Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash
fiod.nl
fiod.nl
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.
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.
Yet I do not think any human would resist a moment in the spotlight, if not to renounce its child and its current direction.
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.
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.
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.
You wouldn't know about them, holy hell haha
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
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.
Though in this case Satoshi could have just kept a smaller number of coins not tied to him.
But seriously, wouldn't you grab the most off the shelf stuff for your throwaway persona to use?
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.
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.
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.
Not so much on the price but the principles that underpin Bitcoin
I, for the record, remain a believer.
And last I checked, the company’s name was SpaceX, not “Elon Musk’s Rocket Company”
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.
He could have sent his BTC to zero address.
Still worth a lot, obviously.
Like, get a loan for $20b in a stablecoin with the payback being $21b in btc in a year?
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?
It would be a great deal for Satoshi, but no other party would accept.
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-...
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...
https://blockchain.info/address/1Dorian4RoXcnBv9hnQ4Y2C1an6N...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ztjmg/andreas_im_...
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).
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...
However, there are some valid counter arguments in this thread, such as Satoshi coming out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, in the wake of a Newsweek article that falsely fingered the latter as Satoshi.
How did the 1A defense work out for sharing "Ghost gun" CAD files?
So not crypto.
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/germany-t...
https://www.loyensloeff.com/insights/news--events/news/bill-...
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.
The Dutch Government also asked for a blanket ban on cash transactions above €5,000 to be included in AML 6/7 (although there wasn't wide support).
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.
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?
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.
To use an analogy, see the open Matrix protocol, a tool for privacy that can facilitate encrypted communication between criminals.
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.
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.
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.
What's the difference between that and a tool whose specific purpose is to make it difficult to track transactions in general?
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.
>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.
Please.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
Then he post a video making fun of his video getting removed due to misinformation that he never retracted or corrected.
Or you're avoiding my point?
1. Mass shootings are committed by those brainwashed by government psy-ops programs to motivate the masses to outlaw guns so they can become tyrannical.
2. Only tyrannical governments enact gun control
3. Gun control leads to extermination of a population.
4. The USA is following this pattern and I guess the left is essentially compared to Hitler or Stalin rising to power to perform genocide after they successfully disarm the right.
He never mentions once all the countries with successful strict gun control and free societies such as most of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia. As though by enacting more strict gun control will lead to genocide always with complete surety.
His whole channel is an exercise in Brandolini's law and he's is most definitely a huge part of the problem.
The funny thing I am a gun owner and support the second amendment, but everyone seems to forget the "well regulated" part of that amendment and the fact that currently there are many "arms" we are not allowed to own, the same ones the military uses. Do you think everyone should own a machine gun if they want? How about a rocket launcher? What about a nuke? We already draw a line at certain arms moving that line or adjusting the regulations around it would not be without precedent.
It has no relation whatsoever to what “regulation” means nowadays.
> Do you think everyone should own a machine gun if they want? How about a rocket launcher?
But almost everyone can own a machine gun or a rocket launcher, where not forbidden by state law. Just pay a $200 transfer tax and wait 3-12 months for the ATF to process your transfer form.
So it doesn't mean background checks or proper record keeping? The meaning of the word has not changed since the 18th century and certainly doesn't mean no rules whatsoever.
>But almost everyone can own a machine gun or a rocket launcher, where not forbidden by state law. Just pay a $200 transfer tax and wait 3-12 months for the ATF to process your transfer form.
So no nuclear arms or chemical / biological arms correct? The right to bear one is infringed.
Machine guns only if made before 1986, no new machine guns due to FOPA. So extremely limited supply and high cost along with the 3-12 month wait is due to more extensive background checks along with a high tax. The right to bear one is infringed.
Missile launchers are approved and taxed not only for the launcher but each round and you also must get a federal explosives permit for the rounds. The right to bear one is infringed.
State are also allowed to regulate them even more so, kind of like state level assault weapons bans and handgun laws? The right to bear one is infringed.
If you are ok with that kind of heavy regulation then doing that for semi-auto assault rifles or hand guns should not be an issue correct? That was my point, the second amendment does not mean you can own any arm you want and the heavy regulation on title 2 weapons, explosives and WMD's seems to work well in preventing their use in crimes without leading to tyranny and genocide.
my argument would be that it does mean you can own that things.
Bans on nukes, etc should be added as amendment to constitution if they're not allowed. They are arms. Should be easy to pass the amendment if the overwhelming majority agree.
The fact you can't buy a nuke isn't some gotcha on legitimacy of restrictions. Clearly nukes should be legal until the constitution is amended to exclude classes of arms and the hughes amendment for post-86 machine guns is blatantly unconstitutional.
(2) Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller's holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those "in common use at the time" finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
There may be a disagreement on how limited the right is but your extreme viewpoint the even nuclear arms should not be regulated due to them not being called out explicitly in an amendment is obviously held by a very small extremist minority.
> your extreme viewpoint the even nuclear arms should not be regulated due to them not being called out explicitly in an amendment is obviously held by a very small extremist minority.
I'm not asserting nuclear arms shouldn't be "regulated." I'm asserting the method by which their regulation is legitimate, in my opinion, would be a constitutional amendment. You're attempt to paint me as an "extremist" is predicated on the false assumption that I've argued nuclear arms should not be regulated at all, when in fact my only assertion is that any regulation should be done in a way that makes it evident to the reader of the amendment that they are not protected.
