EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

Posted Aug 24, 2022 9:24 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118)
In reply to: EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer by XTerminator
Parent article: EFF: Code, Speech, and the Tornado Cash Mixer

> 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.