Conviction of Tornado Cash programmer: Privacy is not a crime (opens in new tab)

It occurred to me once, years ago, that drug dealers could take credit card payments by setting up a porn site and accepting subscription payments through it. Then it occurred to me that a drug dealer probably already thought of that…

I’m guessing the payment processors of Spotify are at least routing through KYC and basic control.

Tornado is flagrantly mixing with known offenders, and even indicated them as such in the UI.

Signal? Protonmail? Personal safes? Https? Car window tinting/privacy films? Government mints? What reason is there to use cash today except to engage in crime?

I'm going to imagine because when the government tells Spotify that people are laundering money through their platform they kill the account and hand over data to investigators?

They don't deliberately run a service explicitly built to enable money laundering.

Basic things you can think about if you try really.

My understanding is that he wrote the code for the smart contracts and open sourced it on GitHub. The contracts were compiled and deployed to the Ethereum network. There was no infrastructure/service controlled by him responsible for running the code or processing the transactions. The core contract, once deployed to Ethereum; could not be modified or deleted by anyone.

The only "infrastructure" in the traditional sense operated by him was a static website hosted somewhere online (which was eventually taken down at the request of law enforcement). The static website offered an optional interface to the Ethereum network for convenience in interacting with the deployed smart contract. The network requests from this website were made to a public Ethereum API provider specified by the end user through their own general-purpose Ethereum wallet browser extension.

It sounds like he got convicted for designing, writing, distributing, and promoting a system whose primary usage facilitates money laundering.

For an extreme example of the same concept: creating an open-source terrain-following and target-tracking drone software that accepts plugins for “cameras”. People are using it to make hunter-killer weapons and you know about it. You’re going to have a very bad day when federal police come knocking.

Software isn’t created in a vacuum. How you react when the police come will often determine your outcome. If you immediately take it down upon being informed, then you have the defense you didn’t know it was illegal. You’re unlikely to be charged. Fighting for “your rights” is proof you intended to facilitate illegal use of the software and people will be wanting to make an example out of you.

(Note, this is in reference to criminal law, not civil law like copyright.)