: Arrest of developer with suspected ties to North
| Korean money laundering
|
| Body: He has also previously contributed to Tornado Cash.
|
| But all we know is what they decided to tell us... he's a
| developer of privacy tech. If the facts change, I'll change
| my mind.
| Someone wrote:
| Did you read the article? It starts:
|
| _"On Wednesday 10 August, the FIOD arrested a 29-year-old
| man in Amsterdam. He is suspected of involvement in
| concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money
| laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through
| the decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash"_
|
| So the suspicion is that he didn't only develop the tool,
| but was involved in its illegal use, too.
| afavour wrote:
| Usually when there's an ongoing investigation the default
| is for police to not release too much information to avoid
| jeopardising the investigation, then release all the info
| when the investigation is complete. It's frustrating and
| often a principle that's applied too broadly, but I do
| understand the reasoning behind it.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| I agree they usually withhold details of the case. But I
| don't think they would flat-out lie about the charges
| being brought.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > But I don't think they would flat-out lie about the
| charges being brought.
|
| I dunno, there's a pretty big trend going on right now of
| producing tv shows / prodcasts about how ineffective
| (with a strong hint of incompentence) cops can be.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I agree they usually withhold details of the case. But
| I don't think they would flat-out lie about the charges
| being brought.
|
| "With suspected ties to X" isn't necessarily an element
| of the charges being brought. And the police can and do
| lie (or state "suspicion" on a very flimsy basis) when
| making public announcements related to arrests, and
| headlines often credulously repeat police spin rather
| than being grounded in facts.
|
| While this tends to get the most attention (and still
| then not enough for the press to change) around police
| spin and media coverage related to police shootings, it
| is true far beyond that.
| voakbasda wrote:
| In the US, government agents absolutely can and do lie
| during the course of an investigation. This is why you
| should never ever talk to the police.
| elefanten wrote:
| There have been a series of previous stories about North
| Korean state hackers using it to launder proceeds from
| known hacks.
|
| This didn't happen with no lead up or context
| game-of-throws wrote:
| Why are we not targeting the hackers instead of privacy
| advocates?
|
| Should we arrest the Tor developers because North Koreans
| use Tor?
| theptip wrote:
| Quite hard to target hackers inside a hostile country
| like NK.
| akimball wrote:
| Hard to pursue the perpetrator does not justify pursuing
| someone else.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _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.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| That's a straw man argument. They don't have to arrest all to
| scare most into doing what they want them to do.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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
| gfodor wrote:
| > 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.
| tgflynn wrote:
| It could be the first of many. Up until yesterday we lived in
| a world (by which I mean the Western World) where no one had
| ever been arrested just for writing open source code. It
| appears that this is no longer the case. This is how the
| Overton window gets moved, one step at a time, not in huge
| leaps. And clearly there are powerful forces interested in
| moving it in a direction that would likely be detrimental to
| many of us here.
| chii wrote:
| > where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open
| source code.
|
| But was he arrested for _just_ the code he wrote? Or more,
| and the code was just an ancillary property of the person
| being arrested?
| clucas wrote:
| How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for
| writing open source code?"
|
| The whole point of my comment was that he was probably
| arrested for more than that... Or at least, we should wait
| to see what the evidence against the guy is.
|
| If you go around saying "the sky is falling! they're coming
| for the developers!" then it turns out the guy was actually
| doing bad stuff to help launder money, you're going to make
| it that much harder to get people's attention when there is
| an _actual_ abuse of police power.
| tgflynn wrote:
| > How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for
| writing open source code?"
|
| I don't know that, but that currently appears to be the
| case and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.
|
| EDIT: The title of the page is "Arrest of suspected
| developer of Tornado Cash". So they are certainly making
| it appear that they consider having developed Tornado
| Cash to itself be worthy of arrest.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The article doesn't actually say he was arrested _for
| being_ the developer of Tornado Cash. It might be trying
| to imply that (or offer an explanation of what the
| connection is between the arrest and the investigation
| into Tornado Cash). All the article asserts is that he is
| suspected to be the developer of Tornado Cash, and that
| he was arrested "[under suspicion] of involvement in
| concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating
| money laundering" via Tornado Cash. That could (and
| likely does) mean that he was involved in far more than
| just development.
| peyton wrote:
| One fact is that it's Dutch law enforcement, not
| international law enforcement. A second fact is that Dutch
| law enforcement have stated "multiple arrests are not ruled
| out," so we're not talking about "just one guy" anymore.
|
| Finally, I'm not optimizing for credibility when stating my
| opinion, nor am I defending a single person. I do not think
| arresting developers is an effective solution for preventing
| money laundering. It matters not to me who the "bad people"
| may be.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Sorry, but this is nonsense. This was strictly done because
| of US pressure and sanction. Netherlands would have done
| nothing and likely the US did the logging and tracing of
| this individual.
| petre wrote:
| We'll see if he gets extradited to the US.
| plgonzalezrx8 wrote:
| > we're not talking about "just one guy" anymore.
|
| Bad people can also work in groups.
|
| > I do not think arresting developers is an effective
| solution for preventing money laundering.
|
| You're essentially reducing his role to "Just a developer"
| while ignoring that he might be a lot more than just a
| developer and might be involved with actual money
| laundering at many different stages of the process other
| than "Just writing a little bit of code".
|
| Im not defending one side or the other, just pointing out
| that by ignoring everything else and calling him "Just a
| developer" you're not being objective.
| puszczyk wrote:
| > This is because they don't like money that is independent
| from state control.
|
| Who is "they"?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Ah yes, arrest developers of open source privacy code and
| blame them for North Korea money laundering
|
| I have questions: did money laundering happen on the platform?
| Did the developer financially benefit from the money
| laundering? If the answer to both is "yes", then it sounds like
| the developer could be in a world of trouble, which is not
| related to crypto.
|
| If I build a picture-sharing board with no moderation, and I
| profit from illegal pictures being shared, I would be in
| trouble for facilitating crime, that doesn't go away because I
| implement the picture-sharing on a blockchain. Using crypto to
| implement any system doesn't make it kosher: as far as the law
| is concerned,a system is what it does, not how it does it.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| They were also asked to implement some basic money laundering
| preventions. They did nothing.
| jjulius wrote:
| Exactly. I understand the sentiment that people are sharing
| around, "They're just being arrested for writing code!",
| but intent matters. And it seems like, in this case, there
| may have actually been _intent_ to develop this to assist
| with illegal activities.
| eric_cc wrote:
| Didn't they throw away the keys to the smart contract a
| long time ago?
| Vespasian wrote:
| If they did that probably doesn't matter.
|
| "I built a bomb I can't disarm" is not a credible
| defense.
|
| It'll be especially nasty if they profited from the
| service after throwing away the keys and "learning" of
| the money laundering going on there.
|
| Walking away a year or two ago would argueably have
| helped them.
| Sir_Liigmaz wrote:
| 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.
| naet wrote:
| I'm in favor of privacy, but if you're profiting off designing
| and operating a system that you know is being used to
| facilitate large amounts of criminal money laundering (some
| going to known foreign government agents), you're more or less
| asking to be arrested.
|
| You can pose an argument that your service has some positive
| impact in certain cases, but you can't flat deny any negative
| impact or responsibility for consequences of your service. This
| is true of any and all services, whether they relate to privacy
| or not.
| [deleted]
| desindol wrote:
| Privacy is a human right? citation needed.
| josu wrote:
| Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
|
| >Article 12
|
| >No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his
| privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon
| his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the
| protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| That allows for interference with someones privacy.
|
| Basically, interference of privacy based on reason or
| system is allowed.
|
| It does give you the right to not be subjected to
| interference of your privacy from random choice or personal
| whim is not.
|
| According to the article, that right has not been broken.
|
| Moreover, you do not have a right to privacy.
|
| Rather, you have a the right to not have your privacy
| arbitrarily interfered with.
|
| This is a pretty important distinction.
