If I create a new type of leather wallet and then North Korea uses it for money laundering, can I be charged for "facilitation"? What about if I discovered electricity, which lead to money laundering?
Where is the line here, and who defines it?
Where is the line here, and who defines it?
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).
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 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.
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.