EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer [LWN.net]

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 5:29 UTC (Tue) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (26 responses)

I generally support the EFF. But I really can't see how money laundering equates to freedom.

Does anyone have any real figures of people *paying* for _goods and services_ (please don't include speculation, illicit activities, and money laundering)?

I know of several open minded organisations, including a bus company, a pub, who tried, and found two things :
1. Just saying you accept bitcoin drives sales down.
2. The people protesting when you pull the mechanism, far outnumber any actual users.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 5:32 UTC (Tue) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link]

Please read "Attack of the 50 foot blockchain" by David Gerard for details. Lots of examples of crank economics and poor math applied to real life in that book. Can all be summarised in one little TLA - DLT.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 6:21 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (5 responses)

The EFF is not campaigning for money laundering, but for the right to publish source code.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 7:31 UTC (Tue) by chatcannon (subscriber, #122400) [Link] (4 responses)

You have hit the nail on the head there. If we accept that the government has the right to censor the Tornado Cash source code to prevent money laundering then the next step is banning end-to-end encryption to prevent seditious libel (or "fake news" or "hate speech" or whatever they are calling it these days).

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 5:59 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (3 responses)

I thought that was github that had removed the source code. Did they do it on government order? Can’t it just be hosted anywhere else?

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 15:44 UTC (Wed) by bradfa (subscriber, #71357) [Link] (1 responses)

The write up on github by Matthew Green explains the answers to your questions: https://github.com/tornado-repositories

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 17:28 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

I find this text entirely inconvincing.
If his problem is the government forbidding the service (the mixer) then github deciding they to host the code is not a grief with the government but with github.
If the government forbid the code itself (did they? The text doen’t seem to say they did), then he could host it elsewhere to fight his fight without involving third parties (github).
This text seems only slightly related to the events...

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 1, 2022 10:40 UTC (Thu) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link]

Sanctions law forbids vendors from providing services to sanctioned entities. It would be a remarkable legal feat to argue that the defense contractor Microsoft hosting the official code repository of the sanctoned entity Tornado Cash would not constitute providing services as a vendor.

This is not about particular code being banned. Note that GitHub hasn't pulled this repo. Because Green isn't laundering money through it.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 7:31 UTC (Tue) by madhatter (subscriber, #4665) [Link] (12 responses)

Paying for real things with bitcoin? I've done it. One of my local pubs (The Devonshire Arms, Cambridge) used to take it, and on several occasions I bought beer and snacks there using bitcoin. The (excellent) butcher across the road from the pub (Mill Road Butchers) also used to take it, and I have bought sausages, bacon, and possibly a pork pie there (it was a while ago, and memory fades), again using bitcoin.

I know it's fashionable to rail against bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, but it has other uses than bad ones. In the case of the Devonshire, my understanding was that the pub owner (a Cambridge ex-software chap) had real trouble getting a POS system that integrated cash register and card handling functionality, for a small number of terminals, for a sane price. Although willing to integrate them himself, he couldn't even get specs for the card handling end of things. With bitcoin, he was able to integrate it all himself in very short order, because all the APIs were public and well-documented.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 8:18 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

That gives you the right to play the Bitcoin game where if only I had not ordered that pizza, or drunk that pint, I would now be a millionaire...

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 14:20 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

I've bought some LSD and Ecstasy with bitcoin.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 16:34 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (7 responses)

Paying for real things with bitcoin? I've done it.

The problem with paying for real things with Bitcoin is that Bitcoin – contrary to what is generally assumed – is not set up to do that, certainly not at scale. The Bitcoin blockchain validation process supports a maximum of approximately 7 transactions per second – globally – which is of course ridiculously low (VISA can do 50,000 transactions per second, no sweat) and can't really be changed (people have been trying, in vain, for ages). Then there's the problem that the fee for a Bitcoin transaction – currently a little less than $1, down from more than double that a year ago – seems a bit steep compared to the price of a pint of beer, and that it potentially takes quite some time for the transaction to show up on the blockchain and become official (certainly longer than it takes to drink a pint of beer, which should make a pub landlord a little nervous). That is on top of the volatility and the risks associated with keeping one's money in files on a computer.