| implements wrote:
| (From Wikipedia) The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of
| the United States ensures that _" the right of the people to
| be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
| against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
| violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable
| cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly
| describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
| things to be seized."_
|
| (Also) Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human
| Rights states: _No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
| interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and
| reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
| law against such interference or attacks._
|
| It's generally understood that without privacy people are
| effectively disenfranchised politically, because any
| expression of an contentious opinion or association with
| subversive or dissident thinkers becomes potentially so
| harmful that wise people would avoid both and keep almost
| entirely to themselves or family.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > unreasonable
|
| > arbitrary
|
| There is no absolute right to privacy.
| zaroth wrote:
| There are no absolute rights. Even the right to life is
| not absolute.
| implements wrote:
| Of-course, but then there are no absolute rights that I
| can think off - property can be taxed, movement
| restricted by imprisonment / laws against trespass,
| labour can be forced by military draft or prison work,
| speech restricted by laws against defamation / abusive
| conduct, life can be taken in self-defence or during
| military service, etc.
| eric_cc wrote:
| It certainly is an ideal if not a legally protected right.
| Before slaves were free, they could still say "freedom is a
| human right".
| seanw444 wrote:
| Privacy not being a human right is acceptable?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| This isn't open source privacy code. Whether or not someone
| else does something bad with it isn't relevant.
|
| Until you can face what it really is, you aren't going to come
| to terms with what's happening.
|
| This is like making unlicensed guns that don't follow safety or
| tracking regulations, then complaining "but I'm not the
| burglar, I didn't kill anyone" when you get shut down.
|
| This is and always has been the obvious explicit purpose of
| this code. This has nothing to do with "privacy" and you don't
| actually legally have the right to hide your financial
| transactions besides.
| notch656a wrote:
| >This is like making unlicensed guns that don't follow safety
| or tracking regulations,
|
| That is actually legal in the nation that was in the news for
| sanctioning Tornado Cash.
| sneed-oil wrote:
| > you don't actually legally have the right to hide your
| financial transactions besides
|
| Maybe you don't, but that's what happens by default when
| using cash
| glennvtx wrote:
| You don't have the ethical right to force people to
| disclose their financial transactions, either. Nor use
| threats of violence against people for designing tools that
| allow people to keep their transactions private. Doing so
| is the action of tyrants. Many people in the world do not
| have the luxury of immunity from state violence for
| supporting activism, and this technology is meant to shield
| them from such.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If you're exchanging cash, you still theoretically have the
| legal obligation to declare it. Businesses accepting cash
| have the obligation of issuing a receipt, and you may have
| some obligations of keeping that receipt.
|
| Now, it's true that these things are hard to enforce, or
| even impossible for small enough sums. But people
| systematically flaunting the rules for large sums of money
| will get arrested, even with cash.
| sneed-oil wrote:
| > If you're exchanging cash, you still theoretically have
| the legal obligation to declare it. Businesses accepting
| cash have the obligation of issuing a receipt, and you
| may have some obligations of keeping that receipt.
|
| I'm pretty sure that's legally required even when buying
| with crypto
| giaour wrote:
| Cash is unwieldy in large amounts, which is why most
| authorities don't care about cash transactions. When cash
| is used at scale for anonymous transactions (e.g., when the
| US airlifted cargo planes full of cash to Iraq in 2004 to
| pay government workers without an Iraqi paper trail), it is
| international news.
|
| If tornado cash were just obscuring transactions that could
| have conceivably been finalized with cash by private
| parties (~<$10K USD), I guarantee that no one in authority
| would give a shit.
| zomglings wrote:
| What do you think the purpose of this code is?
|
| There are people operating on blockchains in which
| transaction parameters are a matter of public record who: 1.
| May not want individual amounts and recipients to be publicly
| inspectable. 2. And are not criminals.
|
| It may not be a right, but Tornado Cash is absolutely a tool
| to increase privacy. It is not solely for criminals to
| liquidate blockchain assets.
| km3r wrote:
| Even if there is people who want that, that doesn't justify
| it. Privacy has limits, and there is some really bad people
| using crypto to transfer assets. Banks are required to
| report suspicious transactions, so working around banking
| laws by using crypto is clearly breaking the spirit of
| those regulations. If an individual wants privacy, there is
| a more standing if they do it themselves, but when a third
| party gets involved, they must follow the same laws all
| businesses must follow. You can't code yourself out of
| legal responsibility.
|
| Now if you don't think banks should be required to report
| suspicious transactions, get that law changed. But
| circumventing the law with crypto isn't the solution.
|
| And taxes are kind of proof that the government has a right
| to see ones personal transactions. You can't have income
| taxes without verifiable income requirements and reporting.
| notch656a wrote:
| When I traded crypto I just self-reported on my taxes.
| It's not that hard. It's already illegal to "evade"
| taxes, so we don't need to make it "double illegaler" by
| banning crypto used to evade taxes.
|
| >Now if you don't think banks should be required to
| report suspicious transactions, get that law changed. But
| circumventing the law with crypto isn't the solution.
|
| The issue is due to FATCA as a US citizen I have no exit
| valve to simply leave and seek residence elsewhere
| because leaving the country still makes me a US person
| reportable to IRS by worldwide banks (and in fact also by
| legal self reporting requirements) and the US charges a
| oft prohibitive multi-thousand dollar exit tax renounce.
| If we're going to put these kind of imposition on people
| we should at least streamline renouncing and make the
| payment to leave the gang something almost as cheap as
| the walk to Mexico.
| a4isms wrote:
| 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 me to keep
| records of who sold me what?
|
| I take the proceeds from my pawn shop to the bank. They are
| required by law to collect my ID. If I deposit large amounts of
| cash, they have additional reporting requirements. Does
| "privacy is a human right" trump these laws that exist to
| prevent the laundering of criminal proceeds through banks?
|
| I also have discomfort over how much data the government
| collects in the name of preventing the laundering of stolen
| goods and criminal proceeds.
|
| But in the large, I accept that freedom is not an absolute, it
| is a set of careful tradeoffs between:
|
| 1. The freedom for citizens to do as they please without
| society limiting what we're allowed to do, versus; 2. The
| freedom for criminal cartels to do as they please, preying upon
| citizens.
|
| The latter is important, because when criminals prey upon
| citizens, they reduce our freedom as well. I want the freedom
| to own nice things. The easier it is for criminals to steal and
| fence my things, the less freedom I actually have to enjoy them
|
| I also want the freedom to run a business. When criminals can
| prey upon businesses with ransomware and launder the proceeds
| through TornadoCash, the less freedom I actually have.
|
| A "Libertarian Paradise" where criminals are free to do as they
| please because we don't want to impinge upon any citizen's
| freedom whatsoever, is free in name only. We may not like all
| of the current set of tradeoffs, but we must accept that if we
| don't make some tradeoffs, we will not be free in any real
| sense.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > 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"...
| a4isms wrote:
| That has no bearing on the basic argument which consists
| of:
|
| 1. Claim: "Privacy is a human right, the government should
| not be allowed to know anything about financial
| transactions," and;
|
| 2. Counter-claim: "Privacy of financial transactions is not
| a thing now, and absolute ideological freedom is not actual
| freedom, it is the law of the jungle where the strong are
| free to prey upon the weak, and the weak have no freedom
| from the predatory strong."
| threeseed wrote:
| > 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.
| cjg wrote:
| https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-
| rights/ri...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There is zero law suggesting financial transactions are
| subject to Article 8 protection.
| duncan_idaho wrote:
| What about right to own property alone as well as in
| association with others.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| > Actually they go after the people committing the crime AND
| those facilitating it.
|
| But only if it is in their interest. We don't see other
| services and platforms sanctioned for facilitating illegal
| activity. Furthermore, the Data Protection Directive does
| give users the (human!) right to privacy, considering that
| crypto isn't a currency, it's merely your private data which
| is also protected by GDPR.
| jjulius wrote:
| >We don't see other services and platforms sanctioned for
| facilitating illegal activity.
|
| ... yes we do, lol. You hear about people being arrested
| and platforms shut down for facilitating financial crimes
| in the crypto space all the time.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > We don't see other services and platforms sanctioned for
| facilitating illegal activity.
|
| How about the various anti-money laundering regulations and
| agencies around the world, e.g.
