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I am actually shocked that the EFF seems to have no idea what is going on here. An entity (Tornado Cash) was sanctioned for participating in money laundering a

by mike_d 4y ago

I am actually shocked that the EFF seems to have no idea what is going on here. An entity (Tornado Cash) was sanctioned for participating in money laundering activity. GitHub terminated their accounts not because of the code itself that existed, but because as a US organization they cannot do business with the sanctioned entity. To provide a clearer example: A US based hotel chain would be free to rent a room to the developers for a vacation, but not for a meetup to work on Tornado Cash code.

tourmalinetaco 4y ago
The Github should have never been taken down. You can terminate a business relationship while maintaining a mirror of open source code. Ultimately, Microsoft, a government-backed entity, performed censorship for the government.
- badkitty99 4y ago
  [dead]
- adastra22 4y ago
  As they are required to do by law. Take your grievance to your federal representatives.
jMyles 4y ago
> An entity (Tornado Cash) An entity? Can you link me to its physical, geographic address? Or its board of directors? Maybe its charter or mission statement? Do they have a revenue model? Can you clarify what transforms a deployed solidity document into "an entity"?
- Shank 4y ago
  The US broadly defines entity as “a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization.” This is written in 31 CFR 510.305, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-510/subpart-C/section-510.305 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p.... This is one of the interesting intersections of US law where interpretation is everything. Until you can find a judge that wants to strictly define all of these words and the term “entity” to establish precisely what an entity is, or unless the code is rewritten, an entity can practically be anything OFAC wants it to be. Based on how this was written, I almost think that if a judge ruled that sanctioning the contract didn’t count, the entire ethereum network could easily be classified as an “entity” as a group of networked computers. The possibilities of this definition are quite profound.
  - jMyles 4y ago
    Agreed. But even by this vague standard, it's an incredible stretch. Tornado Cash is a document, published on github. Anybody can deploy it, or fork it and deploy their fork, and many people have done that. If OFAC wanted to go after members of the $TORN DAO under the theory that, together, they represent an entity, then at least I can see some vague adherence to the rule of law (albeit one in which vagueness is abused in the ways that you point out). But they didn't do that, because they would be difficult, both logistically and politically. Instead, they designated a document, held on many thousands of computers around the world, a "specially designated national." This is a facially childish and unserious move, and is not befitting a state which wishes to be viewed as a serious arbiter of its laws. The designation letter from the Treasury Department[0] reads like something from The Onion. 0: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20220808 https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20220808
    - flangola7 4y ago
      What do you propose be done instead about things like Tornado Cash that would be more effective at stopping it?
      - jMyles 4y ago
        I don't even understand the question. It's like asking, "what can you imagine might be effective at stopping integer factorization?" Math is real. It works reliably. The idea that it can be "stopped" is just... I don't know - childish is the word that comes to mind.
        flangola7 4y ago
        I mean as in a tool that streamlines money laundering and sanctions evasion. The underlying math/science is beside the point. The service tornado cash is ran on physical hardware owned by physical human beings who can be placed in handcuffs.
        4y ago
nostrademons 4y ago
Poor analogy. Speech and ideas are constitutionally protected in the U.S; accommodations are not (well, other than quartering of soldiers). A better analogy is that the government can prosecute people for doing the actions described in the Breaking Bad scene on money laundering [1], but they cannot prosecute the writers of Breaking Bad, the networks it's shown on, YouTube, or people who link to it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsUHDJ0BFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsUHDJ0BFM
- mike_d 4y ago
  Commercial speech does not have the same rights as personal speech under the law. I can scream "dang for president!" to my hearts content, but if my employer pays me to scream the same sentence it is subject to campaign finance laws. The developers are free to write all the code they want. The issue is doing to the benefit of the Tornado Cash criminal enterprise.
iudqnolq 4y ago
> To provide a clearer example: A US based hotel chain would be free to rent a room to the developers for a vacation, but not for a meetup to work on Tornado Cash code. This sounds very wrong to me. Do you have a source for the idea that sanctions apply based on the purpose of the transaction, not the identity of the entity making it?
throwaway290 4y ago
> as a US organization they cannot do business with the sanctioned entity But are they doing business if no money changes hands? For example, Github locked me out of all paid features because I used to sponsor someone and had russian billing address on file. I can still use github free plan, presumably because if no money is involved their lawyers aren't worried?

