5 ms·

Representing how? What action are they anticipating?

by mmaunder 4y ago

guipsp 4y ago
Well, they expect OFAC-based legal action by the government, of course.
- mmaunder 4y ago
  Green wouldn’t have standing for EFF to participate if USA goes after MS. So I’m curious what they’d go after Green for.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    He's the maintainer on the repository - so presumably that. (https://github.com/tornado-repositories https://github.com/tornado-repositories)
- altairprime 4y ago
  If he stands up and operates a for-profit instance of the service, then he will have committed the crime that led to the sanctions against the original operators of the service. If he does not, then he is not a participating entity in the sanctioned service, and is unlikely to attract serious attention from the Justice Department. It’s nice of the EFF to throw down a gauntlet about free speech, but I expect it will be ignored in favor of sanctioning others who operate cryptohash laundering services.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    I don't think there's any for-profit argument by the Treasury against Tornado Cash. But for what it's worth, the smart contract is still live on the Ethereum mainnet. Given that it is immutable, it is not possible to take it down. It's also trivial to fork and I imagine several forks already exist on mainnet and across various EVM forks by now.
    - _ugfj 4y ago
      Potentially you are challenging one of the world's largest governments to find a way to stop it. I dunno what they can or what they will do but imagine this scenario: they sanction it in a way that you are guilty of money laundering if a copy is found on your computer -- now running the Ethereum mainnet or any fork that contains it is illegal in the United States. Do not think the DoJ won't. Refer https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ or James Mickens' https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf for some hilarious hard truth on what happens when cryptographic research meets a real world government agency. Also refer the old saying "never wake a sleeping lion".
      - chrisco255 4y ago
        > you are guilty of money laundering if a copy is found on your computer -- now running the Ethereum mainnet or any fork that contains it is illegal in the United States This is well beyond the regulatory and legal powers of the U.S. Treasury and the DOJ. That is not the letter of the law with regards to money laundering, and the agency cannot invent new laws out of thin air. Nor can they blanket ban a technology or code just because they have to learn new stuff. Could Congress pass such a law? Sure, but even then, we'll go to the mats in the court and in state legislatures. Nevermind that criminalizing and demonizing a large portion of the population hurts your re-election chances. Even torrenting, as egregious as the copyright abuse was in Pirate Bay's heyday, was never banned in such a way. Email scams from Nigeria never necessitated the shutdown of email. VPNs continue to operate. Nevermind that similar cases with regards to cryptography have already gone to court, which ruled in favor of speech: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab... The XKCD example is amusing, but fails even the most basic cross-examination. Surely officers with a court-issued warrant for probable cause of a crime should be able to inspect a person's home or things. Maybe they could find a private key written on a post-it note somewhere in the person's home. That's all fair and good, and no one is arguing against that. Clearly, it's not very scalable, nor should it be. We operate under the presumption of innocence in free societies. We all have a problem with illegal, abusive, mass surveillance. It is a violation of human liberty and a disturbing trend that has to be pushed against to prevent a full-on dystopian, authoritarian hellscape where you don't even have paper cash as an outlet from the panopticon. To avoid that future outcome, to preserve the freedom of your children, you have to fight for privacy and transactional liberty. My ancestors were willing to bleed and die for liberty. Some of us still are, today. Never wake a sleeping lion, indeed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I agree, but GitHub is going out of their way to censor this code, and developers in other countries are being arrested for writing it. Maybe a high profile case of "the code will remain available" will dissuade those who intend to follow suit.
dekhn 4y ago
This isn't the first time smart cryptographers have forced an issue like this. He wants the government to threaten GitHub and him with a lawsuit, and they have to sue him in court (which the government wants to avoid as they have a significant chance of losing). Like Clipper and Bernstein v. US, where EFF was involved.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nimbius 4y ago
  exactly this. Microsoft will always heel to the short leash of US sanctions because the losses for them are tangible: billions in government contracts. gitlab isn't bought and paid for, so forcing the issue only stands to win them PR with hackers.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Microsoft owns GitHUB and you're talking about GitLAB and those are different things.
    - nimbius 4y ago
      correct indeed, my bad. I've been in gitlab all weekend
  - nl 4y ago
    > Microsoft will always heel to the short leash of US sanctions because the losses for them are tangible: billions in government contracts. You seem to be under the impression that "the government" is a monolitic beast that all operates together. There are other parts of government that would like nothing more than to see OFAC get a bloody nose over this (eg, other agencies that believe they should be the ones regulating crypto). He republished it on GitHub: https://github.com/tornado-repositories https://github.com/tornado-repositories
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