| https://www.fincen.gov/history-anti-money-laundering-laws
|
| How about the US Dept. of the Treasury's program against
| Transnational Criminal Organizations, which includes
| sanctions: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-
| issues/financial-sanctions/...
| [deleted]
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Privacy is very much enshrined in US law, it's the 4th
| amendment to our constitution.
| rchaud wrote:
| Strange how the NSA can just skate through this. Then
| again, the US Constitution also says "All men are created
| equal" and that was a bunch of horseshit for centuries.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Laws need people willing to uphold them. It's a good
| thing when laws are unreasonable, and a bad thing when
| people are unreasonable.
| tzs wrote:
| > Then again, the US Constitution also says "All men are
| created equal"
|
| Nope. You are thinking of the Declaration of
| Independence.
| threeseed wrote:
| 4th amendment is specifically limited to unreasonable
| search and seizures.
|
| It doesn't mean that you have the right to privacy in any
| and all situations.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Ah, the famed "Hacker" News users advocating for the Big
| State and against privacy.
| malermeister wrote:
| Just because you're a hacker doesn't mean you have to be an
| anarchist, anti-state extremist.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| 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
| smsm42 wrote:
| Ageism here is unwarranted. I'd assume there are now more
| 40something years olds keeping the traditional hacker
| values (before "hacker" became to mean "dude stealing
| money from gullible strangers over the internet") than
| there are 20something years olds. Because they actually
| might have been the part of that old hacker culture (not
| sure if it even exists now?). Now even in the best tech
| schools they'd probably teach you the most important
| thing on the internet (after the adtech of course) is to
| make AIs to ban "hate speech" and "misinformation". And
| if the independent hacker culture still exists, it's
| certainly not easy to find among the noise.
| gfodor wrote:
| It has been wild watching this crowd slowly morph over
| the past decade or so, largely, into exactly what feels
| like this.
| npc54321 wrote:
| akimball wrote:
| I think you may mistake the individuals for the whole. HN
| as a social center can be corrupted and coopted without
| any of the original individuals changing their behaviors,
| simply by adding more individuals with different
| behaviors. If by "they" you mean the individuals, your
| statement would then be incorrect, while if you mean the
| community gestalt, it would be correct.
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948,
| Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
| interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation.
| Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against
| such interference or attacks."
|
| International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
| 1966, Article 1: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or
| unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor or
| reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
| law against such interference or attacks.
| RansomStark wrote:
| > Not a human right
|
| The UN disagrees. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of
| Human Rights: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary
| interference with his privacy, family, home or
| correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and
| reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
| law against such interference or attacks". [0]
|
| You can argue what the right to privacy means and the
| limitations of that freedom in respect of non-arbitrary
| interference are acceptable, but to claim privacy is not a
| human right is simply incorrect.
|
| [0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-
| huma...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Does the UN declaration have the force of law anywhere? Or
| is is more of a "we wish it worked like this" document?
| estebank wrote:
| > Although not legally binding, the contents of the UDHR
| have been elaborated and incorporated into subsequent
| international treaties, regional human rights
| instruments, and national constitutions and legal codes.
|
| Third paragraph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universa
| l_Declaration_of_Human...
| biglearner1day wrote:
| And it is always under the guise of anti-money laundering,
| anti-terrorism or whatever other reason they can find to excuse
| their inexcusable actions. Take mass government surveillance
| for example.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Biggest one is probably "think of the children."
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| HN in its current avatar would probably cheer on if the
| Patriot Act was enacted today.
|
| Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled
| with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| So we're all suppose to become techno-anarchists? HN has a
| great balance of both, it's just mostly the crypto-obsessed
| that decry government encroachment because they're still
| struggling to find a useful purpose for the technology
| before they get regulated.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Escaping government encroachment is literally the purpose
| of the technology. It needs no other purpose.
|
| The thing is, most people here don't think that escaping
| government encroachment is a worthwhile endeavor. Which
| is pretty much the antithesis of the word "hacker"
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Escaping government encroachment is literally the
| purpose of the technology.
|
| You are assuming that the government is tech-
| illiterate/tech avoidant. As it stands, several US
| government agencies are way ahead of civilians on tech,
| and not for the purposes of escaping the government.
| Technology is just a tool, it can be used to further any
| end the wielder chooses
| jvdizzle wrote:
| It's one thing to be a techno-anarchist and it's another
| thing to be reasonably skeptical about government and
| what it considers "justice" and the ramifications of that
| "justice".
|
| The way the government has been approaching cryptography
| and privacy in general is very much "throw the baby out
| with the bath water, we don't need it". What is happening
| in the financial privacy space (i.e. developments in
| crypto) should be alarming to anyone who believes in
| democracy, in my opinion.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Financial privacy has little to do with democracy and at
| the extreme would be its antithesis. Absolute financial
| privacy would mean that moneyed interests could quietly
| buy any legislation they want and the public would be
| none the wiser because the funding/bribe would be
| untraceable and unknowable. See Citizens United[1] for an
| example of how extending _human_ rights to _money_ has
| negative consequences for democratic society.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
|
| Edit: I don't get why financial privacy is consistenly
| presented as a win for the "little guy" against "the
| man". The "little guy" spends most of his money on
| necessities and pays moderate to low taxes relative to
| other parts of society. The parties standing to win the
| most in a world where any transactions can easily be kept
| private are those that wield a lot of money, a lot of
| power, or both. Consider Nancy Pelosi's insider trading
| and how hard it would be to discover/prove if those
| transactions could be kept private.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Yeah when I first discovered this site in like 2017, it
| seemed to be a place of tech-literate counter-culture
| folks. Now the counter-culture seems to be non-existent,
| and actually looked down on.
|
| At this point, the majority of the comments I read sound
| like a CNN anchor script. Ha, maybe it's their web
| developers.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > when I first discovered this site in like 2017, it
| seemed to be a place of tech-literate counter-culture
| folks.
|
| Yep. I could see why you would think that.
|
| > Now the counter-culture seems to be non-existent, and
| actually looked down on.
|
| What changed?
|
| > At this point, the majority of the comments I read
| sound like a CNN anchor script.
|
| There it is. Your attitude. Your comment.
|
| HN is still mostly what it was when I first joined. The
| issue isn't that HN isn't counter-culture.
|
| Rather, you aren't.
| kodah wrote:
| One thing to recognize is that HN has had an influx of
| new users that are pretty right wing, at times using
| veiled far right speech. Years ago, it was filled with
| people who had stock very left wing (at times ridiculous)
| views that I wouldn't call "counter-culture" either. I
| only know this because I've had to report many of them.
|
| My hypothesis is that each of these groups come here
| after being kicked out or pushed out of wherever they
| usually hang out. The ones that remain on HN after a
| period of time are the ones that dang doesn't wear out
| via moderation or haven't been outright banned. They
| eventually learn to be good HN members and then stay.
| akimball wrote:
| The greater the threat which a community represents to
| the vested control hierarchy, the more intensely it
| becomes infiltrated and coopted. This is an Iron Law.
| akimball wrote:
| As evidence, see the moderation immediately above.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > HN in its current avatar would probably cheer on if the
| Patriot Act was enacted today.
|
| No.
|
| > Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled
| with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.
|
| Probably because you disagree with tech/gov right now. It's
| really a case of "the leopard ate my face." HN has a long
| history of supporting "Big Tech." The issue is, you don't
| like how big tech is using it's power now, but were fine
| with it using that power years ago.
|
| > Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech
| apologists.
|
| It's always been that way. You just refused to see it
| because it aligned with your views.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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".