Do you or do you not believe the right to bear a nuclear arm should be infringed?
Its sounds like (I think) yes you do believe it should be infringed but disagree with the current laws technical implementation. You are an extremist in that most people agree with the current law and do not think a new constitutional amendment is needed to regulate nuclear arms.
1) Whether nuclear arms ought to be regulated
and
2) IF it is to be done, how can it be done legally.
I think we can answer (2) without the prejudice of opinion of (1). My opinion on (2) would be the right to bear arms should not be infringed until the constitution is amended to state the right to bear <whatever words have the effect of excluding nuclear arms> shall not be infringed. I believe there would be little political difficulty in passing an amendment excluding nuclear arms, and if it helps us depend much less on implicit interpretation then it's good for everyone. Hopefully it would shut down some of these gotchas that try to drive a wedge in towards legitimizing other infringements by trying to get the counterparty to relent banning of nukes is constitutional under the currently written constitution (not saying that's your argument precisely, but I've seen it a lot).
Yes this is a gotcha question, which is the point, the strict reading of the second amendment says "Arms" the whole point is a logical exercise in whether that literally means all arms or if it is in fact not an unlimited right to all arms.
Making an amendment for every new form of arm would be a colossal waste of time if we can just agree that the second amendment is not an unlimited right as almost everyone understands it to be including conservative Supreme Court justices. This is actually settled case law and is "legal" your assertion that it is not legal is a farce so #2 is a non-issue except in an extremists mind.
Here we observe the devolving into ad-hominem calling the counterparty an extremist. If painting your counterparty as an "extremist" is how you want to make your point, that's your prerogative, and I'll give the you the benefit of the last word and never having to deal with me ever again. So after replying to my statement below (or not) rest assured you can feel well knowing you have the last word to an "extremist", which is of course whoever disagrees with you. You can walk away feeling proud and strong your name calling was necessary to make your point.
>You did not answer #1, do you believe the right to bear nuclear arms should be infringed? Can you answer?
No. I believe as the constitution is currently written they cannot be infringed. I believe if the 2nd amendment is amended they could be. Of course, if the constitution says arms aren't protected it would be a lot harder to call it an infringement. I also completely reject this notion of you holding the second amendment hostage which suggests our options are accepting legitimacy of implicitly banning nukes (and by extension, perhaps other unnamed things), or accept all arms. Clearly an amendment excluding nukes is an alternative.
>Making an amendment for every new form of arm would be a colossal waste of time if we can just agree that the second amendment is not an unlimited right as almost everyone understands it to be including conservative Supreme Court justices.
I don't agree with this interpretation. Again if you just want to defer to the courts that is fine, but I don't see the point in debating. You can simply say "my argument is whatever the latest interpretation of the supreme court is" and we both understand it's not really up to debate that the supreme court agrees with you that nuclear arms are bannable.
>Making an amendment for every new form of arms
I mean you don't even have to do that, you can change the second amendment to say "firearms .50 cal or smaller and knives" or say "excludes anything that a reasonable person would presume would be used to be killed 10+ people in a single activation of the munition." We can debate the wording aforementioned, maybe you don't like the exact phrases I used, but if we can word laws against these things then we can certainly make an amendment.
>would be a colossal waste
You might be the first person in history who simultaneously wants restrictions on nukes but thinks it's just too much work to solidify the framework banning them from people you don't want to have them. If the belief is banning nukes saves humanity or whatever I don't see putting pen to paper as a waste of time (and if universally agreed, not even that politically difficult.) Amending the constitution to exclude nukes would make this a lot more clear and less of a precarious position of being dependent on implicit interpretation by the courts, so I don't see a downside.
>the strict reading of the second amendment says "Arms" the whole point is a logical exercise in whether that literally means all arms or if it is in fact not an unlimited right to all arms
Yes my position is that it literally means all arms. If someone says something I think is absurd (I do not think the literal interpretation of the second is absurd at the time of its writing, but many would), I don't simply choose to re-interpret what they wrote to convince myself they implicitly did not mean what they said.
>assertion that it is not legal is a farce
Of course what's currently considered by most to be "legal" is whatever the supreme court says it is, I'm growing tired and bored of you suggesting any other opinion is a farce. It's pointless to debate, just go read the court proceedings if that's your position. It's worth noting at various times the supreme court changes its mind on what is legal, what is considered legal (or illegal) today could be considered different tomorrow upon appeal to the supreme court. I don't think it's inconceivable at some point the courts may take on more literal interpretation of the constitution, which could result in a constitutional convention (which some may argue we are due for).
And a second note on this point: supreme court justices themselves disagree on what's "legal" so even the majority opinion could be considered legal by one justice and illegal by the other. But of course a minority opinion justice is allowed to have these opinions of dissent and I am not... because that would make me a farce unlike the dissenting judges.
>You might be the first person in history who simultaneously wants restrictions on nukes but thinks it's just too much work to solidify the framework banning them from people you don't want to have them.
The framework is already solidified under 18 U.S. Code § 831 and 832 there is no need to waste time trying to get an amendment passed. There are many more statutes than amendments to handle more specific issues such as this. The point of having statutes is so that a the constitution need not be amended for every new legal situation.
>I don't simply choose to re-interpret what they wrote to convince myself they implicitly did not mean what they said.
