Conviction of Tornado Cash programmer: Privacy is not a crime!
www.patrick-breyer.deOn Tuesday a Dutch court sentenced the programmer Alexey Pertsev to five years in prison. The court found him guilty of money laundering because the "Tornado Cash" software he developed enables criminals to carry out completely anonymous and untraceable crypto transactions (so-called "crypto mixer")
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Updated, my bad.
Honest question, what do you mean by this? What’s the difference really?
Citizenship.
I see, thanks.
Sure.
Here's your I seeal.
Due to its mode of operation, the court considered the software to be “specifically intended for criminals”
Crime is an action a state doesn’t like, not necessarily wrong or evil, but serves interests other than the state. If the state has to authorize everything, then the state is favoring dominance over governance.
When the state has to monitor all transactions it is tyranny.
The state is just the abstraction of the collective will of the governed, if the Dutch people have determined this is a crime against their society, then it is.
The state holds a monopoly on violence, another monopoly isn’t a stretch.
Collective will is just the myth that is used to legitimize the state
The state is also so much more than the will of the governed. To say that it is all there is to it would consider governments like those governed by the divine right of kings fo be stateless. Stalin’s Russia, or Kim Jong Un’s DPRK would then be stateless.
Nah
This is only true in a people’s democracy. The Netherlands is capitalist. The government is the collective will of the capitalist class.
What a fantasy world you live in. Must be nice. In truth, the state is a gang of thugs and parasites. Has nothing to do with the collective will of the people, a concept which doesn’t exist in reality.
That’s really only in theory. I don’t think there’s any country where the government does what the polis wants in every instance.
For an entity hat already has monopoly over violence, how difficult is it to claim monopoly over the collective will?
Official link to ruling (in Dutch): https://deeplink.rechtspraak.nl/uitspraak?id=ECLI:NL:RBOBR:2024:2069
Snapshot of translation: https://archive.ph/JKdbV
Wasn’t the arrest over a year ago? How much time is left on the sentence?
This is terrible, but 5 years is pretty tolerable. Assange is in locked up for being a journalist and faces life in tortuous conditions.
Also, write your MEP and vote pirate party.
Assange isn’t merely a journalist. He collobarated with russian security services and was on their payroll during his work on their “RT” initiative.
Horseapples. Why I suddenly see a lot of out of touch with reality statements lately?
Please stop with the C.I.A. talking points. Have some self awareness. All of this McCarthy red scare shit is embarrassing.
Looks like development of such things will have to start happening on the dark web. What a ridiculous conviction.
What the fuck is this kind of reasoning? Is privacy illegal now?
Anti Commercial-AI license
Privacy maximums end up in supermax
Oops I’m a privacy maximalist now, I didn’t even know. Time to privacymaxx this removed up !!
privlets don’t stand a chance
Damn, even your slurs get maximum privacy.
I can’t say removed ?? That’s removed removed !!!
Just wait until th
Some famous ex felon and computer hacker named Kevin Mitnick wrote some books about privacy maxing, you might want to read a few of them. I guess he’s still a felon, he just served his sentence and is no longer in prison. He did legit steal some people’s identity and commit wire fraud.
Not a felon anymore. He died.
Thank fuck for the PirateParty!🏴☠️
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
About the licence, how are you going to prove that your data was indeed used in training a Model ?
It’s not enforceable in any way, it’s just virtue signaling. Lemmy itself is a privacy dumpsterfire. GDPR compliance is literally impossible.
How would I prove it? I don’t know. Do I think it will work? Probably not. But if I have the license someone might find it when a LLM accidentally reveals that it was trained with data that is under that license, and maybe the EU does something about it. Maybe the Pirate party will make the EU do something about it? Who knows? But they are the only ones I see that are actively trying to protect all of us an our right to privacy, and for that they have my vote! 🏴☠️🇪🇺
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This is a good question but I would just like to point out that 15 years ago nobody would have predicted that the questions we were asking and answering on stackoverflow would be used to train models (and that open source would have it’s license violated so brazenly) and that if you tried to delete your contributions because you didn’t want them to be used to train models you would get banned from the site, so even though adding a license to your comments might be meaningless, it might also be a powerful tool down the line. You never know how it’ll go.