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Sure,
|
| I've even heard speculation that the leak of the various money-
| laundering documents involve an effort to monopolize laundering
| to a even small group.
|
| That's as maybe but no kind of money laundering should have our
| sympathy. Most money laundering does damage - the kind that
| isn't for directly illegal activities often involves local
| corrupt exploiting their control of local resources (Iran, a
| major oil producer, burning 4% it's oil for bitcoins to escape
| sanctions, for example).
| tokai wrote:
| Did you look it up or are you just spouting what ever you can
| dream up to fit your argument? Lots of people all over the
| world have been arrested based on the panama papers.
| mouzogu wrote:
| pretty sure the only people who suffered where the execs
| running the company, losing their yearly bonus,...and only
| because they embarrassed their overlords.
|
| "In March 2018, Mossack Fonseca announced that it would cease
| operations at the end of March due to "irreversible damage"
| to their image as a direct result of the Panama Papers"
| Kbelicius wrote:
| "In October 2020, German authorities issued an
| international arrest warrant for the two founders of the
| law firm at the core of the tax evasion scandal exposed by
| the Panama Papers. Cologne prosecutors are seeking German-
| born Jurgen Mossack and Panamanian Ramon Fonseca on charges
| of accessory to tax evasion and forming a criminal
| organization"
| [deleted]
| paulsutter wrote:
| There's a big legal distinction whether the developers are
| collecting fees from operation of the service, since that's very
| different from merely developing open source software. I'm
| curious how this develops
|
| > It is suspected that persons behind this organisation have made
| large-scale profits from these transactions.
| dannyw wrote:
| There is no fee paid to the developer when it comes to Tornado
| Cash, although there is the TORN token, which is a "governance"
| token.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Are holders of the "governance" token liable in any way?
|
| Like I know the scam of governance tokens is kinda "you
| control / own part it it, sorta" even though a lot of them
| don't do anything.
| operator-name wrote:
| Unless you count relay nodes, but they were run by more than
| just the developers.
| rvnx wrote:
| Exactly like original of developers of Bitcoin, it's not
| because they are not running the nodes themselves that they are
| not benefiting from facilitating ponzi or money laundering.
|
| Nodes are running the network, and developers earn through
| increased coin value and both are necessary part of the
| operations of the service.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Coders logic != legal system
| Anunayj wrote:
| Yup exactly, the mistake these guys did here is, instead of
| creating a token that you have to buy to use the service,
| then giving yourself 50% of the token supply, and having 50
| of your keys control a "DAO" for governance, they decided to
| flatly price.
| paulsutter wrote:
| You've inadvertently explained why a transparent ruse like
| that wouldn't work.
|
| If you want to develop serious privacy technology, make it
| open source and don't benefit from it financially
| Anunayj wrote:
| Oh that was sarcasm directed at the state of
| cryptocurrencies today :P
| [deleted]
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| By this logic every blockchain developer should be arrested.
| The TC developers are not collecting fees directly, but they
| probably did give themselves a large supply of tokens to
| maintain control over the protocol, since the tokens were
| designed for governance.
|
| You can name any blockchain and see the same pattern. You can
| name many applications on top of blockchains, like Uniswap, and
| see similar. All of these protocols are known to facilitate
| some amount of illegal activity. Does this mean all developers
| of these protocols should be charged?
| paulsutter wrote:
| No this means that you should talk with a serious law firm
| before you start one of these projects. OFAC, KYC,
| securities, AML/CFT, so many laws apply and without expert
| advice you can end up in a bad spot
|
| Expert lawyers do exist, example:
|
| https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/professionals/j-dax-
| hansen.ht...
|
| "Dax has advised and continues to work with many of the
| leading companies, industry associations and consortia.
| Projects include U.S. and international digital currency
| exchanges, vaulting and custody solutions, bitcoin kiosks,
| tokenized gold and commodities, decentralized exchanges,
| autonomous smart contracts, stable coins, and Non-fungible
| tokens (NFTs). Beginning in late 2016, Dax worked with his
| colleagues to apply a new level of legal counseling to
| established software projects undertaking token sales related
| to decentralized applications (DApps) and distributed
| protocols..."
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| There is still no legal precedent around a case like this
| as it relates to DAOs and autonomous smart contracts, so a
| law firm could not have told you anything except "we can
| neither confirm nor deny." If there is another US sanction
| that targets a non-custodial smart contract and open source
| project, please do share.
|
| Devastating that it has come to "do not code an E2EE
| privacy tool because you might find yourself in jail one
| day."
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no legal precedent around a case like this as it
| relates to DAOs and autonomous smart contracts, so a law
| firm could not have told you anything except "we can
| neither confirm nor deny."_
|
| Have you hired counsel? This isn't what lawyers do.
|
| Good counsel should provide guard rails. They _will_ say
| this is novel and that they can't guarantee anything, but
| lawyers do that anyway. They're giving advice, not
| judgement.
|
| One of those rails would involve responding to credible
| public allegations around being used to launder money by
| Pyongyang.
| ucha wrote:
| This makes so little sense to me. I don't know how much
| information is made public by the Dutch justice system but I
| would really like to see an affidavit or something like it to
| understand what specific charges are levied against that
| developer.
| tgv wrote:
| Once the trial starts, certainly journalists should be able to
| read all of it, unless the court decides some of it is too
| sensitive. The verdict will be published at rechtspraak.nl.
| seanw444 wrote:
| A trial that has far-reaching effects on the populous, being
| hidden from the populous. That would be entirely
| unsurprising.
| aljsuhbydnhd wrote:
| dangerface wrote:
| I understand why they arrested him but it doesn't seem like he
| did anything thats illegal so it will be interesting to see what
| charge they bring or how they intend to differentiate between
| tornado cash and HSBC laundering money for cartels.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| 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 sure what governance features if any the core
| contracts have), but there are things that could have been done
| nevertheless, like shutting down the website that provided a
| convenient front end.
|
| Basically, unless he can show that he genuinely did not know
| that the service was laundering illegal funds on a large scale,
| or that he did everything in his power to stop this use, he is
| probably screwed. This is especially true if he profits in any
| way from the operation of TC, like if he was operating any
| relay nodes that took a fee for funding anonymous withdrawals.
| dannyw wrote:
| 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?
| jsmith45 wrote:
| 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.
| fisf wrote:
| So, we arrest developers of metasploit and Tor?
| Arnt wrote:
| 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 platform such as that which executes Ethereum's smart
| contracts.
| phphphphp wrote:
| 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.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I hope they'll find and arrest the developers of web browsers
| and Google, because both tools were used to find information
| (about how to murder people and dispose of corpses).
| codehalo wrote:
| Is adobe responsible if someone uses it to edit or create
| pictures of child porn?
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| By this logic, all E2EE and open source privacy tools should
| have their developers arrested. Matrix, Tor, PGP.
|
| The stated goals of TC was privacy. Privacy is not a crime.
| rabf wrote:
| Do you believe that the sam applies to encypted messaging
| protocols which facilitate criminals and terrorists to
| communicate privately?
|
| The developer of Tornado Cash is not responsible for who uses
| it and for which reasons, just are knife makers are not
| responsible for murders.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Should knife makers be held responsible if someone stabs
| someone? TC was designed for privacy and bad actors _also_
| took advantage of that. Prosecutors basically need to prove
| that privacy is bad, good luck with that.
| csydas wrote:
| I would be hesitant to get into the knife/gun comparisons.
|
| The charge isn't the anonymization of the money, it's
| specifically the concealment of money produced by criminal
| activity, and whether or not that's something that is
| allowed based on NL law is really the question, as is the
| motive of the developer/service providers.
|
| This next part is from a US perspective, but remember that
| there are multiple aspects to law besides just the actual
| act. There has to be a motive as well.
|
| The reason as I understand it that knife/gun manufacturers
| aren't really held responsible is because (arguably) their
| goal is not for persons to commit illegal acts.+ Thus the
| illegal act is an exception and independent of the
| intention of why the product is produced, and there is not
| a motivation to empower illegal activity from the
| manufacturers.
|
| With Tornado cash, it becomes a bit murkier I think and I
| suppose this is why it's being sent for examination as
| opposed to outright finding the person guilty. I would
| imagine what the judge wants to find out are things like:
|
| 1. Who was the primary audience/user for Tornado Cash (TC)?
| Not generalized, but who was actually using it?
|
| 2. Were there communications between the team behind TC and
| other entities that can be identified or no?
|
| 3. Did the TC team have awareness of who their main
| customers were and where the coins mainly came from?
|
| 4. Was there any campaigning by the TC team that can be
| found which shows they were specifically catering to people
| doing illegal activities?
|
| 5. Likely, a court and FIOD would want to investigate if
| any regional activity can be tied to Tornado Cash++, and if
| a known sanction region was utilizing the service, were
| actions taken to prevent this.