All amendments must be interpreted, they are far too short and vague to not be. In the case of the second it has been interpreted like all rights spelled out in the constitution, they are not unlimited. This has long historical precedent and the interpretation does change with the times as can be seen with obscenity laws with the first amendment and most recently abortion laws and the fourteenth, right to privacy is not unlimited, even Roe vs Wade made this point.
>Of course what's currently considered by most to be "legal" is whatever the supreme court says it is, I'm growing tired and bored of you suggesting any other opinion is a farce.
Suggesting that the supreme courts decision is not legal is again an extremist point of view to the point being farcical, you may disagree with the law as it stands, but its currently the law of the land in the legal sense and its the supreme courts job to interpret whether the regulation of arms is constitutional and thus far it has. The vast majority of people seem to agree that arms can be regulated under the second amendment it's just matter of specifics, which is where statutes come in and the debate over the specifics.
After all, the 2nd amendment was written at a time when civilian ownership of warships was okay, so I don't see how it shouldn't extend to all arms—past, present, and future.
But we don't hear about that? Why? Because pharma, at least in the US, is something like 80% of the advertising revenues of all mainstream-mass media channels - so it's one of the big elephants in the room that they prevent from society being alerted to; health and education institutions have also been corrupted by pharma and their profits.
Otherwise, your arguments are still only at the shallow level - and don't address or even acknowledge that gun control, or gun rights being enacted, may in fact be an authoritarian effort - and most always implemented through the guise of "doing what's good for society."
So is it possible that in Canada, where the Trudeau government is planning to implement a mandatory gun buyback program [for certain guns to begin, but illogically, and that does practically nothing to reduce crime] - using fear mongering and opportunities of US atrocities or Canadian atrocities that the vast majority of weapons used were illegally obtained firearms] is aiming for tyrannical control - or you can't even open your mind to that possibility? If not, it makes me wonder what relatively shallow and skewed information/propaganda/perspective you've been exposed to?
Though I know that the opposite is claimed by propaganda (at least, Obama failed to recognize Armenian genocide, and anything bad is easily believed without questions about USSR).
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.
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.
Homicide rates are lower than in over-regulated nearby Germany and quite a few other European countries. It’s even lower than some famously entirely gunless Asian countries.
Your conclusions are not grounded in data.
It's just a google away to prove it.
Czech Republic is a shall issue country in the heart of otherwise gunless Europe.
500 year long gun tradition. The only two times gun ownership/carry was suspended during those 500 years was under Nazi and Soviet occupation.
Even foreigners from friendly nations can obtain a permit and carry, not even the USA doesn’t do it.
Self-defence with deadly force enshrined in the constitution.
Lower homicide rates than gunless Asia.
Every gun permit is also automatically a concealed carry permit, again, not even the USA doesn’t allow in every state.
20% of parliamentarians carry weapons to the Parliament.
This is a country in Europe.
I'll never argue that the presence of guns directly cause gun violence. There are many factors at play. Strong gun regulations are one proven means to reduce gun violence, even if they are merely treating a symptom rather than the real disease. Unfortunately, making the necessary changes to truly solve the problem is even more of an uphill battle. I could see meaningful gun legislation passing within the next 10-15 years. But it will probably be decades before we solve our problems with inequality, healthcare, and education, assuming our entire democracy does not disintegrate first.
Yet, they don't have shall issue laws, no constitutional rights like in CZ and USA, and their homicides (firearms or not) are somewhat higher. They border each other and have a long shared history going back a thousand years.
Seems regulations actually matter very little, except maybe appeasing the anxious that something is being done?
Czechs do ask for medical clearance, which is probably reasonable, but I'm afraid even that could be abused by a rogue government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry
Wikipedia has more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
People admitted under ESTA can legally possess a firearm (state law still applies). The 2nd amendment rights are the same for Green Card holders as they are for U.S. citizens, and for everyone else there’s the hunting permit loophole.
What do you mean, even the USA doesn’t do it?
In Czech Republic you need to take an exam on weapons law, which you must take in Czech.
I think what parent post was saying is that in Czech Republic (national not state level), foreigners can not only obtain firearms, but also carry (presumably concealed), which as I'm guessing you also know varies widely from state to state, and here in California from county to county.
Of course I'm mind-reading here, I could be totally wrong.
When my brother-in-law and his son come visit from Switzerland they love to go shooting. In fact they get bored with my stuff and rent things with more punch (e.g. .338 Lapua). We visited a friend of mine in TX, and the things you can rent there (e.g. .50 BMG), we've only heard myths of those in CA, no one's actually ever seen one.
Not technically true, there needs to be a reason, but in most cases concealed carry is generally accepted.
Now, explain why you think an AR-15 is so dangerous? Tell me why you’re so focused on that gun when it’s both not the major gun used in mass shootings[1], and when more homicides are committed with pistols[2].
I know quite a lot about guns, and I can explain the obsession. AR-15’s are hopped up 22’s. Literally. They take a 55-ish grain bullet and stack a lot of powder behind it. For reference the “not at all dangerous” 22 rimfire the government wants everybody to move to has a 40-ish grain bullet. What this means is low recoil, with good power. Coupled with relatively cheap ammo, you can sport shoot, compete and defend your farm with a single gun. Further, the AR platform is highly modifiable. I can swap uppers and change the caliber entirely. I can have an upper used for sport shooting, and a different one for hunting.