The main reason why Bitcoin hasn't replaced actual money by now is that Bitcoin really sucks at being money.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 18:07 UTC (Tue) by Ranguvar (subscriber, #56734) [Link] (6 responses)

This limit is not a technical one, it is an issue of consensus.

The dominance of one client software - Bitcoin Core - and extremely heavy-handed censorship by Theymos, who owned r/bitcoin, bitcointalk.org, and bitcoin.it, has destroyed consensus that existed for raising the arbitrary 1MB block size (see SegWit2x) or indeed any other significant network upgrade (hard fork).

There are centralization disadvantages to raising the block size, but they have been blown out of proportion while the company that primarily sponsors Bitcoin Core's development - Blockstream - specializes in off-chain solutions to scalability.

Charitably, we might take their position as very cautious conservation of Bitcoin's initial foothold, though it imperils the climate.

Thankfully, Ethereum exists, which has multiple client software teams, can and does hard fork regularly, and continues to fulfill many of Bitcoin's original goals as well as expanding very significantly on scriptability, throughput, and energy friendliness.

Comment by Satoshi and related thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg...

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 8:04 UTC (Wed) by immibis (subscriber, #105511) [Link]

To paint a picture of this "heavy-handed censorship", I remember this got to the point where if you mentioned block size increases your account would get immediately, permanently banned from r/bitcoin.

Of course, Reddit has now banned my account from the entire site because I wrote one comment mentioning corruption happening among Reddit moderation. It's not just Bitcoin stuff.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 21:18 UTC (Wed) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (1 responses)

So somehow trusting a certain Chinese company to handle consensus is better than trusting legally accountable and responsible organisations (eg your bank)?

That line of reasoning frankly beggars belief.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 14:05 UTC (Thu) by Ranguvar (subscriber, #56734) [Link]

I never mentioned a Chinese company or said they "handle[d] consensus".
Strawman.

How accountable is the Federal Reserve to its policy?
How accountable are the banks which were bailed out on the taxpayer's dime, to the taxpayers themselves?

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 5, 2022 22:45 UTC (Mon) by kokkoro (guest, #139153) [Link] (2 responses)

Raising the block size makes it impractical for regular users to run a node. Ethereum suffers from this exact problem. You need a 1 TB SDD to run an Ethereum full node and 12TB+ SDD (and growing faster than Moore's Law) for an archive node.

Bitcoin Lightning addresses the issue of everyday transactions, which it can only do with a robust layer one to rely on.

I suggest watching this video, which explains the various useful properties that arise from the specific design choices made in Bitcoin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trwhWsKm3Qs

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 7, 2022 9:07 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Bitcoin Lightning addresses the issue of everyday transactions, which it can only do with a robust layer one to rely on.

The “Lightning Network” is like commercial nuclear fusion in that everyone agrees that it will definitely be great and solve all our problems N years from now, and everybody has been claiming that for M years already, where M is a lot larger than N.

In the meantime, the Lightning Network has a number of show-stopping issues:

It relies on the idea of pre-paid “channels”, which is silly. Basically, if Alice wants to be able to send Bitcoin to Bob without the inconvenience and expense of having to go through the Bitcoin blockchain, she can set up a “channel” between herself and Bob in the Lightning Network and pre-load that with however many Bitcoins she plans to send to Bob ever, over the entire lifetime of the channel. This already sounds like a great idea given the volatility of Bitcoin.
If Alice then finds out that she really wants to send Bitcoin to Dora without the inconvenience and expense of having to go through the Bitcoin blockchain, the idea of the Lightning Network is that the system will somehow figure out that Charlie happens to have a channel to Dora, and that Bob happens to have a channel to Charlie. So, in theory, Alice can use her channel to Bob to send some Bitcoin (out of the amount that Alice earmarked for Bob when she originally set up that channel) to Bob, who will then use his channel to Charlie to send it on to Charlie, who will then use his channel to Dora to send it to Dora. We can already see how this will obviously be vastly more efficient than doing the Alice-to-Dora transaction on the blockchain in the traditional fashion. The issue that how to do this type of decentralised routing in partially-known graphs efficiently is basically an unsolved problem is something proponents of the Lightning Network do not like to talk about.
It is obviously ridiculous for everyone to have to set up pre-paid Lightning Network channels to everyone else (if you're travelling from X to Z via Y and you just want to get a cup of coffee in the transit area of airport Y, you're not going to set up a Lightning Network channel, which is an on-blockchain transaction, to the coffee shop; the inconvenience and expense of doing this would be equivalent to that of just paying the coffee shop directly on the blockchain). What might eventually work, after a fashion, is for everyone to set up a few Lightning Network channels to centralised entities which can sort out everyone's payments efficiently so that the correct amounts end up in the correct places. This could make the unsolved mesh-routing problem mentioned above less of an issue. Such centralised entities exist in the non-Bitcoin world – we usually call them “banks” – and they are exactly what Bitcoin was originally supposed to NOT need or have.
As a matter of principle, the Lightning Network works by keeping transactions off the blockchain, which clearly negates all the very desirable advantages Bitcoin proponents have been claiming for a system that is blockchain-based, decentralised, etc. etc., and which supposedly make Bitcoin so great and compelling. If the Lightning network means that everyone's transactions will go through what amounts to a bank, why not use a proper bank with wide acceptance, quick, cheap, and convenient transactions, safeguards for customers, and regulatory oversight instead?

So the correct answer to anyone who claims that the Lightning Network will take care of the issues that make Bitcoin totally unusable as a currency (let alone a replacement for today's existing currencies) is “Not anytime soon, mate.”

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 7, 2022 10:44 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> Raising the block size makes it impractical for regular users to run a node. Ethereum suffers from this exact problem. You need a 1 TB SDD to run an Ethereum full node and 12TB+ SDD (and growing faster than Moore's Law) for an archive node.

That seems like a pretty basic problem with the idea of blockchains for a global financial system: the technology doesn't scale well, so it only works if people don't use it much. If everyone on Earth used Bitcoin we could each send 1 transaction every 30 years(!), which is barely enough to open and close a single Lightning channel in your lifetime. By trying to allow regular users to run a node, it becomes impossible for more than a tiny minority of people to have any presence on the blockchain at all, so either way it fails as a decentralised system for individuals.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 21:13 UTC (Wed) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (1 responses)

And does your pub depend on you to keep it's doors open? How many others pay in bitcoin?

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 6, 2022 9:03 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

In Cambridge, probably a nonzero number. (Anywhere else, basically nil, because the costs and delays and complexity of doing so are totally ridiculous.)

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 12:20 UTC (Tue) by mss (subscriber, #138799) [Link] (5 responses)

money laundering is a loaded term, a more NPOV one would be probably something like money privacy

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 21:21 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

You're confusing privacy with secrecy. I know you believe only the latter can provide the former but the concepts are still different.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 15:12 UTC (Wed) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (3 responses)

While you're at it, “stealing” is such a loaded term that you should prefer the NPOV “relocation of matter”, too.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 21:16 UTC (Wed) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link]

Spot on! :)

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 22:13 UTC (Thu) by mss (subscriber, #138799) [Link] (1 responses)

Calling every money handling service offering good privacy a money laundering operation would be like calling end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service (Signal, etc.) "message laundering" or calling onion routing "data laundering".