|
| I understand that the goals of cryptocoins and the goals of
| Governments are opposed by design, and likely there will be
| constant conflicts like this for a long time with
| cryptocoins and governments; one wants to circumvent
| monetary rule, the other imposes the monetary rule. I have
| no personal judgement on TC or cryptocoins, but the court
| decisions will be interesting to read.
|
| + - I do realize that this line blurs a lot depending on
| the type of knife being sold, and even worse with gun
| manufacturers. Unironically, the Borat movies (I forget
| which one) show this pretty well when Borat asks which gun
| is best for "stopping Jews", and the gun owner doesn't
| blink. Gun manufacturers I would suggest walk a fine line
| in their advertising, as do proponents of gun rights. I
| know responsible gun owners so I'm not here to case a wide
| net on all things gun related, but my take on a lot of
| weapons advertising is that it sells a violence fantasy.
|
| ++ I'm not as familiar with ETH or even how probable it is
| that they can find who used a service, but it's something
| that the teams will try to figure out. Whether or not this
| is a good idea long term is not the point I want to make,
| it's more that I think this is something governments will
| be interested in. Very likely, there is a vested from these
| governments in ensuring specific sanctioned countries
| cannot use cryptocoins to circumvent sanctions. I don't
| really agree with this ultimately, but it is important to
| understand the entire thought process beyond just
| "governments hate cryptocoins".
| salawat wrote:
| Knife/gun is completely unrelated in the grand scheme of
| things.
|
| In finance, you are _required_ to maintain the chain of
| provenance in an unobfuscated form. If you can 't, or
| won't, your license to operate is revoked. If you didn't
| have one in the first place, you're already in hot water.
| You cannot play in the sandbox anymore. That's the civil
| side. Just like not being willing to help with airline
| emergency exit doors probibits you from taking up that
| row of seats.
|
| Second, if you are connected to willful facilitation of
| criminal activity, that's when the fangs really come out,
| because the criminal with the technical expertise to
| facilitate is a much rarer thing, and the perfect subject
| for being made an example of ad a warning to others.
|
| This is why I have repeatedly told anyone who'd listen.
| Peer-2-Peer payment technologies without control/auditing
| paired with them will _never be tolerated_ once they are
| widely known about. Hell, things like World of Warcraft
| Gold or game currencies have been used as money
| laundering vehicles long before blockchain, and even they
| got law enforcement scrutiny from time to time.
|
| Do not publish that which you don't want to eventually
| run the chance of being held responsible for.
| l-lousy wrote:
| Have there not been quite a few bills/laws proposed
| recently that also advocate for privacy being bad?
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Should knife makers be held responsible if someone stabs
| someone?
|
| Not a valid comparison.
|
| Courts and law have long held the completely reasonable
| position that if the main intent of a product is not to
| commit crime, that those using it for a crime are held
| responsible, not the producer.
|
| Conversely, if a product is designed to facilitate crime,
| or is used significantly more for crime than not, then the
| liability starts to shift to the producer (as well as the
| users).
|
| This is the latter case. If the courts show that the
| producers knew the product was used for crime and added
| features to assist that on purpose, then they should be
| held liable.
|
| According the to article, 14% of money moved through the
| mixer was of criminal origin. If any bank did that, they'd
| rightfully get hammered by the law (and they do, for vastly
| smaller ratios of criminal activity).
|
| There are laws about facilitating criminal money
| laundering.
| [deleted]
| lukeramsden wrote:
| > This is the latter case.
|
| You're stating this as if it's fact when it's really not.
| Tornado Cash was certainly not designed with the intent
| of criminal activity, but for privacy - and as for
| "significantly more for crime than not", I've not seen
| any actual evidence for this, only evidence to the
| contrary. People claim it's mostly used for crime, but
| those are purely conjecture, at least the ones I've seen
| are.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Tornado Cash was certainly not designed with the intent
| of criminal activity, but for privacy
|
| Again, claims of privacy is not enough magic to make them
| free from legal requirements for money laundering laws.
| Privacy claims do not make banks immune from money
| laundering. Privacy claims do not make anyone free from
| meeting legal requirements.
|
| >those are purely conjecture
|
| The above states ~1/7 of all money flowing through can be
| tied to criminal behavior. If true, that's an astounding
| ratio that would rightfully put a bank out of business
| and key players in prison.
| arbol wrote:
| > and added features to assist that on purpose
|
| Unless the service was redeployed (unlikely) or operating
| behind a proxy contract, it wouldn't have been possible
| to add new features.
| koolba wrote:
| > This is the latter case.
|
| How is privacy not a legitimate use case?
|
| > According the to article, 14% of money moved through
| the mixer was of criminal origin.
|
| I'm pretty sure the majority of duffel bags sold in
| cartel controlled areas of Mexico are used to transport
| drugs or drug money, that doesn't mean selling them
| should be a crime.
| csydas wrote:
| I think you're missing the intent part of crime. Someone
| selling a duffle bag or producing one for production is
| likely not selling it for the purpose of facilitating
| crime, they just are selling a bag. The question with
| guns/knives/Tornado Cash is "what is the motivation
| behind the producers/service provider once put under
| scrutiny?"
|
| A textile mill producer who gets an order for 5000 duffle
| bags likely has no vision in mind for the use of the bag
| beyond "sell to N stores at X price for profit". The
| storeowner who buys the duffle bag likely also has no
| criminal motive and instead just wants to sell inventory
| at profit.
|
| Tornado Cash devs will be scrutinized to understand their
| main goals, and their communications/advertising
| strategies, likely as well as any correspondences will be
| considered for this determination.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >I'm pretty sure the majority
|
| I'm pretty sure that's not true. 1-1 we tied :)
|
| And again , not equivalent. If local duffel bag makers
| knew duffel bags were used significantly for crime, and
| added features to facilitate crime, and ignored laws
| requiring tracking criminals (which is what money
| processors have to follow), then the duffel bag maker
| would be criminally liable.
|
| In the cast at hand, the company processes the
| transactions for criminals. That is vastly different than
| selling a duffel bag. And it runs afoul of criminal money
| laundering laws that all processors have to follow, and
| for good reason.
|
| This is why the courts are the place to hash such stuff
| out - internet opinions are vastly inferior to people
| performing investigations using evidence.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| Source - ChrisLemont
|
| get off your high horse, use of tornado cash is quite
| common among crypto natives, otherwise it's like
| broadcasting your pepsi purchases on instagram
| Vespasian wrote:
| Tornado cash could have (for example) implemented AML or
| KYC policies to achieve the same without coming under the
| suspicion of assisting criminals.
|
| Given the high data protection requirements warranted by
| operating a financial service, users could be reasonable
| sure that their Pepsi purchase remains private.
|
| Of course such measures would run counter the intended
| use of Tornado cash, including money laundering, but that
| is their problem and no one's else.
| dlubarov wrote:
| What could "features to facilitate crime" be in this
| particular case? Tornado is a simple contract with a
| singular purpose, to provide financial privacy for its
| users. It simply doesn't have any features that
| facilitate a more specific use case, be it money
| laundering, personal safety, or anything else.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure the majority of duffel bags sold in
| cartel controlled areas of Mexico are used to transport
| drugs or drug money
|
| I'm sure that isn't true. Most people anywhere in Mexico
| are civilians not involved in the drug trade.
| LeeroyWasHere wrote:
| Phantom Secure might be the closest example?
|
| But there's definitely legitimate uses for Tornado Cash.
| The same way there's legitimate uses for cash.
|
| 14% of funds, yeah, not 14% of users... Big difference.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >14% of funds, yeah, not 14% of users... Big difference.
|
| Yep, it shows an incredible quantity of money laundering
| through the service.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Should knife makers be held responsible if someone stabs
| someone?
|
| Only if you made and advertised a "human killing knife", so
| in this case I have no idea how this software was
| advertised by the devs and community.
|
| I think the intention is important in this case, what was
| the purpose and who benefited the most , if 99% of knives
| are used for bad things then you would probably have some
| ideas about that issues.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I've seen (but never used) TC before. The site was
| totally neutral with minimal explanation. I've made the
| comparison because both are really simple tools.