Representing how? What action are they anticipating?

guipsp 4y ago

Well, they expect OFAC-based legal action by the government, of course.

mmaunder 4y ago
Green wouldn’t have standing for EFF to participate if USA goes after MS. So I’m curious what they’d go after Green for.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  He's the maintainer on the repository - so presumably that. (https://github.com/tornado-repositories https://github.com/tornado-repositories)
altairprime 4y ago
If he stands up and operates a for-profit instance of the service, then he will have committed the crime that led to the sanctions against the original operators of the service. If he does not, then he is not a participating entity in the sanctioned service, and is unlikely to attract serious attention from the Justice Department. It’s nice of the EFF to throw down a gauntlet about free speech, but I expect it will be ignored in favor of sanctioning others who operate cryptohash laundering services.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I don't think there's any for-profit argument by the Treasury against Tornado Cash. But for what it's worth, the smart contract is still live on the Ethereum mainnet. Given that it is immutable, it is not possible to take it down. It's also trivial to fork and I imagine several forks already exist on mainnet and across various EVM forks by now.
  - _ugfj 4y ago
    Potentially you are challenging one of the world's largest governments to find a way to stop it. I dunno what they can or what they will do but imagine this scenario: they sanction it in a way that you are guilty of money laundering if a copy is found on your computer -- now running the Ethereum mainnet or any fork that contains it is illegal in the United States. Do not think the DoJ won't. Refer https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ or James Mickens' https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf for some hilarious hard truth on what happens when cryptographic research meets a real world government agency. Also refer the old saying "never wake a sleeping lion".
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      > you are guilty of money laundering if a copy is found on your computer -- now running the Ethereum mainnet or any fork that contains it is illegal in the United States This is well beyond the regulatory and legal powers of the U.S. Treasury and the DOJ. That is not the letter of the law with regards to money laundering, and the agency cannot invent new laws out of thin air. Nor can they blanket ban a technology or code just because they have to learn new stuff. Could Congress pass such a law? Sure, but even then, we'll go to the mats in the court and in state legislatures. Nevermind that criminalizing and demonizing a large portion of the population hurts your re-election chances. Even torrenting, as egregious as the copyright abuse was in Pirate Bay's heyday, was never banned in such a way. Email scams from Nigeria never necessitated the shutdown of email. VPNs continue to operate. Nevermind that similar cases with regards to cryptography have already gone to court, which ruled in favor of speech: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab... The XKCD example is amusing, but fails even the most basic cross-examination. Surely officers with a court-issued warrant for probable cause of a crime should be able to inspect a person's home or things. Maybe they could find a private key written on a post-it note somewhere in the person's home. That's all fair and good, and no one is arguing against that. Clearly, it's not very scalable, nor should it be. We operate under the presumption of innocence in free societies. We all have a problem with illegal, abusive, mass surveillance. It is a violation of human liberty and a disturbing trend that has to be pushed against to prevent a full-on dystopian, authoritarian hellscape where you don't even have paper cash as an outlet from the panopticon. To avoid that future outcome, to preserve the freedom of your children, you have to fight for privacy and transactional liberty. My ancestors were willing to bleed and die for liberty. Some of us still are, today. Never wake a sleeping lion, indeed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I agree, but GitHub is going out of their way to censor this code, and developers in other countries are being arrested for writing it. Maybe a high profile case of "the code will remain available" will dissuade those who intend to follow suit.

dekhn 4y ago

This isn't the first time smart cryptographers have forced an issue like this. He wants the government to threaten GitHub and him with a lawsuit, and they have to sue him in court (which the government wants to avoid as they have a significant chance of losing). Like Clipper and Bernstein v. US, where EFF was involved.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nimbius 4y ago
exactly this. Microsoft will always heel to the short leash of US sanctions because the losses for them are tangible: billions in government contracts. gitlab isn't bought and paid for, so forcing the issue only stands to win them PR with hackers.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Microsoft owns GitHUB and you're talking about GitLAB and those are different things.
  - nimbius 4y ago
    correct indeed, my bad. I've been in gitlab all weekend
- nl 4y ago
  > Microsoft will always heel to the short leash of US sanctions because the losses for them are tangible: billions in government contracts. You seem to be under the impression that "the government" is a monolitic beast that all operates together. There are other parts of government that would like nothing more than to see OFAC get a bloody nose over this (eg, other agencies that believe they should be the ones regulating crypto). He republished it on GitHub: https://github.com/tornado-repositories https://github.com/tornado-repositories
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago