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The censorship of the idea of Tornado cash thing reminds me of the old quote: "Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why sh

The censorship of the idea of Tornado cash thing reminds me of the old quote: "Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." - Joseph Stalin

ajross 4y ago
> The censorship of the idea of Tornado cash thing No one "censored" anything. The Department of the Treasury didn't sanction an "idea". GitHub took down an actively-maintained software project on their own servers that was in use in practice as a money laundering tool. Now, should the source code to that project be available from other, more trustworthy maintainers? Maybe. I tend to agree with the EFF here that this is something that needs to be allowed. But the idea that this is some kind of oppression of innocent open source hackers is... really not what's happening. And pretending otherwise seems unserious to me.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  >that was in use in practice as a money laundering tool. Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, Paypal and plenty of others are also "in use in practice as a money laundering tool" and yet for some reason they are not shut down.
  - nl 4y ago
    It's actually pretty rare for these to be used as money laundering tools.
    - from 4y ago
      Western Union has actually paid some substantial settlements to the government regarding AML and sanctions violations. Liability for AML stuff mostly falls on card issuers and is largely related to large cash sales of prepaid cards so Visa and Mastercard aren't really on the hook for that. If you followed the El Chapo trial you may remember the stories about prepaid cards: https://www.reuters.com/article/bc-finreg-money-laundering-idUSKCN1QN218 https://www.reuters.com/article/bc-finreg-money-laundering-i....
  - pjc50 4y ago
    They have processes against this, and indeed for all of those you can find "horror stories" of false positives from those processes. Tornado deliberately does not have any KYC process - indeed, the entire point of it is to obscure knowledge of ownership of (possibly stolen) money.
- chii 4y ago
  but this has flavours that taste similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS I agree that law enforcement and gov't would want to prevent money laundering. They targeting individuals involved in money laundering is right and just - as long as it is done within the confines of the law. However, the code does not break the law, in the same way that a gun does not kill. It's the person. So the code should be freely available. If it turns out that everyone in society ends up using the code to "break the law", then the law needs to be revised.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  If you want to get pedantic, the source code isn't the tool used for money laundering, it is a description of the tool. An idea. And github took it down because they fear government reprisals for publishing it. Getting nitpicky about whether you personally call that censorship or not seems like it's being deliberately obtuse, surely you understand the intent and accept it's a reasonable use of the word. (What's more censorship can even apply to purely private actions under common definitions, and can also be objectionable especially depending on the motive.) > Now, should the source code to that project be available from other, more trustworthy maintainers? Maybe. Should an idea be censored if one person publishes it, but allowed to be published by others? I can't follow the logic behind that. There are reasonable arguments for censorship, but they're almost all based on the content of what is published. The only exception I can think of are false or unfounded claims where the knowledge and intent and perception of the person publishing could be factors. That doesn't apply here though, so what's your reasoning? > But the idea that this is some kind of oppression of innocent open source hackers is... really not what's happening. And pretending otherwise seems unserious to me. Pretending censorship isn't censorship because it may not fall neatly under a clause in a country's constitution doesn't seem serious to me.
  - ajross 4y ago
    > If you want to get pedantic, the source code isn't the tool used for money laundering, it is a description of the tool. An idea. No, that's not right. The Tornado Cash contracts, built specifically from that github project, were in active use on the blockchain. That's a machine, not an idea. You're right, that there's semantic space to talk about the distinction, but that github project was directly conflating the two. So it was killed. Now we have another project, run by a researcher interested in blockchain technologies and not someone trying to run a crypto tumbler. And now the argument seems to have some more reasonable weight. But please don't pretend that the Tornado github project existed for some kind of abstracted idea of discussion. It was a practical project designed to be used for crypto mixing, and as such deserved to be regulated that way.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
- paulpauper 4y ago
  Ironically it was ethermine that did the only censoring
pvg 4y ago
This is almost certainly not a Stalin quote. The second part doesn't really make sense as a Stalin quote but I doubt any of it is.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ajross 4y ago