| programmarchy wrote:
| So should the authors of the anarchist cookbook or 2600
| magazine be charged with crimes also?
| agotterer wrote:
| 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, how do we as a
| society/community draw the line on determining a developers
| intentions?
| phphphphp wrote:
| Software doesn't come to be through immaculate conception:
| the authors created it, knowing it could be used in this
| way.
|
| If a company releases software that is used nefariously,
| there are very common legal actions to hold them
| accountable. For example, Facebook has extensive legal
| obligations to meet to do with behaviour on their platform.
|
| I am not arguing that tornado cash should be illegal (or
| that encryption should be illegal) rather I am arguing that
| people are responsible for the software they have created.
|
| If I commit a crime, my intent is absolutely a part of the
| equation when determining legal action. Why should it be
| any different with software?
|
| If you wish to argue that the right to privacy is so great
| that it exceeds any risk of criminal activity, and thus the
| developers of tornado cash were doing something for the
| greater good, so be it (that's probably the position I
| would take) but it doesn't absolve them of responsibility.
|
| Taken to the extreme, if I build a piece of software that
| can save the lives of murder victims by killing the
| murderer: I am responsible for the killing of (intended)
| murderers. We might decide that the activity is justified,
| that the software is operating for the greater good and is
| therefore permissible, but that doesn't change my
| responsibility.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _I am arguing that people are responsible for the
| software they have created._
|
| So, is your answer to the asked question yes, the
| developers of Metasploit should be arrested and jailed?
|
| How about the developers of Bitlocker? It's used to
| encrypt illegal content, impeding police discovery
| efforts. Every person who developed a file-sharing
| website should probably also be arrested. Lots of
| illegal/pirated/etc. content out there.
|
| The point being that almost every software on the planet
| can potentially used for malicious and illegal
| activities. Seems like if we indefinitely held developers
| responsible for what _other_ people do with their
| software, the smart person would never develop any
| software.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Law isn't a binary based on responsibility, it's
| reductive to suggest that by arguing for responsibility
| we are also arguing for prison for software developers. I
| can be responsible for your death and spend no time in
| prison.
|
| Every other industry deals with this challenge -- why
| should software be any different?
| ziddoap wrote:
| You can take the word "jailed" out of my comment, replace
| it with "responsible for", and I still think my point
| stands...
|
| You said:
|
| > _If a company releases software that is used
| nefariously, there are very common legal actions to hold
| them accountable_
|
| If you believe that, it follows that you believe that
| every developer of encryption algorithms should be "held
| accountable" (be it jail, or "responsible without
| prison", etc.) because other people use encryption to
| hide illegal activity. Developers of internet protocols
| should be accountable for the actions other people take
| on the internet, because lots of illegal things happen on
| the internet.
|
| Metasploit, Kali, 7-zip, FileZilla, Word/Excel, Putty,
| OpenVPN... Should I go on? All of these are used for
| nefarious things all the time. Are you really suggesting
| that the developers of these should be responsible for
| the nefarious things that _their users_ do? If not jail,
| what responsibility are you suggesting?
|
| > _Every other industry deals with this challenge -- why
| should software be any different?_
|
| Most other industries have _protections_ against this
| type of liability, _not_ responsibilities. See knives,
| guns, planes, cars, etc. Unless their is gross
| negligence, which isn 't just "it was used nefariously",
| the maker of X is generally not responsible for what some
| user of X does with X.
|
| Edit for clarification:
|
| You can argue about purpose-built nefarious software,
| sure. If I develop ransomware, and advertise it as
| ransomware, and there's no legitimate use other than
| ransoming... I should probably be held responsible for
| the ransomware attacks that occur using that tool (at
| least, I accept that argument). The problem with applying
| this to _all_ software is that most everything that is
| used nefariously was originally designed for and used for
| legitimate uses. When that 's the case, the person who
| committed the crime with the legitimate tool should be
| held responsible, not the maker of the legitimate tool.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Anonymizing spending on it's own is not a crime.
|
| Money laundering laws very much disagree with this.
| agotterer wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the money laundering laws. But do
| they state that you can't buy something anonymously and
| without an audit trail? Because spending legally obtained
| cash seems anonymous to me. Is anonymizing your digital
| spend with legally obtained capital that different?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I can't speak for the US, but in Germany, transactions
| between countries over 10kEUR must be reported to the
| Bundesbank. There are similar limits for inner-country
| transactions with businesses, especially financial ones.
| I assume the USA has similar rules. So small cash
| transaction are fine, but as soon as larger sums are
| involved it's going to be very problematic.
|
| Since crypto currencies, nearly by definition, don't care
| about country borders and the mixers don't trace the
| amount put in by each user, they almost certainly allow
| you to circumvent money laundering registration
| requirements. It's even worse if they frame the mixer as
| financial institution, in which case it directly violates
| its reporting requirements.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| > It's even worse if they frame the mixer as financial
| institution
|
| Where do they?
| agotterer wrote:
| These are fair points and I believe there are similar
| laws in the US.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Money laundering laws in the U.S. require some other
| crime to be involved.
| oefrha wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > It is suspected that persons behind this organisation have
| made large-scale profits from these transactions.
|
| I'm sure a judge can look at more concrete evidence in the form
| of financial gains.
| koheripbal wrote:
| 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.
| vecio wrote:
| In this case, will the Tornado developer benefit from the smart
| contracts? I think the service charge about 0.3%, so that money
| mainly go to the TORN holders?
| [deleted]
| rvnx wrote:
| It seems reasonable to expect that Ethereum operators share
| responsibility in case of usage of their network for malicious
| or criminal activity. They have the technical means to control
| what goes on there or not. Otherwise it's like if you run P2P
| nodes and claim pedo pictures aren't your problem.
| Tepix wrote:
| That depends on what are reasonable technical means to
| prevent things.
|
| Is it reasonable for the postal service to examine every
| single piece of mail to check if it is illegal?
| rvnx wrote:
| They are held responsible to a certain point yes, and
| shipping services actively control high-risk shipments (up
| to the point they check the box contents, for airplane
| shipping, for batteries for example).
|
| It's forbidden to send money through mail in many places.
| When you go to the post office to send money, the post
| office verifies your identity, the payment method, the
| sanctions list, etc and keeps the records for the
| authorities.
|
| If you decide to violate the rules and send cash in a
| letter, the postal service allows the authorities to access
| the raw packages and full information, and full access to
| it, whether to use cash sniffing dogs (they really exist),
| etc.
|
| Also, a fundamental difference with crypto exchanges:
|
| Whether you send large amount of cash for criminal activity
| via the postal service or whether you send a large amount
| of books the postal service isn't going to benefit more, so
| they don't have to encourage criminal activity.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| > They have the technical means to control what goes on there
| or not.
|
| Imagine the scenario wherein potential "illegal" crypto is
| mixed through another service. How would you expect Tornado
| to verify that without straight-up blocking specific services
| through transaction patterns?
| [deleted]
| fzfaa wrote:
| > Otherwise it's like if you run P2P nodes and claim pedo
| pictures aren't your problem.
|
| If the network is completely p2p, they really aren't.
|
| OTOH, it seems foolish to develop/run a p2p network and
| publish your real name along with it. It's asking for
| trouble.
| darkcha0s wrote:
| I know I will get a hail of downvotes for this, but again
| you're comparing apples and oranges. The operators are using
| crypto for a wide range of applications. Using a mixer has
| probably 99.9% illegal reasons and 0.1% legitimate uses.
| Making money laundering harder is a good thing, no matter how
| many people here will try to convince you it isn't.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| unlike 'peer 2 peer' cash usecases of crypto. ethereum
| added a lot of social elements to it with ens names. All
| sorts of common folk use tornado cash to keep their private
| transactions separate from their public address
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| > Making money laundering harder is a good thing, no matter
| how many people here will try to convince you it isn't.
|
| What a useless, puerile argument
| akimball wrote:
| Only if you presume that private deeds are illegitimate.
| That appears to reverse the presumption of innocence,
| without which the law becomes nothing more than a tool to
| destroy the enemies of the prosecutors.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > Using a mixer has probably 99.9% illegal reasons and 0.1%
| legitimate uses
|
| Similar to people using paper money or end-to-end
| encryption really. Nobody _needs_ military-grade encryption
| or anonymous currency unless they 're trying to hide
| something.