1: https://www.newsweek.com/ar-15-rifles-were-used-26-percent-l...
2: https://abcnews.go.com/US/type-gun-us-homicides-ar-15/story?...
I completely understand that guns are difficult to understand for non gun owners, they simply don't do any research. Couple that with the amount of research required to be knowledgeable takes weeks or even months for even the most competent of us. But imagine what you sound like to someone who is knowledgeable. It’s like someone challenging a PhD on knowledge. You should know what you’re talking about and if you don’t keep your mouth shut.
If you want actual visual proof that the AR-15 is on the lower end of the spectrum then watch this video, timestamped at multiple different locations:
AR-15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5QNTnMO5xU&t=9m53s
M14 (bigger than AR-15): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5QNTnMO5xU&t=10m41s
Lever Action (still more power than an AR-15): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5QNTnMO5xU&t=11m25s
12 gauge shotgun (and still, more destructive power than an AR-15. Also comes recommended by President Biden!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5QNTnMO5xU&t=11m53s
In fact, the AR is so underpowered in today's world it's being replaced by the military (this gun has 2x the power of an AR-15): https://www.sigsauer.com/blog/us-army-selects-sig-sauer-next...
Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US led to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.
Then give some thought to what Europe was like in the early 20th century!
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."
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.
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...).
Careful. I pasted a quote. Those are not my words. I didn't accuse anyone of being cowardly.
You might want to actually look at gun ownership numbers before repeating tired and very wrong Right talking points
First of all, Austria is the only country in the European Union where firearms are only partially licensed.
Second of all... Sorry, what I really meant was to say was that European gun ownership (broadly speaking) is very different from USian gun ownership. Europeans generally need permits, reasons for ownership, training, et cetera just to own a firearm. Carrying is heavily discouraged, and often illegal without a permit... which the state is under no obligation to give you. Magazine size restrictions are rampant.
In the United States, in many territories, we don't have equivalent policies. Many states allow for entirely permit-less ownership and carrying of firearms. We don't need to ask permission – that's the difference I'm trying to indicate here.
I think the hardest one to talk about is the non-violent sex offender -- CSAM and the like. They have a high re-offending rate, and rehabilitation efforts aren't very effective in this area. On one hand they're only a handgun away from being a violent offender, but on the other we don't want to lock them up for life.
Personally I think it's a good tradeoff.
2) If the punishment does actually have a deterrent effect (which is questionable, but lets presume it is true), then it should have a deterrent effect on the underlying violent crimes like murder or assault with a deadly weapon. Assuming the punishments for murder and assault with deadly weapon are worse than felon-in-possession (and I would hope they would be), one would conclude the marginal deterrent effect against violent crime is minimal for felon-in-possession laws. On the other hand defending genuine threat to life with a weapon is generally legal, so the deterrent effect for felon-in-possession is nearly all constituted of felon-in-possession laws. That is the felon-in-possession laws likely have little to no marginal effect on preventing violent crime while they may have significant marginal effect on the ability of felons to legitimately defend themselves. Put simply, it moves armed self defense from "legal" to "super illegal" while moving violent crimes from "super illegal" to "more super illegaler" -- which just seems like an extremely poor tradeoff.
3) In a world where arms are trivial to obtain (felon or no), if people can't be trusted in public not to kill others they should not be released from jail. The idea people would be ok with killing others (or other armed violence) but too scared to break the law to 3d print a gun just seems ridiculous. Releasing people who legitimately are believed to be a threat to the public in the event they obtain weapons just seems bat-shit insane to me. If you want a half-step of probation under which no weapons are allowed while they are closely monitored by a PO, to me that makes more sense. But a free man off probation can be assumed to be able to get weapons whenever they like, so we can't be releasing people to be free if we expect them to kill others with weapons.
4) >The best predictor of whether you will commit a crime in the future, is if you've committed one in the past.
I mean that's probably true. If someone owns a pot plant today, it's not unreasonable to guess they will own one tomorrow. Which if they own guns at the same time, is federally a felony. Of course many of those people were never a particularly worrisome threat, that is until you made that illegal which in your own words turns them into people likely to commit crime again. It's the government taking peaceful people committing a victimless crime and damning them into situation where by your own admission makes them more likely to be trapped into a world of crime in the future (perhaps because felony record hurts their job prospects).
> CSAM and the like.
And here's the nuke everyone likes to drop as a bad faith effort to force others to specifically defend CP offenders rather than generically non-violent criminals. If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children, then they need locked away forever or somehow gone from society. Otherwise, they need their rights restored when they are returned. I'd really prefer not to have a conversation revolving around these kind of offenders, because I find it is often just a clever trap to try and make someone out to be a supporter/defender specifically of people involved with materials involving disgusting acts to children. And of course even these people have civil rights, but defending them is so incredibly unpopular (I admit I don't enjoy advocating for their rights), so it's a cheap and easy win to introduce in a debate system with upvote/downvote to grey out comments.
I'm of the personal opinion that crimes against children should require some nexus to the physical abuse (i.e. the person that did the filming, abused the child, etc) because digitally planting evidence for this kind of crime is so incredibly trivial for police and so rapidly turns the opinion of jurors and everyone against the subject that in effect it's almost like a blank check for police to put anyone they like in jail for a long time without finding an immediate nexus to the abuse of a child or even any witnesses / claims by the child or their family. People merely found with a photo and the cop says "I promise I did not put it there, I am a good honest person" always sat very poorly with me, and I can't help wondering how many innocent people have been convicted of these offenses.