> The censorship of the idea of Tornado cash thing No one "censored" anything. The Department of the Treasury didn't sanction an "idea". GitHub took down an actively-maintained software project on their own servers that was in use in practice as a money laundering tool. Now, should the source code to that project be available from other, more trustworthy maintainers? Maybe. I tend to agree with the EFF here that this is something that needs to be allowed. But the idea that this is some kind of oppression of innocent open source hackers is... really not what's happening. And pretending otherwise seems unserious to me.

alasdair_ 4y ago
>that was in use in practice as a money laundering tool. Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, Paypal and plenty of others are also "in use in practice as a money laundering tool" and yet for some reason they are not shut down.
- nl 4y ago
  It's actually pretty rare for these to be used as money laundering tools.
  - from 4y ago
    Western Union has actually paid some substantial settlements to the government regarding AML and sanctions violations. Liability for AML stuff mostly falls on card issuers and is largely related to large cash sales of prepaid cards so Visa and Mastercard aren't really on the hook for that. If you followed the El Chapo trial you may remember the stories about prepaid cards: https://www.reuters.com/article/bc-finreg-money-laundering-idUSKCN1QN218 https://www.reuters.com/article/bc-finreg-money-laundering-i....
- pjc50 4y ago
  They have processes against this, and indeed for all of those you can find "horror stories" of false positives from those processes. Tornado deliberately does not have any KYC process - indeed, the entire point of it is to obscure knowledge of ownership of (possibly stolen) money.
chii 4y ago
but this has flavours that taste similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS I agree that law enforcement and gov't would want to prevent money laundering. They targeting individuals involved in money laundering is right and just - as long as it is done within the confines of the law. However, the code does not break the law, in the same way that a gun does not kill. It's the person. So the code should be freely available. If it turns out that everyone in society ends up using the code to "break the law", then the law needs to be revised.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
If you want to get pedantic, the source code isn't the tool used for money laundering, it is a description of the tool. An idea. And github took it down because they fear government reprisals for publishing it. Getting nitpicky about whether you personally call that censorship or not seems like it's being deliberately obtuse, surely you understand the intent and accept it's a reasonable use of the word. (What's more censorship can even apply to purely private actions under common definitions, and can also be objectionable especially depending on the motive.) > Now, should the source code to that project be available from other, more trustworthy maintainers? Maybe. Should an idea be censored if one person publishes it, but allowed to be published by others? I can't follow the logic behind that. There are reasonable arguments for censorship, but they're almost all based on the content of what is published. The only exception I can think of are false or unfounded claims where the knowledge and intent and perception of the person publishing could be factors. That doesn't apply here though, so what's your reasoning? > But the idea that this is some kind of oppression of innocent open source hackers is... really not what's happening. And pretending otherwise seems unserious to me. Pretending censorship isn't censorship because it may not fall neatly under a clause in a country's constitution doesn't seem serious to me.
- ajross 4y ago
  > If you want to get pedantic, the source code isn't the tool used for money laundering, it is a description of the tool. An idea. No, that's not right. The Tornado Cash contracts, built specifically from that github project, were in active use on the blockchain. That's a machine, not an idea. You're right, that there's semantic space to talk about the distinction, but that github project was directly conflating the two. So it was killed. Now we have another project, run by a researcher interested in blockchain technologies and not someone trying to run a crypto tumbler. And now the argument seems to have some more reasonable weight. But please don't pretend that the Tornado github project existed for some kind of abstracted idea of discussion. It was a practical project designed to be used for crypto mixing, and as such deserved to be regulated that way.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
paulpauper 4y ago
Ironically it was ethermine that did the only censoring

pvg 4y ago

This is almost certainly not a Stalin quote. The second part doesn't really make sense as a Stalin quote but I doubt any of it is.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]