| Arnt wrote:
| That's not actually true.
|
| Say I sell software, or SaaS. Then I may need military-
| grade encryption because I _need_ to sell, a few
| potential customers (may) need that, and I _need_ to keep
| my costs down so supplying the latest and greatest cipher
| to everyone is the right default. It may waste a bit of
| CPU but it saves the time of the sales and support
| people, and human time is expensive.
|
| Say I'm going to buy something tomorrow, and I don't like
| SPoFs. There's a card in my wallet, or maybe two, but if
| the card reader in the shop is down, that's a SPoF unless
| I also carry some cash.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| That is the fun part, isn't it. Government is now ok with
| crypto, because it can easily track it. But you try to
| make it actually not being able to track, booy howdy, it
| will come down on you like a ton of brick.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| You mean the miners? Mining Ethereum doesn't allow for much
| inspection of what you're validating in each block.
|
| It's just a program that runs and guesses a bunch of salts
| that hopefully result in a hash that meets some particular
| parameters (e.g. starts with 5 zeros). You want to be the
| first to guess correctly so you win the reward for that
| block, so any sort of investigation doesn't make sense. From
| what data was stored on-chain in that block and whether it
| may be problematic (or even what the data represents), to
| which contracts were involved (and whether they have criminal
| ties), it's just not reasonable for any miner to take
| responsibility for the block chain operating as expected.
|
| I think this is the core issue with the block chain, is that
| society has always expected there to be some moral agent that
| you could hold responsible. Except in cases of natural
| disasters, you can normally blame someone.
|
| But with blockchains, it's a lot harder to place blame on
| someone, or link a physical person to the online identity.
|
| Similarly with the 2008 GFC, everything was abstract enough
| that almost nobody got in trouble for a situation that was
| most certainly man-made, but hard to place the blame. At
| least then, though, the government had some amount of control
| over the banks and also relied on them to return society to
| normal.
|
| Through the government's eyes, block chain doesn't appear
| necessary for society to operate and is very difficult to
| regulate, so I'm sure their tolerance is a lot lower for
| blockchains when financial crimes crop up from it.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I thought standard procedure here is you pay a fine that is a
| fraction of your revenue, not jail time.
|
| Like here: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-
| analysis/2013/investing-n...
| Jensson wrote:
| If they did this closed source he probably wouldn't get
| jailed, and instead the company would have gotten fined.
| But open source makes things easy to trace so you just jail
| the person who wrote the code.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I assure you it's even easier to find the CEO of a major
| bank.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yeah, but then they would imprison the CEO and not the
| developer. Very different, especially since it is easy
| for CEO's to say that they weren't aware of any criminal
| activity. A developer who directly develops the feature
| is much easier to blame.
| biglearner1day wrote:
| > Yeah, but then they would imprison the CEO and not the
| developer.
|
| While they do get blamed, the Netherlands doesn't seem to
| care all that much. They seem very selective with how
| they react to supposed money laundering
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ing-groep-settlement-
| mone...
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/how-ing-bank-in-poland-helped-
| russians...
| Jensson wrote:
| They key difference is this:
|
| > ING's Chief Executive Ralph Hamers said no individual
| at the bank was found to be responsible for the failures
|
| Closed source means it is easy to hide whose fault it
| was, and then all you can do is fine the company since
| you can't arrest everyone. This is also why companies are
| so keen on deleting old message logs etc, to avoid
| leaders going to prison.
| yamrzou wrote:
| > it's like if you run P2P nodes and claim pedo pictures
| aren't your problem.
|
| It's more like being arrested for developing a Bittorrent
| client
| josefx wrote:
| After making it repeatedly clear that you think Bittorrent
| is the next big thing for pedos and that your client is
| intentionally optimized to keep pedos safe from the
| government.
|
| Nearly every time someone gets arrested for developing
| software they where also advertising and in some cases
| outright advising people on how to get away with illegal
| shit using their software.
| paganel wrote:
| I think the people behind those clients were clear targets
| back in the day, before the advent of services like Netflix
| and Spotify alleviated some of the financial troubles
| experienced by the entertainment industry.
| rvnx wrote:
| KaZaA for example (which became Skype indirectly)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Being arrested is not that big of a deal- it merely means they
| suspect that you committed a crime and want to question you. I
| would also wait and see what they are accused of, maybe there
| is more to it than simply contributing to an open source
| project.
| [deleted]
| rascul wrote:
| It can easily turn into a big deal if the arrest means you're
| locked in a cell for awhile.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What is the alternative?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Summons the person to court and only issue an arrest
| warrant if they fail to appear.
|
| This is SOP for the bulk of nonviolent crimes in the US.
| rascul wrote:
| I guess the alternative is to not be arrested and locked
| in a cell? That's kind of up to someone else.
| retcore wrote:
| In the UK arrest is lawful simply to ensure that your
| statement or interview can be obtained, entirely without any
| kind of suspicion. Still will disqualify you for automatic
| entry in the US however.
| redandblack wrote:
| Just like Boeing/Airbus were held responsible for 911 attacks
| by developing and building the planes
| wiz21c wrote:
| Just like banks help dictators to hide their money
|
| (and banks do all they can to avoid fraud, yes yes yes)
| rvnx wrote:
| 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 = the more shady flows.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > 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.
| rvnx wrote:
| In what world would they want to encourage hijacking or
| even remotely benefit from hijacking ? It doesn't make
| any sense
| DocTomoe wrote:
| "Not doing everything to prevent hijacking" is not the
| same as "encouraging hijacking". Semantics and formal
| logic matters.
| p49k wrote:
| From the guidelines:
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith
|
| The person's core argument was obviously that "airlines
| do what they can to keep people safe rather than
| financially benefiting from criminal activity" which
| distinguishes Tornado from airlines and web browser
| developers.
|
| As an aside, it was less important to prevent hijacking
| before 2001 because the end result of most hijackings
| before then was that nobody got hurt if pilots complied,
| so there would be no reason to place a cockpit door. That
| strategy obviously changed after 9/11.
| viridian wrote:
| Ironically, I find your interpretation of the parent
| comment uncharitable, because I never would have framed
| the core argument the way you did.
|
| I don't think the behavior and results of airplane
| hijackings pre 9/11 fall into common knowledge, even on
| hacker news. That's a pretty niche, specific collection
| of 20+ year old historical facts.
| landemva wrote:
| > 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.
| tzs wrote:
| ...and when experience showed that the existing system
| was not adequate they beefed it by adding those doors.
|
| That's one big difference between those whose products
| can be used for both good and bad who do not get in legal
| trouble over the bad use and those that do. There's some
| threshold for a given type of produce of tolerable bad
| use. When they product is approaching or exceeding that
| they make changes to lower it, or if it can't be fixed
| abandon the product.
| louwrentius wrote:
| He wasn't just developing software, he seems to also been
| involved with operating the Tornado mixer service, thus enabling
| / facilitating money laundering and evasion of sanctions.
| dylkil wrote:
| tornado cash doesnt facilitate money laundering, it just
| obfuscates the source of eth, like converting debit into cash,
| those funds still need to enter the real system in some
| "legitimate" manner in order to be considered laundered.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Any kind of mixer is intended to anonymise transactions and
| that doesn't really have any legitimate, legal use case.
|
| Que remarks about 'privacy' in 3,2,1...
| Eduard wrote:
| GDPR
| dannyw wrote:
| Does contributing to an encrypted messaging app, like Signal or
| Matrix, also mean you're enabling / facilitating child
| pornography and terrorism?
|
| Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch
| of bytes, like this:
| `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`
| seanw444 wrote:
| The popular consensus on HN seems to be that the government
| having absolute monopolistic control and power over personal
| finance is inarguably good.
|
| "But money laundering!" so?
|
| "But evading taxes!" so?
|
| You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these
| crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits. Forcing everyone's
| transactions to be public and traceable just so it's easy for
| the government to arrest people is not a good tradeoff.
| fisf wrote:
| The consensus on HN regarding crypto, privacy, and free
| speech has shifted considerably over the years.