5) If we're going to cherry pick offenses, I'd like to point out owning scary mushroom or an undersized lobster is a felony as well. You may argue crimes such as even those make one more predisposed to violence, but even if that were true I would argue there must be _some_ amount of time (10 years? 20 years?) without committing further crime when there is a regression back towards, within the noise of error, of the general public.
6) >But it does show a lack of respect for the rule of law
When it comes to matters of armed violence I'm far more interested in whether the person respects human life against unjust violence than I am generically about all laws such as whether they used a stock instead of a brace on a "pistol" (felony) or stood in front of a mining truck during a protest (felony in Arkansas I believe, if not one of the adjoining states). One could argue by your (and my) standard the US government should be disarmed.
I do think my post triggered you though. You may want to think about why you reacted so strongly to this.
> And here's the nuke everyone likes to drop as a bad faith effort to force others to specifically defend CP offenders rather than generically non-violent criminals.
It's not bad faith. There are roughly 750,000 sexual offenders in the US. In 2020, the US held around 1.2M prisoners, and has about 5.1M felons in the population at large.
> If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children...
I don't just believe it. There are studies to back it up. Note that the recidivism rates for sexual offenders below are vastly underreported as sexual offenses are not as likely to be reported as other offenses.
https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-re...
The question you didn't answer, is how to fix it -- but instead, blasting me for providing one, when you don't have a good faith solution yourself.
> If we're going to cherry pick offenses, I'd like to point out owning scary mushroom or an undersized lobster is a felony as well.
At any point in time, any passed law might be considered unjust in the future. The founding fathers said they wanted to make a "more perfect union" as a response to the punitive laws made by the Crown. MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends towards justice." as a response to the human injustices to slavery and Jim Crow.
But as a whole, we -- that is society -- believe that crimes against children should not be legal, and that's the view I take as well. Real CSAM (not any artistic rendering) means some child in real life is being abused in real life.
> when you don't have a good faith solution yourself.
Hilarious because you clipped off the second half of my sentence in my quote where I provided the answer. If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children, then they need locked away forever or somehow gone from society.
Your obsession with CSAM is bizarre, I might add. And the fact you glossed over pretty much all my non-CSAM related points pretty much goes to show your intent here.
>believe that crimes against children should not be legal, and that's the view I take as well
My argument revolves around civil rights after full release from jail+probation/parole/community control, not whether crimes against children should be legal.
>You may want to think about why you reacted so strongly to this.
I really don't appreciate what I've seen you and many others do which is try to make someone who defends the civil rights of people who are free and released as someone who somehow doesn't want justice for children. These kinds of accusations made under the veil of academic debate are just an intelligent version of slinging shit at the schoolyard.
This is called recidivism and it’s a product of fuckwads like yourself who write people off for life the first time they run afoul of the law. It’s a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy that people return to crime when society deems them as subhuman when they return from prison.
> On one hand they're only a handgun away from being a violent offender
You’re only a handgun away from being a violent offender by that simple logic. You’re literally talking about non-violent people suddenly becoming violent for no reason.
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%20Gu...
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/australi...
It's not too long ago homemade explosives were a seriously real threat in this nation (and others with much more strict regulations, such as the UK). Mass knife stabbings aren't that uncommon around the world, and driving a vehicle through a crowd remains one of the most effective means of violence readily available.
The point is... the tool isn't the problem it's the person. It's a figurative band-aid to think we can solve mental health issues by taking away objects and ignoring the actual core problem... which is mental health.
Stable, mentally healthy people do not commit these mass violent acts. Full stop.
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.
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.
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
Trying to paint the entire movement with the views of it's most extreme members is absolutely bad faith communication.
1. Sport Shooters 2. Self Defenders
There are some that over lap, but I am not a sport shooter, i own guns exclusively for self defense, most gun owners that "support reasonable restrictions" do so because they only care about maintaining shooting sports, and are fine with restrictions because normally they are targeted to self defense uses of fire arms.
There is also a small subset of gun owners that are ignorant of the current state of law and believe rhetoric like "closing the gun show loop hole" or other such non-sense.
None of this however changes the fact that the MAJOR organizations that support gun control, and big name politicians pushing for gun control have their implicit stated goal of total ban of the most common weapons in use today, (Semi-Auto rifles and pistols with capacities greater than 8)
So sure maybe they will allow people to have a black power musket, or some other such non-sense and you believe that classifies as "not a total ban" but to me that is a total ban
Again, not true. You need to get out of your filter bubble and meet more kinds of people. People own guns for many reasons and those different reasons do drive different gun usage.
A ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity pistols is not even remotely the same thing as banning all guns or even banning all non muskets. I don't think such a ban has popular support even among those who do support greater restrictions.
You trade one for the other. Mentally unstable/unhealthy people commit mass violent acts regardless of the tools available.
In practically zero cases of mass shootings was the assailant completely mentally healthy. Taking away one particular violent tool is not going to solve the mental health problem in this country.
Which, btw, are all regulated in the US.
See Indiana Mall Shooting
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.
It may be what some folks want to believe happened, but it is absolutely not the facts.
The prosecution couldn't bring to the stand the people he killed -- because they were dead.
