- Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The case escalated and was eventually dropped, included POTUS attention.
- Aaron Swartz passed away via suicide in 2013 under threat of 35 years in prison and a lot else for downloading from JSTOR programmatically
- Clifford Stole spent several years being ignored by every govt agency under the Sun, except for CIA, for finding, attributing and then exposing a widespread KGB hack of govt systems in the 80s
- L0pht testified in front of congress to expose significant internet security risks that were otherwise ignored.
I’m not saying Tornado Cash and related devs were doing a purely moral action. But the automatic siding with the heavy hand of govt sanctions on code the govt doesn’t really understand is pretty shameful for a nuanced technical audience.