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> I think this misunderstanding is causing the confusion: Tornado Cash is also a running service which North Korea used to launder money. The "misunderstanding

by jMyles 4y ago

> I think this misunderstanding is causing the confusion: Tornado Cash is also a running service which North Korea used to launder money. The "misunderstanding" in question is the result of obtuse and confusing language, such as you are using here. The "service" to which you refer is, of course, the ethereum blockchain. And I don't know who "Tornado Cash" is with respect to your sentence, but they aren't "running" the ethereum blockchain any more than any node operator is. > That’s what was sanctioned, not the source code "It's not the source code that was sanctioned, it was the contract deployed to the ethereum blockchain". That's... source code. The sanction isn't against nodes who subsequently evaluate that source code for the purposes of executing a transaction, but against the code itself (listed by the addresses which refer to it), as you can plainly read in the designation letter. > The guy who was arrested As you obviously already know, that is a separate, but similarly capricious, case to the one we're discussing here - a criminal case in The Netherlands. OFAC has said nothing about Pertsev and has only designated this contract (again, source code) as a "specially designated national". They could have chosen to designate individuals who holding $TORN DAO token (one of many which govern a contract running the software that OFAC sanctioned), but they didn't, because they would be difficult or impossible, both practically and politically. I'm not sure why you are pretending that they took this (arguably more reasonable) action. Credit where credit is not due. > they must have situations like this frequently where they know funds are linked to criminal activity but haven’t yet identified every person involved on either end of the transaction. ...yet they have never listed a piece of bank software as a specially designated national. Strange, don't you think?

acdha 4y ago
> ...yet they have never listed a piece of bank software as a specially designated national. Strange, don't you think? Did they? The list says “Digital Currency Address”, not software, and that makes sense since they don’t care about how the code works, only that it was involved in illegal activities. There’s nothing in there which says you couldn’t run your own copy with different addresses, although obviously it’d be unwise to do so unless you fixed it to comply with the law or restrict transactions to people you trusted.
- jMyles 4y ago
  I'm sorry if you are genuinely trying to participate in good faith; your comments are really not making sense to me. > The list says “Digital Currency Address”, not software, I don't understand what you're saying here. The addresses in question are simply the addresses which pointed to copies of the EVM bytecode in question at the time the letter was written. There are many more now of course. If they instead used a URL (and a checksum for verification), do you then acknowledge that the sanction is against a document? What's the difference? An ethereum address (in the case of a deployed contract) simply points at a piece of software that can be run in a verifiable way. Just like a URL+checksum. > they don’t care about how the code works, only that it was involved in illegal activities. They have taken no action against anybody whom they purport to have engaged in illegal activities. If they did, they'd at least gain some credibility in the minds of the larger legal profession. As it stands, this particular sanction is making nobody happy. > There’s nothing in there which says you couldn’t run your own copy with different addresses The FAQ says, "While engaging in any transaction with Tornado Cash or its blocked property or interests in property is prohibited for U.S. persons..." I agree with the EFF's concern here that this appears to mean that indeed you'd run afoul of the law is you ran your own copy with different addresses. And if you're right, and that all the redeploys of the contract are completely legal and fine for use now, isn't that even _more_ capricious? What makes those OK, but the above addresses not OK? If someone from NK tumbles a single penny through a contract, does that suddenly make the address in question illegal, while all other identical deployments of the contract are not illegal? The whole thing is just totally unserious.

by jMyles 4y ago

acdha 4y ago

> ...yet they have never listed a piece of bank software as a specially designated national. Strange, don't you think? Did they? The list says “Digital Currency Address”, not software, and that makes sense since they don’t care about how the code works, only that it was involved in illegal activities. There’s nothing in there which says you couldn’t run your own copy with different addresses, although obviously it’d be unwise to do so unless you fixed it to comply with the law or restrict transactions to people you trusted.

jMyles 4y ago
I'm sorry if you are genuinely trying to participate in good faith; your comments are really not making sense to me. > The list says “Digital Currency Address”, not software, I don't understand what you're saying here. The addresses in question are simply the addresses which pointed to copies of the EVM bytecode in question at the time the letter was written. There are many more now of course. If they instead used a URL (and a checksum for verification), do you then acknowledge that the sanction is against a document? What's the difference? An ethereum address (in the case of a deployed contract) simply points at a piece of software that can be run in a verifiable way. Just like a URL+checksum. > they don’t care about how the code works, only that it was involved in illegal activities. They have taken no action against anybody whom they purport to have engaged in illegal activities. If they did, they'd at least gain some credibility in the minds of the larger legal profession. As it stands, this particular sanction is making nobody happy. > There’s nothing in there which says you couldn’t run your own copy with different addresses The FAQ says, "While engaging in any transaction with Tornado Cash or its blocked property or interests in property is prohibited for U.S. persons..." I agree with the EFF's concern here that this appears to mean that indeed you'd run afoul of the law is you ran your own copy with different addresses. And if you're right, and that all the redeploys of the contract are completely legal and fine for use now, isn't that even _more_ capricious? What makes those OK, but the above addresses not OK? If someone from NK tumbles a single penny through a contract, does that suddenly make the address in question illegal, while all other identical deployments of the contract are not illegal? The whole thing is just totally unserious.