The jury decided that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. That finding is not inconsistent with anything I said.
The whole problem of firing off guns in a crowd is that everyone involved might be acting in self-defense, and yet still end up killing eachother.
Life isn't a video game, or an action movie. You can't always tell who the 'bad guy' is, or even if there is one.
And if you don't ever believe that confronting an active shooter is ever the correct thing to do, why do you think having a gun will help you? Take your own advice and run away, you don't need a gun to do that.
I do not believe that the people who attacked Rittenhouse believed that he was an active shooter they needed to stop, not for a moment do I believe that, nor did the jury, nor did anyone else that has a rational mind
Active shooters do not run toward police with their hands up
https://capitalpunishmentstudies.tumblr.com/post/17208707639...
"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.
Why do you think this guy should be exempt from the rules that everyone else has to follow?
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.
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.
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.
…or guns, alcohol, abortions, etc.
People have a need for privacy and disassociating spending from receiving for perfectly normal and legal reasons.
Or someone knowing you book a lot of hotels and flights, so your home must be empty a lot.
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.
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.)
It also doesn’t follow that a private ledger would be banned any more than, say, credit cards or PayPal are banned. The thing which would get them banned would be refusing to comply with KYC laws, which is a political choice rather than a requirement.
It remains to be seen what they mean by this. Tornado doesn't extract fees, so the profiting couldn't be exactly direct.
> It also doesn’t follow that a private ledger would be banned any more than, say, credit cards or PayPal are banned.
I specifically said "fully private", not "private from your neighbor", to differentiate with credit cards or PayPal where users have no transparency or control over who sees their data.
> The thing which would get them banned would be refusing to comply with KYC laws, which is a political choice rather than a requirement.
It's not possible for a decentralized system to "comply with KYC laws". That's like asking that paper dollars require an ID to transfer. They can't do that, they are bits of paper existing in physical reality.
Similarly, autonomous consensus-based systems like cryptocurrencies and trustless smart contracts can't just say to users "sorry, I'm not able to serve you until I see your valid government-approved ID", they are "things" not "services with a helpdesk, a street address and a CEO".
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'.
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).
So this argument, while potentially valid, doesn't apply here.
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.
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.
WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.
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
Tornado Cash has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.
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.
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.
Also if your friends then regularly snoop and trace every single one of your transactions so they can laugh at you for your purchases, I wouldn't consider those to be your friends.
I mean fair enough, you have contrived a legal example. Yes, I admit it does have valid use cases, I just don't think they're very common at all.
Why would you need a mixer? If you want to hide it from your friends just send it to a new address and then buy with that address.
Privacy is not bad.
"Oh, because this blockchain isn't anonymous enough I must use a mixer!"
Still mostly money laundering though.
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.
Not everyone believes that money is a form of speech, current US Court rulings on campaign finance notwithstanding.
2. Not wanting to give your entire financial history to every single person you interact with.
Do you like such a privileged life that you can't imagine a government or adversary using knowledge about your finances against you? Do you think Russians trying to help friends and family should be restricted from doing so because Putin says so?
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.
There are legitimate using an open ledger as Ethereum, privacy is a right.
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
If the law is written by authoritarians they very well could be. What is legal has absolutely no relation to what is right, wrong, ethical or unethical. It depends entirely on the people passing the law.
When funds from every major hack are going into your protocol maybe you're actually doing something bad.
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.
By contrast only 14% of Tornado Cash activity has been traced to illegal activity.
https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=...
Do we need to hold ballistic table calculators' developers accountable?
What if these calculators' developers submitted a PR to SQLite source code or just a feature request and SQLIte devs got it done, are SQLite developers also culpable by proxy?
Where do you stop your "they knew what they were doing"?
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."
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Layering phase is when the original source of money is concealed through transactions or bookkeeping tricks.
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.
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.
They really shouldn't.
Neither should any other security researcher who publishes exploits.
Neither should any other developer of cryptographic technology.
What about automobile manufacturers? They kill almost as many people as guns (in the US, quick google search)
Money laundering, especially running a money laundering business which does not follow certain rules, is illegal regardless if some of the usage is legitimate.
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.
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?
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.
> If you don't want your transactions to be public, don't use a public ledger.
That's exactly what people were attempting to do, with Tornado.
> You don't get to launder your money
There is no money laundering available with Tornado, it doesn't turn an illigitimate source of funds into a legitimate one. And it also has a compliance tool to allow proof of transfer between accounts.
> Tornado Cash wasn't free, there was a fee which as I understand it was sent back to various developers.
This wasn't sent to developers. It was a fee you would pay relayers to propagate transactions on the network and was optional. You could choose to fund withdrawals with a relayer or to use funds in your own wallet.
> Money laundering
This isn't money laundering.
Privacy is definitely a legitimate use for something like Tornado Cash, what are you talking about? Hell, if someone found out what my address is and it's not in my best interest that this person knew about it, I would definitely use it just to move my funds to another address.
If you sell me a screwdriver and then I go and kill someone with it, should you be prosecuted for it?
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.
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.
We shall see if that's the case here. My guess is the state can't stop it
I mean, the FBI has already shown it can see through mixers and arrest those who try to cash stolen bitcoins.
China has made sale or possession of bitcoin a crime but the West is following different road - with enough state intervention, bitcoin will wind-up a public money, less private money system than regular bank accounts. Every transaction is on the blockchain and that is public. Try putting that in your "anarcho-capitalist" pipe and smoking it.
source?