Such services don't have to be utilized mostly for malicious purposes, much like end-to-end encrypted IMs aren't.
The current state of affairs is a side effect of actions like this Tornado Cash one and bad laws that give rise to them.
They make it difficult to launch a privacy-respecting money handling service.

Also, this has nothing to do with renaming theft.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 26, 2022 10:31 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

There are many good reasons why you would want all your financial transactions to NOT be visible to anyone you ever interact with financially (in a crypto currency context). In particular, you don't want someone in set A to know you financial interactions with others in set B.

Set A could be:

- family or friends, who you might give a birthday present to, or pay for a meal you shared, etc - or them to you.
- Your employer, who pays you

Set B could be:
- some charity that supports some socially polarised cause, e.g. unpopular-minority-rights.
- a political movement, party or politician's election campaign
- a completely legal sale of some goods that may be embarrassing or frowned upon (sex toys, marijuana in some places, etc.)

Now, Tornado cash supports tools that can generate proofs of your interactions with it - so there's no reason the government couldn't just ask people to account to the government for their transactions. Just like with taxes, you may have to show your accounts.

There is no reason why we can't have both privacy-from-the-public AND accountability to the government (or authority with power to hold us to account) with these systems, in a similar fashion as we have had for _the entire history of humanity's use of money_. There is no reason why the long standing balance of privacy and accountability MUST change in the digital world.

Yet, governments are keen to change it. To move to a world where all transactions are visible to them, and where they can gate-keep access to the methods of conducting financial transactions of any note.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 8:41 UTC (Tue) by bartoc (guest, #124262) [Link]

I kinda doubt this is what's going to put a damper on OFAC's power, but I don't have a problem with them trying. Even if the repo stays up if OFAC keeps shutting down any tumblers using the code that should be sufficient to stop money laundering, after all you need a decent amount of legitimate users to hide in for this stuff to be effective.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 11:27 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (16 responses)

You know what'd really stick it to the world's most carceral government and a tech company that famously aids and abets that side of it for pocket money? Coming back to the hornet's nest with an even *bigger* bat! And a clown suit with sponsor decals.

The levels the EFF will stoop to in the defence of profiteering. Like anyone else who loudly makes it about freedom of speech, it's never about freedom of speech.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 11:41 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (15 responses)

> The levels the EFF will stoop to in the defence of profiteering. Like anyone else who loudly makes it about freedom of speech, it's never about freedom of speech.

I think it is about freedom of speech. But the problem with freedom of speech, as I see it, is there are THREE freedoms which humans value. Unfortunately, REAL LIFE says PICK ANY TWO.

Given that America seems totally fixated on free speech, to the exclusion of anything else, this means that people like me (who value the other two) get rather upset ... I guess you're the same as me in that regard.

(The other two are the opportunity to accumulate wealth, and the right to live in a functional caring society. America seems to have abandoned that last one.)

Cheers,
Wol

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 12:07 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (13 responses)

> I think it is about freedom of speech. But the problem with freedom of speech, as I see it, is there are THREE freedoms which humans value. Unfortunately, REAL LIFE says PICK ANY TWO.

There might be a freedom of speech element to this, but on the other hand: the purpose of a system is what it does. If it's not primarily about the criminal uses then the EFF should go put up a technologically equivalent system minus that aspect, and they'd then have an obvious and legitimate grievance to point to when that one gets taken down. I don't think they can or will.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 14:38 UTC (Tue) by pavon (guest, #142617) [Link] (1 responses)

We teach accountants about common laundering techniques so they can keep an eye out for it when working with clients. We teach law enforcement officials about laundering so they can catch and enforce the law. Academia studies and writes about laundering techniques to see how other changes in the finance world affect laundering, and further advance the cat and mouse game. I don't see why studying code that describes a laundering mechanism should be any different.

Furthermore, the code itself is insufficient for laundering - you need a service running that code with a sufficiently high volume of money flowing through it to make the mixing effective. By the nature of blockchain, the existence of these services will be difficult to keep secret.

