There are a ton of legitimate, non-criminal reasons to use Tornado Cash. Maybe it just feels weird for random strangers on the internet to be able to figure out

There are a ton of legitimate, non-criminal reasons to use Tornado Cash. Maybe it just feels weird for random strangers on the internet to be able to figure out your net worth when that's not something you share with my family and closest friends. The real thing at stake here is freedom of speech. Following this OFAC announcement the code was immediately censored from Github. This is because OFAC violations can land you in jail for up to 30 years. This means that code, which is clearly just speech, is being censored. Either first amendment, free speech rights will be eroded or governments will have to relinquish their control when it comes to who deciding how you can spend your money. Governments clearly aren't going to give up their control without a fight. Sometimes there's a political and ideological aspect to our work as software engineers. I'm reminded of brave heroes like Martin Hellman and Phil Zimmermann who risked going to prison over our right to access cryptography. The internet as we know it today only exists because they were willing to break the law at immense personal risk. We need people with that kind of courage more than ever today.