SO comments are already CC-BY licensed (granted not -NC licensed, but still), but it doesn’t seem to have helped much.
My best guess for the hopeful outcome is the ai starts tacking on the license magic words at the end of things it says… But ultimately it feels like a digital version of sovereign citizens to me.
I see it as a social signifier more than anything else.
removed by mod
Same as CP used against encryption.
its not the actual money laundering they object to.
it’s that they didn’t get a cut.
I spotted the libertarian in the room, LOL. Although I completely agree, so I’m right with you, brother.
Hopefully, not all is lost. He has appealed and hopefully a greater authority will overturn this ruling.
Where could I follow up on this story?
This article was posted by a MEP of the pirate party. You can follow him on mastodon.
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer
In what twisted fucked up crazy world is that a bad thing?
I hate this timeline…
If you guys do want to get into crypto to buy certain…things, though if ill advise it, I’d recommend Monero not stuff like Bitcoin.
If you read the verdict it says: maximum privacy combined with optimal obfuscation techniques. This implies that the sole role of the software is money laundering. The striving for privacy itself is not in question.
Free software can be used for what every you want to use it for.
I do not disturb that in any way, just clarified the verdict from Dutch
That is the first software freedom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
That dot became part of url
Thanks, fixed. I usually notice to be careful around URLs because the parsing varies
The ending period? Not for me on Voyager.
For me on Jerboa(official lemmy app)
Sounds to me like you need an upgrade. I tried Jerboa, but it felt like it always lagged behind or was buggy for some reason. Then I switched to Voyager, which gets constant updates. Also, it’s a PWA, so I don’t need an app and it can thus be used on mobile, tablet, desktop, etc. Not to mention the theming is one of the best, in my opinion.
This happens with cash too. If you take in a bunch of cash, you have a duty to know what it’s from so that you’re not facilitating terrorism or crime or subverting sanctions. In fact, of you handle cash or finance, you generally have to take training on these laws every year.
This thing is the definition of money laundering and was known for exactly those problems.
But in essence, they are punishing this guy for writing code. And at least in the United States, code is considered speech. And this is a very bad precedent. I know that this is a Dutch court, but still that is not a good thing.
It’s continental system. Precedents don’t have as much power as in English system. And Netherlands are in ECHR jurisdiction, so it’s likely to be
overturnedfound contradicting European Convention on Human Rights.He can write the code. He can release the source. Nothing is illegal until he takes currency.
And see, there’s where the problem comes in. He never actually took the currency from the smart contract itself. In fact, it is still online and being used as of this day. And he is getting none of the currency just like he got none of the currency before. What they are going after him for is creating a front-end user interface to access the contract. I believe they did take a fee from that user interface since it made it simpler than interacting with the contract directly. The problem is that they are saying that by taking fees from that user interface, he is money laundering, but not everybody who used that user interface was using it for money laundering. A famous example is the creator of Ethereum used it to donate to Ukraine.
He’s taking a fee in order to launder your money.
Even had the front end website not been running, that money would have still been laundered. I heard an explanation of it earlier that was saying something to the effect of, imagine a door at the edge of a field. There is no walls, there is no nothing else, just a door at the edge of a field. Anybody can come into that field and use it whenever they wish. Putting a lock on the door will not keep people out of the field. They can just walk in wherever the door isn’t.
I feel like this would be better if the field was surrounded by a 1 foot moat, and there was a bridge.
It would take some amount of effort to step over the moat and not trip, vs just walking over the bridge.
The bridge has a small toll to help maintain it.
