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If Tornado Cash could be banned, couldn't the same logic be used to ban Tor? The former obscures financial transactions, and the latter obscures communications
by programmarchy 4y ago
If Tornado Cash could be banned, couldn't the same logic be used to ban Tor?
The former obscures financial transactions, and the latter obscures communications, but there's a similar principle in play.
- kibwen 4y agoThe US military itself uses Tor. They don't want to ban it, because even if the traffic on Tor is illicit, it still serves to mask the military's own traffic. Don't forget that Tor was originally developed by the US Navy.
- realce 4y agoI hear NK uses it too, it should probably be made devastatingly illegal therefore.
- staringback 4y agoMost of HN actually thinks like this unfortunately
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoI’d be willing to bet there is US government black budget money that moved over Tornado Cash, too. The issue then becomes that Tornado Cash wasn’t originally developed by the govt and whatever further implications that has.
- netheril96 4y agoThat is the point of your parent comment: defeating their argument by their logic. To be logically consistent, the US should either ban both Tornado Cash and Tor or allow both.
- iotku 4y ago>The US military itself uses Tor. They don't want to ban it That's not really any reassurance in the long term, if they find a better/different solution that goes out the window.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> couldn't the same logic be used to ban Tor? No. Despite attempts to conflate code on a blockchain with code as a concept, the code comprising Tornado Cash hasn’t been banned. You can publish it. Hell, you can re-deploy it, though that would be stupid.
- programmarchy 4y agoRight, I was referring to the wholesale banning operation of the service, not the source code. Sure, you can print the source code on a t-shirt or something like DeCSS, but that's less relevant.