Thus it makes more sense to focus enforcement actions on the services not the knowledge or code.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 14:50 UTC (Thu) by tome (subscriber, #3171) [Link]

Nicely succinct, thank you.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 14:10 UTC (Wed) by wittenberg (subscriber, #4473) [Link] (10 responses)

Freedom of speech is never absolute. Many crimes are pure speech. Examples include blackmail, extortion, libel, copyright infringement, and many others.

--David

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 15:52 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (9 responses)

NULLUM CRIMEN NULLA PŒNA SINE PRÆVIA LEGE

Should we be creating new crimes limiting speech? One should not create a computer program that could be used for money laundering?

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 21:33 UTC (Wed) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (8 responses)

I don't recall any global manhunt for the psedonymous Nakamoto.

What exactly is your point here?

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 10:45 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (7 responses)

> I don't recall any global manhunt for the psedonymous Nakamoto.

Is it possible that it's because he wasn't ever found?

Anyway, the *fact* is that Alexey Pertsev was arrested.

> What exactly is your point here?

>> Freedom of speech is never absolute. Many crimes are pure speech. Examples include blackmail, extortion, libel, copyright infringement, and many others.

My point is that those crimes are already defined in law. And so is money laundering. But "writing a software that *may* be used to assist money laundering" isn't defined in law as a crime. Nor are "writing a software that is *mostly* used to assist money laundering" or "writing a software that *some people believe* is only used to assist money laundering".

Furthermore, it's even debatable if "writing a software that will be used *absolutely only* to assist money laundering, *provably without reasonable doubt* ..." is defined as a crime in US law (or any other jurisdiction) -- even if this would not be the case.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 11:03 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> But "writing a software that *may* be used to assist money laundering" isn't defined in law as a crime.

Yes it is: 18 U.S. Code § 1956, section (3)(B) - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956

It's also not limited to mere money laundering. If you are making and providing tools that you know are used to commit crimes, you can be held liable. There are cases when people who make secret compartments in cars were imprisoned because these compartments are used to traffic drugs.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 11:24 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (5 responses)

Here is the law you cited:

> (3) Whoever, with the intent—
[...]
> (B) to conceal or disguise the nature, location, source, ownership, or control of property believed to be the proceeds of specified unlawful activity
[...]
> conducts or attempts to conduct a financial transaction involving property represented to be the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, or property used to conduct or facilitate specified unlawful activity, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. For purposes of this paragraph and paragraph (2), the term “represented” means any representation made by a law enforcement officer or by another person at the direction of, or with the approval of, a Federal official authorized to investigate or prosecute violations of this section.

The key words here are

"conducts or attempts to conduct a financial transaction involving [...] property used to conduct or facilitate"

Writing the software isn't covered; even distributing the software as free software isn't covered. The only thing that would be covered would be *selling* such software.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 11:33 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (4 responses)

The people who were arrested for "making secret compartment in cars" were probably charging for that, or profiting in some way, *IFF* they were arrested for that specific statute.

IANAL, but I was a prosecutor's paralegal in some point of my youth :-)

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 25, 2022 13:48 UTC (Thu) by martin.langhoff (guest, #61417) [Link] (3 responses)

You can make money writing code /for hire/. Or you can make money in the effort of making the software available – if you you've done it as part of work.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 26, 2022 12:20 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (2 responses)

But the text of the cited statute restricts prosecution only if you make money FROM someone that is laundering money, _in casu_.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 26, 2022 12:37 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

If you are paid from fees that the mixer gets from the participants, then you can be liable.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 26, 2022 13:08 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

And, at this point, we are in the 9th level of "if"s, none of which applies -- in principle, unless proven otherwise -- to Mr. Pertsev.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 12:27 UTC (Tue) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link]

And what the US did here is ban knives instead of using the knife to kill people or protected species. Which in itself is quite insane.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 12:46 UTC (Tue) by martin.langhoff (guest, #61417) [Link] (4 responses)

Is software speech or tool? Is it _what it looks like_ (speech), or _what it does_ (tool)?