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".
"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"
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).
> 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:
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.
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 coördination. 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.
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.
Same as the Silk Road/darkmarkets argument.
The US has significant control over European countries. They're nearly vassal states to a degree.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I'm sure that isn't true. Most people anywhere in Mexico are civilians not involved in the drug trade.
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.
Yep, it shows an incredible quantity of money laundering through the service.
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.
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.
Unless the service was redeployed (unlikely) or operating behind a proxy contract, it wouldn't have been possible to add new features.
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.
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".
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.
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?
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.
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.
Every other industry deals with this challenge — why should software be any different?
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.
If you knowingly build software that can be used for money laundering and make no effort to prevent money laundering then, if software was treated like other industries, you’d absolutely expect to be held liable.
You've retreated back to money laundering, but that is not what you originally were talking about.
You were pretty clear that you were talking about any software which is used nefariously. Which I pointed out that pretty much any software can be used nefariously (e.g. ssh, browsers, hosting software, etc.), but you keep avoiding that.
A web browser can be used to access a banking website through which you might engage in money laundering, sure, but that’s very different to a piece of software that can be used to hide the origin of funds.
The difference is like a kitchen utensil manufacturer vs. a gun manufacturer. A kitchen knife can be used to kill, a gun can be used to kill, but we hold gun manufacturers and kitchen utensil manufacturers to different standards because intent is an important aspect.
Your argument is predicated on the idea that intent doesn’t matter, but intent does matter, intent is a significant component of criminal law.
>If a company releases software that is used nefariously, there are very common legal actions to hold them accountable
There is no mention of intent. Just that if a software is used nefariously, the creators of that software should be legally accountable.
You later talk about your intent, when you commit a crime, but that's very different. I agree that if someone commits a crime with X software, their intent should be considered. What I don't agree with is holding Tatu Ylönen accountable for someone else's nefarious use of ssh.
Money laundering laws very much disagree with this.
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.
Where do they?
The stated goals of TC was privacy. Privacy is not a crime.
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.
Like here: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n...
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...
> 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.
It's more like being arrested for developing a Bittorrent client
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.
Is it reasonable for the postal service to examine every single piece of mail to check if it is illegal?
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.
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?
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.
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.
What a useless, puerile argument
"Doing nothing" isn't reasonable though, and the people has decided. Calling the people's arguments puerile or useless makes no difference.
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.
Yes and no. It depends on what you mean by “validating”.
If your objective is to restrict the types of transactions that end up in the blocks you yourself create, you can recompile geth with a custom mempool implementation, and use that custom mempool to inspect the data of any pending transaction you want. This is how MEV works.
In other words, it is 100% possible for a technically-competent miner to only create new blocks that exclude blacklisted accounts, or that restrict transactions according to any number of criteria.
On the other hand, once a new block has already been mined and propagated to the network, there is nothing that a single miner can do to stop it.
If you start rejecting otherwise-valid blocks because they include blacklisted transactions, you will only fork yourself from the network. The rest of the miners will keep on building on top of the block you wanted to drop.
They have less control than you may think.
Any ethereum miners (or proof-of-stake validators) who block some class of transactions immediately become vulnerable to denial of service attacks.
This came up back in 2016 with the DAO hack on ethereum[1]. Some ethereum miners considered blocking transactions that moved the stolen funds, but then realized that this was infeasible: if you block such transactions, then the DAO hacker can spam you with them. Such spam on ethereum is usually prevented by requiring the sender to spend money on each transaction (ie pay gas fees). But that fee is only charged when the transaction is included in a block -- if you refuse to include it, then the spammer pays nothing. The kicker is that, by Rice's theorem, there is no way in general to distinguish "malicious" transactions from non-malicious ones (for _any_ definition of "malicious") short of just executing them to see what they do.
So if you as an ethereum miner (or validator) try to block certain transactions, you can be forced to do unbounded amounts of work for free, ie DoS'd.
[1] https://hackingdistributed.com/2016/07/05/eth-is-more-resili...
This is SOP for the bulk of nonviolent crimes in the US.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
(and banks do all they can to avoid fraud, yes yes yes)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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"
Someone else has told you this already, but you seem intent on ignoring it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
(I can't verify the veracity of this report, but if true, this looks like it was a coordinated international police operation)
A bitcoin private key is just "KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM" after all.
A dollar in a bank account is similarly abstractable. Anyone equating crypto to speech is undermining actual privacy rights.
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.
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.
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.
Nobody is banning technology or math, only specific, usually criminal, uses of technology and math are banned.
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.
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.
a) he doesn't operate, market or deploy nmap in most instances. Doesn't consult or gives input at all.
b) He doesn't receive fees from using nmap on an ongoing basis
c) Nmap doesn't fall under financial laws which are stricter and require more to be in compliance with.
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.
> It is suspected that persons behind this organisation have made large-scale profits from these transactions.
Nodes are running the network, and developers earn through increased coin value and both are necessary part of the operations of the service.
If you want to develop serious privacy technology, make it open source and don't benefit from it financially
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?
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..."
Devastating that it has come to "do not code an E2EE privacy tool because you might find yourself in jail one day."
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.
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.
Where is the line here, and who defines it?
Let's cut to the chase: it's virtually guaranteed that Signal and Matrix are used for sharing child porn.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him in Prison
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?