But bridge or no bridge you’re getting into the field.
Lol, i like it
Yes, we agree. It’s still a bunch of bullshit.
There’s no reason people using tornado wouldn’t have to disclose their sources to the authorities, same as cash.
But it does protect them from malicious actors.
I don’t think you understand. Banks (or anyone who accepts large amounts of money) has a duty to have some idea of where that money comes from. There are anti money laundering laws.
Go open a bank account right now and try to deposit a briefcase full of $50,000 in cash and see what happens. You might, maybe be able to do it, but there will absolutely be questions.
We know what the rules are dude, we are saying they’re wrong.
I think it will go to my quotes collection. “We know what the rules are, we are saying they’re wrong”.
That doesn’t apply to small amounts below $10k
But, again, the same applies. I deposit btc or cash into a bank, even $50k, then I disclose its source to the authorities, with the paperwork. But by using a privacy service, I can comply with the law and protect myself from malicious actors
I’ve done this. They ask you for the paperwork documenting the source of the funds. Just follow the process. It doesn’t matter if its fiat or crypto.
There are reasons to use this service that are completely legal. They should sentence the people laundering money, not the people providing privacy tools that happen to be misused.
By this logic DARPA should be put on trial for creating TOR
what about computers and the internet? those were created and used for bad too. also gps and weather satellites.
fun fact: the first digital computer was invented for the explicit purpose of calculating artillery firing tables for the army during the war. what it actually ended up getting used for on its first program, was studying global thermonuclear war.
That would be the story if a lifetime
please don’t jinx it :(
Oh… We are in THAT timeline.
By this logic every locksmith should be put on trial for making locks, every manufacturer of vaults and safes, every lumber company for making wood used in fences, every costume designer for making halloween masks, every post office for renting PO boxes… etc.
Evil privacy maximalists !
Dont give them any ideas.
Too late
So they throw vendors of knives in jail too?
No, but they throw vendors of screwdrivers in jail too.
deleted by creator
How is that a privacy tool?
I think you meant vendors of safes.
And vendors of locks.
Same idea
Absolutely disgusting. Privacy is a right!
The same logic should apply to manufacturers whose products are used in committing a crime…
That logic they’re using should be burned with fire.
With that logic, cars being highjacked for a crime should make the company liable for the crime (Revolutionary actions would also count as crimes). That gives car manufacturers alot more legal reason for adding kill switches to their vehicles’ engines, which would most likely be used by cops for whatever the fuck they want.
How about DJI’s drones being used to kill individuals in Ukraine? Steam decks are currently also being used by Ukraine to control machine gun turrets remotely, and they’re able to be used that way explicitly because they use regular OS’s (a major boon to its users.)
This type of regulation would only further lead to anti-consumer products, and a stronger police state.
Uhh really hope that’s sarcasm…
You hoped right.
Well apparently the rest of the people here didn’t get the memo
I dunno. If you manufacture tools designed specifically for killing, for example, you’ve definitely played a part in somebody’s use of your tools for killing.
I can’t think of many examples. Maybe electric chairs and guillotines.
Military weapons, which should be banned lol.
You cannot get select fire firearms as a civilian, they’re effectively banned.
You’ve never heard of guns?
They’re not necessarily made for killing. Most people defending themself with a pistol (whose only purpose is for shooting humans) would not want to shoot for the head or chest
I’m downvoting you, but only because you wrote “whose only purpose is for shooting humans”, which is false statement.
Really, you could have used better examples like brass knuckles. They can’t be used for anything else other than injuring and killing people.
Ah yes, I forgot that all pistols have a “wound only” setting.
Was tornado cash made for laundering money?
My point is that gun manufacturers will say they make their products for defense, not killing. Knife manufacturers, same. Hammer manufacturers, same.
There’s very few products which everyone can objectively say are designed for killing.
That is absolutely crazy. I wish the strength to go through that for Alexey Pertsev!