by mike_d 4y ago

tourmalinetaco 4y ago

The Github should have never been taken down. You can terminate a business relationship while maintaining a mirror of open source code. Ultimately, Microsoft, a government-backed entity, performed censorship for the government.

badkitty99 4y ago
[dead]
adastra22 4y ago
As they are required to do by law. Take your grievance to your federal representatives.

jMyles 4y ago

> An entity (Tornado Cash) An entity? Can you link me to its physical, geographic address? Or its board of directors? Maybe its charter or mission statement? Do they have a revenue model? Can you clarify what transforms a deployed solidity document into "an entity"?

Shank 4y ago
The US broadly defines entity as “a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization.” This is written in 31 CFR 510.305, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-510/subpart-C/section-510.305 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p.... This is one of the interesting intersections of US law where interpretation is everything. Until you can find a judge that wants to strictly define all of these words and the term “entity” to establish precisely what an entity is, or unless the code is rewritten, an entity can practically be anything OFAC wants it to be. Based on how this was written, I almost think that if a judge ruled that sanctioning the contract didn’t count, the entire ethereum network could easily be classified as an “entity” as a group of networked computers. The possibilities of this definition are quite profound.
- jMyles 4y ago
  Agreed. But even by this vague standard, it's an incredible stretch. Tornado Cash is a document, published on github. Anybody can deploy it, or fork it and deploy their fork, and many people have done that. If OFAC wanted to go after members of the $TORN DAO under the theory that, together, they represent an entity, then at least I can see some vague adherence to the rule of law (albeit one in which vagueness is abused in the ways that you point out). But they didn't do that, because they would be difficult, both logistically and politically. Instead, they designated a document, held on many thousands of computers around the world, a "specially designated national." This is a facially childish and unserious move, and is not befitting a state which wishes to be viewed as a serious arbiter of its laws. The designation letter from the Treasury Department[0] reads like something from The Onion. 0: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20220808 https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20220808
  - flangola7 4y ago
    What do you propose be done instead about things like Tornado Cash that would be more effective at stopping it?
    - jMyles 4y ago
      I don't even understand the question. It's like asking, "what can you imagine might be effective at stopping integer factorization?" Math is real. It works reliably. The idea that it can be "stopped" is just... I don't know - childish is the word that comes to mind.
      - flangola7 4y ago
        I mean as in a tool that streamlines money laundering and sanctions evasion. The underlying math/science is beside the point. The service tornado cash is ran on physical hardware owned by physical human beings who can be placed in handcuffs.
        4y ago

nostrademons 4y ago

Poor analogy. Speech and ideas are constitutionally protected in the U.S; accommodations are not (well, other than quartering of soldiers). A better analogy is that the government can prosecute people for doing the actions described in the Breaking Bad scene on money laundering [1], but they cannot prosecute the writers of Breaking Bad, the networks it's shown on, YouTube, or people who link to it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsUHDJ0BFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsUHDJ0BFM

mike_d 4y ago
Commercial speech does not have the same rights as personal speech under the law. I can scream "dang for president!" to my hearts content, but if my employer pays me to scream the same sentence it is subject to campaign finance laws. The developers are free to write all the code they want. The issue is doing to the benefit of the Tornado Cash criminal enterprise.

iudqnolq 4y ago

> To provide a clearer example: A US based hotel chain would be free to rent a room to the developers for a vacation, but not for a meetup to work on Tornado Cash code. This sounds very wrong to me. Do you have a source for the idea that sanctions apply based on the purpose of the transaction, not the identity of the entity making it?

throwaway290 4y ago

> as a US organization they cannot do business with the sanctioned entity But are they doing business if no money changes hands? For example, Github locked me out of all paid features because I used to sponsor someone and had russian billing address on file. I can still use github free plan, presumably because if no money is involved their lawyers aren't worried?