As geeks we enjoy the freedom that comes with treating it like speech, and we defend it... well sometimes. Because when that speech is actually dangerous to our world _we censure it_. We talk about _responsible disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities_, which is a form of censorship. We don't like to think about it in those terms but it is socially useful censorship.

Now think of nuclear physicists: some of their knowledge and techniques to operationalize the knowledge are ... explosively dangerous. They self-censor too, and if they don't national security folks I'm sure knock on their door (I'm sure there's lots I don't know about how that knowledge is controlled).

In this case, I am with the EFF – _running_ the software as a public service is probably a crime but publishing the software shouldn't be. But I can also see why we need a more nuanced criteria than "it's speech".

Any such criterial will be dangerous (as in – "slippery slope" dangerous), so it's better to think it through than to bury our heads in the sand.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 14:28 UTC (Tue) by fest3er (guest, #60379) [Link]

[mayhap rambling a little]

«Is software speech or tool? Is it _what it looks like_ (speech), or _what it does_ (tool)?»

It is both, just as human languages are. Human languages present ideas, thoughts and tasks, and configure human neural networks to understand those ideas, think those thoughts and/or carry out those tasks. Computer languages present ideas to humans to understand and present tasks to computers to carry out. Artificial neural nets will, eventually, allow computers to understand ideas and think thoughts presented to them.

While we have bodies of law that attempt to teach us that which we should *not* do, it is ultimately up to each individual to decide what is good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, divine or evil. That is the real purpose of 'free will'.

In short, actions can be bad/wrong/immoral/evil. But ideas and thoughts are only when they are translated into actions. Once rejected with sound reasoning, thoughts and ideas serve as examples of 'that which we should not do'. [This is why a course exploring the social implications of programming should be required to obtain a degree in computing sciences/engineering.] Erasing bad examples from the human body of knowledge prepares those examples to be rediscovered and re-presented in the future.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 21:47 UTC (Tue) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] (2 responses)

Because when that speech is actually dangerous to our world _we censure it_. We talk about _responsible disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities_, which is a form of censorship.

We ask people to consider the real harms that speaking now is likely to cause, and we ask people to delay speaking for a limited time (rarely more than 90 days, often no more than 30) in order that mitigations can be put in place to prevent people from coming to harm.

I find it very hard to agree that asking someone "Please, could you just wait a bit before speaking?" should be described as "censorship".

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 8:13 UTC (Wed) by immibis (subscriber, #105511) [Link] (1 responses)

What about cases where speaking causes real harms, no matter how long you wait? Example: you discover a way to make a nuclear bomb from common household materials.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 26, 2022 4:06 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> Example: you discover a way to make a nuclear bomb from common household materials.

In that case you should expect that your secret will get out eventually no matter how hard you try to hide it. Or if not that, someone else will independently discover the method without your help. Either way, keeping everyone in the dark so they can't take reasonable steps to protect themselves is not the answer.

Also, I shouldn't even have to point this out, but in your example it wasn't the *speaking* that caused the harm. Revealing the secret harms no one. Harm only occurs when someone takes action by building the device and detonating it either irresponsibly or with malicious intent.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 13:47 UTC (Tue) by atnot (subscriber, #124910) [Link] (3 responses)

I think this is a highly concerning argument. The legal backbone of corporate sponsoring (elsewhere known as a "bribe") of politicians in the US is the questionable court decision that restricting corporations from spending money as they wish is a violation of the US's free speech extremist laws. Free speech is important of course, but it being favored at the cost of the democratic integrity on which those freedoms rely upon in the was disastrous and very short sighted. It, to me, very clearly set the course for the continuing crisis of legitimacy for US democracy.

