GitHub suspends Tornado Cash developer account

In 2022, I'm unaware of an actual situation where a bank account must be shared with anyone else. If someone wants the content of your bank account they need to go through the courts.

> Do you think that Vitalik openly launders money?

Who can tell? Isn't that the point of Tornado Cash?

Hiding something legal. In a trivial example, you might not want your spouse to know what present you've bought them before unwrapping it.

Or more corporate, you don't want your competitors to know details of your next project.

> A way to ignore such laws can be a good thing.

There are groups who think property rights are inane and tyrannical. One way to ignore those laws is breaking and entering. Is it only a good thing when it conveniently aligns with what you consider inane and tyrannical?

It’s extremely irresponsible to suggest someone use cryptocurrency in such an environment. The public ledger is a godsend for the secret police giving them evidence for retroactive prosecution and good odds de-anonymizing people, receiving funds from a notorious money laundering site could be used to persecute the journalist, statistically nobody has adequate opsec to conceal their use of these applications, and having sent them tokens would obligate them to take on additional risk converting them into something useful.

Cash is much safer because the risk is only at the time of transfer.

I doubt that you'd be allowed to "encrypt your digital financial transactions" in China.

Because his service facilitates financial crimes in US and interpol is a thing? You can be extradited from any two countries with treaties.

Which seems unlikely in his case as he is based out of Russia.

US can and will restrict his access to US persons/assets (incl. vice versa).

They're doing business in the US. Only their US business is directly affected. Most crypto sites have different operations in the US because different countries have different laws, and you technically have to follow all of them.

Be realistic here, are you distributing oss that exists for the sole purpose of money laundering?

I don't have a strong opinion on whether tornado cash should be allowed to exist, but it's obvious that it violates US law.

Similarly if you distribute OSS viruses don't act shocked if people want to harass you over it - distributing viruses is illegal in some places

ISIS recruiting manuals and videos are also free speech. According to your view YouTube/Microsoft should not remove them.

Beside the fact that GH is a private company that maybe doesn't want to be associated with some stuff.

Is speech which is used to commit crime protected in the same way?

Encryption beyond a particular strength has long been an ITAR restricted export.

Now everybody gets to learn that the United States regulatory policy machine will lean very hard on anything that'll threaten it's ability to flex soft power against its opponents.

>What even is GH required to do in response to this sanction, or are they just being overly cautious since we’re in uncharted waters?

Letter of the law is don't do financial transactions with those addresses.

The quiet part is: this technology is now associated with being a channel for money laundering, and will open up any parties hosting or making it available a potential subject of accessory to wire fraud/money laundering charges. As a publically funded company, I assure you, the legal, risk, and compliance departments are now erecting 100 foot poles between the company and this project.

You see, big business and government have a bit of an incestuous relationship. The bigger the market actor, the easier it is for the government to apply sufficient pressure where the easy way out is for said large actor to just "stop associating with that thing".

This is why OFAC is aptly named. You end up on it, and you basically fall out of the economy. The last sound you hear is the subject in question going O, FAC-<signal lost>.

Oh, actually, no, slight exaggeration, the truth is far more chilling.

You see, financial institutions will still process deposits. They just stop allowing withdrawals, turning the business relationship into a one-way trap for funds.

In theory, it may be possible to get off the OFAC list if you end up on it, however, financial institutions are instructed not to inform customers that they are sanctioned if asked. You're only told that a technical error precludes them from completing the transaction. If you mistakenly show up on OFAC, (like by sharing a name with someone who is on it), there are ways to get off of it by providing proof you are not the individual in question. In fact, most times, if you reach out, the service personnel you get are trained to get as much personal info as possible to try to determine whether or not you are actually the individual targeted by OFAC.

Companies will generally dig into it, and resolve it while playing coy. In this case though, it looks like businesses are taking the message to heart and just noping out of supporting it.

> since source source code is speech, can the government even sanction it?

er...the US government infringes on free speech all the time

There is a question unasked in all replies here:

Is GitHub sanctioning just the accounts that they consider to be directly associated with the sanctioned organization, or, are they also sanctioning the upload of that open source code by unassociated third parties?

See, for example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

There is a long history of "the land of the free" carving out exceptions from freedom.

Yes, this happened at least once before, when the Spanish government asked GitHub to take down repositories related to applications helping citizens to organize focused protests: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/blob/master/Spain/20...

The group that was focused in the take down requests was "Tsunami Democràtic", which you can find some background information about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Tsunami

Yes, the government considered strong cryptography to be a munition and said it was illegal to put the source code of PGP on the internet. Courts ruled against the government in Bernstein vs. United States, saying source code was speech protected by the First Amendment. That's why we can all use strong cryptography today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

If that tool doesn't exist, how will you respond when the government tells you to prove the source of funds you got from Tornado Cash?

I don't know when or where that is from, all I know for certain is that for at least 2 years now, the contracts have been immutable and non-upgradeable, by anybody.

Edit: also idk where you're seeing the governance component in that flow you linked, there doesn't appear to be one...

Dedicating work to the public domain is not possible in many jurisdictions, which is the reason for CC-0 and similar licenses. They're "close enough" for practical purposes but they're not the same thing. Even if you use CC-0, you will still have the copyright of the work in such jurisdictions, because it is only an attempt to give up as many rights as possible.

Who are you gonna call when someone comes to eat you? Surely not the police.

Are you making software that has the explicit stated purpose of facilitating illegal money laundering, like these crypto mixers openly say they do? If not, then you don't have anything to worry about from these sanctions.

Anonymising the purchase of hammers

Having private transactions using a public blockchain ledger.

It's the same as asking "why do people need E2E encrypted chat," because they want to and there's nothing wrong with them not wanting you to read their chats, that's why.

What use cases does E2E encryption have besides hiding criminal activities from law enforcement? Exactly the same goes here. As long as you're not doing illegal things and file your taxes, everything should be perfectly fine.

It may be interesting source code to read.

Or is that also an illegal/illegitimate use now?

Haha my goodness. Yes, if you're the state, all that is theoretically true, but the catch is of course the problem of legibility. The state is well aware of that, as you noted, but so many transactions themselves are untrackable, some because of explicit state policies (undocumented immigrants line up to purchase money orders to pay taxes a notable example of a collective and voluntary effort to overcome state obstacles that are put in place, but also the many many unbanked individuals in the country, especially those not on the payroll for various reasons). That argument absolutely works if you simply realize that a) the state is never going to be able to actually capture 100% of cash transactions and b) the state's primary goal is not recordkeeping per se but to collect its perceived share, so the greater punishment it dishes out and the more complex laws get in regards to consumer finance, the more likely that those on the cusp simply opt out of the formal system if they're in a position to do so and disappear from all that heavy enforcement measures, much of which the average consumer do not understand fully anyway.

This viewpoint issue is not limited to financial legibility of course. We do know that the underground economy, because data is only reported by authorities, is inflated or deflated for political purposes, further muddling any potential estimations. Oh, and plenty of what the IRS wish to do is just that - wishful, and only when it's convenient for the other party. You can try to regulate cash transactions domestically in a more heavy handed manner, but you're mostly going to affect those least able to afford it to begin with, and the costs involved may not be worth the effort. Oh, and US currency is commonly used abroad, including in place of native currencies in some countries. When it comes to cash, there are only estimates as to how much the government can reasonably regulate the transacting of, and the government's policies have undermined efforts to do so even when they could. Not everyone is in the cohort that posts on HN.