|
| I have a hard time pinpointing the time, or identifying the
| reasons, bit the current sentiment towards some of those
| topics is chilly.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and
| traceable
|
| My transactions are not public, but that's because I don't
| use blockchain. This is a problem _created by_ blockchain
| technologies. Services like Tornado Cash are a poor
| solution that introduces new problems (like making
| laundering much easier).
|
| Traceability is indeed required for large transactions in
| most jurisdictions. Where the line for this should be drawn
| is debatable. I think it would be hard for society where
| all transactions are fully anonymous to function. It's too
| easy for bad actors to free-ride or otherwise take
| advantage of the situation. I would prefer a _little_ more
| freedom /privacy here but it's definitely a situation with
| trade-offs in both directions.
|
| Also, keep in mind that increasing privacy for financial
| transactions would disproportionately benefit those with
| the most money.
| tzs wrote:
| > You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit
| these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits
|
| How?
| yokem55 wrote:
| The 'service' is a contract on the chain. It exists and
| operates because thousands of other people are running nodes
| that run that chain. It still works today if you access the
| static front end website via ipfs or have a local clone of it
| or manually build and submit the transactions via your own
| local node.
|
| So, once deployed, there really isn't anything to 'run' in
| order for it to continue.
| louwrentius wrote:
| > thousands of other people are running nodes that run that
| chain
|
| Then thousands of people - including him - enable tax evasion
| and sanctions.
|
| Thank you for providing a good example why all crypto should
| be banned. And yes you can ban cryptocurrencies by outlawing
| exchanges.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| This sentence provides a hint of what is going on:
|
| "Since Monday 8 August 2022 Tornado Cash has been placed by the
| US government on the OFAC sanctions list of America."
| threeseed wrote:
| "In June 2022 the het Financial Advanced Cyber Team (FACT) of
| the FIOD started an criminal investigation against Tornado
| Cash"
|
| And the article is from 12 August. So NL would have informed US
| who then put them on a sanctions list.
| codyb wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
| dlubarov wrote:
| > Launder your money here
|
| This is like framing Signal as a "insert terrorist plan here"
| app. The tool can be used for that purpose, but it was never
| designed or marketed for it.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| 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
| should not be treated as a criminal for building Matrix E2EE
| protocol that enables privacy, they should not be treated as
| criminal for building Tornado Cash protocol that enables
| privacy.
| mint2 wrote:
| Okay so you're saying NFTs are absolutely meaningless, what
| the holder solely owns is a 256 bit integer and absolutely
| nothing else?
|
| Anyway, in this case unlike debatably with nfts, there is
| concrete value tied to possessing knowledge of the integer so
| acting like it's just sharing random numbers is deceptive and
| rather easily detected deception. resorting to deceptive
| arguments generally makes people turn against the position of
| the one trying to deceive so if advocating for tornado devs,
| one should avoid that argument unless one is actually trying
| to make people against them.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| The point is: the protocol encrypts a private key, a
| private key is an integer, or text hash. Saying that it is
| OK to build tools that encrypt text, like Matrix protocol,
| but it is not OK to build tools that encrypt private-keys-
| as-text is a slippery slope.
|
| Which one is it?
|
| - privacy is a right, and people should be allowed to share
| knowledge privately
|
| or,
|
| - privacy is not a right, and people should only be allowed
| to share knowledge if that knowledge is not associated with
| "value"
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Repeating an argument _verbatim_ this many times just
| comes across as patronizing. We get it. You think numbers
| can't be outlawed. You're wrong and in general,
| pedantry/technicalities about theoretical computer
| science is _not_ going to help you when considering human
| power structures.
|
| Someone else has told you this already, but you seem
| intent on ignoring it.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| You did not answer my simple question. :) Sorry to be a
| broken record about comparing this to E2EE privacy
| protocols, but many commenters on HN only seem to think
| it is worthwhile when in the form of a chat app.
| cortesoft wrote:
| 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 isn't that arrangement of ink on the paper, the
| crime is using those lines on the paper to commit fraud. Same
| thing here, it isn't the numbers or math that are criminal,
| it is using those numbers and math to commit crime.
| whatisweb3 wrote:
| 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.
| once_inc wrote:
| If this developer only created the mixing service smart contract
| and wasn't actively operating it or advocating for it, I doubt
| Dutch judges can rule him guilty for money laundering. The 9/11
| reference made by others is very much on par.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Even if he only created the contract the developer essentially
| thumbed his nose at the state. That is the kind of "crime" that
| government takes very seriously. If they want to screw him they
| will. It's just a question of how thick the veneer of
| legitimacy on the screwage will be. It's not like this guy has
| some vocal political minority to back him up so there's not
| much to stop them.
| once_inc wrote:
| Building a mixing service that allows people to buy stuff
| without their employers being able to track it is a
| legitimate, non-trivial reason.
|
| These mixers are privacy enhancers. Privacy is a general
| term, and doesn't have to relate to evading the government.
| If you don't want your employer to know you've bought an NFT
| from your company's direct competitor, that is a privacy
| request too.
| threeseed wrote:
| Except that privacy is not some human right enshrined in
| law that usurps other laws.
|
| If you facilitate money laundering that is still a crime
| even if the intent was for legitimate reasons like privacy.
| jiriknesl wrote:
| Well, maybe we should start lobbying to make it so.
| diogenes1 wrote:
| so when are we arresting engineers who built roads and
| trucks that were used for money laundering?
| Vespasian wrote:
| At least 2013 put probably for much longer.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/
| [deleted]
| threeseed wrote:
| > I doubt Dutch judges can rule him guilty for money
| laundering.
|
| Sensible position given he isn't actually being charged with
| money laundering.
|
| He is being charged for facilitation and since you're a little
| sloppy with the facts there will assume that you're not a EU/NL
| lawyer with expertise in these matters. I know as a layman I
| will assume that FIOD/Public Prosecutors wouldn't arrest him if
| they didn't anticipate a successful conviction.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This is an interesting case because it's applying financial law
| to a decentralised cryptocurrency operation. If research shows
| that Tornado was indeed processing a billion dollars of criminal
| funds then I'm not surprised arrests have been made even though
| it may be hard to prove actual involvement by the network
| operators. These numbers come close to the fund processing
| capacity of a small financial institution and there are
|
| The points about DAOs are also interesting. DAOs have no central
| authority or elected leadership. Setting up a DAO should not be
| enough to get out of legal responsibilities of running a
| financial institution, but people voting in DAOs also shouldn't
| be treated like CEOs because they have very little actual power.
|
| Conviction in this case might have a serious impact on
| decentralized crypto schemes. DAOs are a great technical
| workaround for not having a direct kind of leadership but the
| real world doesn't care about fancy technical solutions. Someone
| sets up a certain system and that someone has the
| responsibilities that come with setting up such system. If that
| service a free website, the responsibilities are extremely
| limited; if that service is a financial institution, your
| responsibilities become more serious.
|
| Re: "this is just a dev", the dev also presumably ran the
| software they created, and with a seventh of the processed volume
| being criminal funds, it's almost sure that they operated on
| dirty funds at some point. Even if the developer's role in the
| (suspected criminal) DAO is considered insignificant, this might
| make the dev a money mule as he temporarily stored stolen funds
| in their crypto wallet. According to Dutch law, money mules may
| be prosecuted as complicit with fraud and any other financial
| crimes that take place.
|
| One might defend the cryptocurrency operators by claiming that
| they can't verify the identities of their customers to comply
| with money laundering regulations, but that only underlines the
| illegality of the system: if your system isn't capable of
| complying with the law, you shouldn't operate such a system. It's
| like claiming you don't need seat belts in your cars because you
| can't figure out how seat belts work: your lack of control or
| creativity is not society's problem.
|
| With how overloaded the courts are, it'll take months or even
| years to see the impact of this arrest. Whatever the outcome,
| it'll have a big impact.
| markisus wrote:
| The dev doesn't operate the TornadoCash contract. The code is
| actually run by people who operate ethereum nodes. After the
| initial deployment, the dev has zero involvement.
| xbruteforce wrote:
| Online privacy is at stake for years already. The cypherpunks
| have said it.
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