EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 23, 2022 6:21 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer by gfernandes
Parent article: EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

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.