The upshot of using this "free speech" argument here goes the same: That if you simply set up some minor legal separation and put your actions into code instead of performing them manually, all democratic control over those actions is lost. This is the same argumentation that all cryptocurrency projects in general use to flagrantly evade securities laws, with concerning success.

There's a lot of discussion about "slippery slopes" with things like this, but these slopes can go both ways. I would like to remind, for example, of Facebook's (a company not known for it's love of democracy) ventures into cryptocurrencies here. Whatever powers individuals should have must also be measured for their capability to oppress.

Freedom for code is good for coders, of course. But pursuing it at the cost of wider society here is just as disastrous and short sighted as Citizens United.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 14:08 UTC (Tue) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (2 responses)

> Freedom for code is good for coders, of course. But pursuing it at the cost of wider society here is just as disastrous and short sighted as Citizens United.

The point that can be easily made is that that freedom for code is not the same as the freedom to run the code.

Practically, this means that the code, once written, can be run in a jurisdiction where the act of running it is not illegal. This is a very important possibility because, mirroring my point in the other LWN discussion, the US law is not the only law on planet Earth.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 15:07 UTC (Tue) by martin.langhoff (guest, #61417) [Link] (1 responses)

> The point that can be easily made is that that freedom for code is not the same as the freedom to run the code.

That works for code that does't immediately cause damage when run.

Publishing powerful day-zero exploits, where running them is almost impossible to trace, would be an example.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 31, 2022 9:43 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Basically, “free” speech could be protected absolutely, as long as “implementing” ideas required a separate action by some other human (which could them be taken accountable for his decision to act on the ideas if the act was deemed harmful by the society as large).

However that’s the theory. In practice we’ve recognized for a long time that some forms of “speech” had to be regulated because they had a direct detrimental effect without someone else making a conscious decision (slander, privacy invasion, hate speech, etc all the things that cause direct action by others without rational informed accountable decision making).

The harder computing science works at making implementation direct, automatic and transparent, the less “speech can be absolutely protected because accountability is at the implementation step” will work out.

We’re already at the stage where god-like “let it be light” is not merely the expression of an idea but can have direct effect (just add Alexa or whatever before).

Publication of some commits will *already* cause various CI/CDs to auto-execute the result (sometimes in remote countries).

As the limit between expressing an idea having it implemented blurs, so will the accountability barrier.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 16:21 UTC (Tue) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

Seems to be generally good points by EFF, except I think it is important to say free software, especially when talking about rights since software freedom should also be a right.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 7:22 UTC (Wed) by XTerminator (subscriber, #59581) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm surprised at the misuse of the first amendment in his quote. The first amendment only protects against censorship from the government. Not from private bodies such as GitHub... FYI I'm only commenting on that part and not speaking out for or against anything.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 9:24 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (2 responses)

> I'm surprised at the misuse of the first amendment in his quote. The first amendment only protects against censorship from the government. Not from private bodies such as GitHub

EFF argues that censorship (sanctioning) of Tornado Cash by the US government creates a chilling effect around its code, thus compelling GitHub to "self-censor".

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 9:47 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, the argument would be that Microsoft believes it is _required_ to remove the code due to the government regulations - they didn't self-censor, but were effectively compelled to, on pain of large fines.

And if there is uncertainty about this, this is part of the problem: Governments create vague laws and regulations around AML, which come with potentially huge consequences for companies and their officers (fined out of existence, criminal liabilities), and so corporate compliance departments take the maximal possible interpretation of those vague regulations - out of fear of consequences if they get it wrong.

And ordinary peoples' lives are made tedious by this, up to having service pulled based on undisclosed information and basically fear, with no judicial oversight.

EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Sep 1, 2022 10:42 UTC (Thu) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link]

There's nothing vague about this. Sanctions law forbids vendors from supplying services to sanctioned entities. I really don't see how hosting the official code repository of a sanctioned entity wouldn't count.