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.
Are we really moving back in this direction? Let’s just ban math because criminals use cryptography.
"Since Monday 8 August 2022 Tornado Cash has been placed by the US government on the OFAC sanctions list of America."
And the article is from 12 August. So NL would have informed US who then put them on a sanctions list.
If only they had used Codeberg, this would not have been an issue at all, as Codeberg is self hosted and a free hosted version is in Germany.
The issue isn't owning or writing viruses or malicious code, the issue is distribution and deployment of such code.
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.
If you facilitate money laundering that is still a crime even if the intent was for legitimate reasons like privacy.
[0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma....
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 €. The large majority of money laundering happens through banks, who just pay a fine and sweep it under the rug.
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.
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.
... 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.
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/...
Nope. You are thinking of the Declaration of Independence.
It doesn't mean that you have the right to privacy in any and all situations.
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.
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...
Third paragraph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.
At this point, the majority of the comments I read sound like a CNN anchor script. Ha, maybe it's their web developers.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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).
"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.
Just-so 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.
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.
(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.)
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.
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).
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.
No company will advertise themselves as a criminal operation, even the dumbest thieves aren't that stupid.
If someone did what tornando is doing with physical cash, they would also be committing money laundering.
Does shuffling a bunch of currency notes together - some of which might be from a drug dealer - make you a criminal?
Banks and financial institutions are happily privatizing Big Brother.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
This didn’t happen with no lead up or context
Should we arrest the Tor developers because North Koreans use Tor?
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
This is a hysterical prediction.
"12 states prohibit state family planning funds from going to any entity that provides abortions."
https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-family...
That's assuming you're correct they would try to ban private funds. A big assumption.
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In that case there is no room for crypto. Totalitarian regimes can execute anyone suspected of holding it.
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.
Does that somehow invalidate your point?
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?
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.
Can you give an example of one such time?
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'.
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.
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).
I fundamentally disagree. You objectively cannot “kill” something that is not “alive”. That is just a fact of life itself. A government can legislate all they want, but it does not make an unborn fetus any more alive. And thus any law rooted in this idea is fundamentally absurd, preposterous, and so downright stupid that on the principle alone (aside from the many others) any such ban shouldn’t be followed.
To entertain the idea that government can legislate whatever it wants is to imply that a government can dictate the laws of physics. It’s just nonsensical.
The fetus is alive. It's a bunch of cells. There's a causal interaction to remove it from the host which makes it a bunch of dead cells.
Legislatig physics is stupid, but what if some state said by law which interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one? Stupid, but not much different than building codes. Or say that prions are alive and can run for office... stupid, but there used to be a lot of absurd laws. (If someone works on Saturday they shall be put to death. Sure, what's work? And then there are many many many interpretations of what's work.)
Whether it’s the former or the latter cannot be determined from this arrest alone.
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.
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.
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.
> "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
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.
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.
Maybe you don't, but that's what happens by default when using cash
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.
I'm pretty sure that's legally required even when buying with crypto
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.
A 200 euro banknote's dimensions are about 153x77x0.113 mm, if we consider double that thickness (because unless they're brand new, banknotes tend to crumple) we get that 2,253,400 euros will have a volume of 30 liters, which should fit in a backpack. If you wanted to use the more common 50 euro banknote you could fit 615,650 € in 30 liters.
The 500 euro note, which would allow you to carry an even larger sum in the same 30 liters, was discontinued because European authorities were concerned about how much the note was being used to facilitate illegal activity: https://www.bis.org/review/r160211e.htm . In the US, all bills with a face value greater than $100 were recalled in 1969 for similar reasons.
You can transport a greater dollar value in the same volume using diamonds or gold, but again, the amount one person can carry is not unlimited.
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.
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.
>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.
You could want to use Tornado Cash for other forms of privacy, while still respecting your obligations to governments.
For example, suppose you are a company that pays salaries in tokens on the Ethereum blockchain but you want to do this without disclosing each employee's salary to the rest of their peers. You could fund a bunch of fresh accounts through Tornado Cash and distribute private keys to your employees off chain so they could access their funds.
Everyone involved could be completely respectful of taxes, etc. but they would still benefit from the privacy offered by Tornado Cash.
That is actually legal in the nation that was in the news for sanctioning Tornado Cash.
>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.
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.
(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.
> arbitrary
There is no absolute right to privacy.
There are more cryptogrifters than there are cryptographers.
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!
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.
Tornado Cash is not a money laundering operation. It is a privacy tool.
> suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering
Sufficiently good use of sufficiently good privacy technology would make this judgement impossible. What happens then? Good luck not becoming a police state.
Crimes happen in the real world, not behind a cipher. Some element of any crime is unencrypted and unencryptable.
> 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.
This is demonstrably false.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/nj-supreme-court...
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?
Who is “they”?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Tornado Cash is not a company and nobody operates it. It is a privacy protocol.
Better to say “If I am a HTTPS”…
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."
Good example again of low profile laws that are abused by government and police forces to get to their objectives.
>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.
Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch of bytes, like this: `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`
"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.
I have a hard time pinpointing the time, or identifying the reasons, bit the current sentiment towards some of those topics is chilly.
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.
How?
So, once deployed, there really isn't anything to 'run' in order for it to continue.
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.
Que remarks about 'privacy' in 3,2,1...