Nobody is banning technology or math, only specific, usually criminal, uses of technology and math are banned.
What about banning chemistry and physics? If I fire a gun and the bullet hits someone I get arrested (and maybe even if it doesn't hit anyone if I am somewhere were shooting guns is not illegal), yet all I did was use some levers (physics) to add compress a spring adding potential energy to it (physics) which then got converted to kinetic energy (Hooke's law, more physics), which imparted energy to some chemicals starting a reaction (chemistry) that produced expanding gases that caused the bullet to rapidly leave the barrel of the gun, where it followed a ballistic trajectory (physics).
Or what about banning biology? Look closely at other animals sometimes. Things that in humans we'd call rape and murder and robbery are quite common. Millions of years of evolution have selected for animals that do those things. Humans too have the same propensity to do many of those same things, and would do so more often if they were not illegal. Just look at what happens when people find themselves in situations where those laws do not apply or where they have no chance of being punished, such as when a country successfully invades another country.
That's true for consumer products and even more significant for things like guns.
In most places you're a not even allowed to manufacture guns not to speak of Marketing and selling them.
Offering a service like tornado cash (e.g. getting financial benefits from transaction fees) would be just as illegal if they used potatoes instead of cryptocurrency. There are laws dealing with money laundering specifically and "doing it on the Blockchain" doesn't circumvent them.
a) he doesn't operate, market or deploy nmap in most instances. Doesn't consult or gives input at all.
b) He doesn't receive fees from using nmap on an ongoing basis
c) Nmap doesn't fall under financial laws which are stricter and require more to be in compliance with.
A bitcoin private key is just "KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM" after all.
A dollar in a bank account is similarly abstractable. Anyone equating crypto to speech is undermining actual privacy rights.
You _can_ transfer a cryptocurrency by sending its private key on an encrypted messaging app.
What happens if someone makes a mixer that operates over Signal messages? This is not a bad-faith argument: The entire CoinJoin protocol used to operate over IRC; before they developed their own communications system for increased efficiency.
Honestly, if someone just develops a mixer and publishes the code they’re probably fine. That’s speech. GitHub or a journal, it is protected.
Tornado’s developers didn’t do that. They made a token that with monetary value that they get paid; they hired people and had a website promoting the service; et cetera. If this were just a GitHub repo, yes, the comparison to speech would be apt. It’s not. And I’m none too thrilled about folks throwing actual free speech and privacy under the bus to defend crypto.
Both thought they were right and the evil people got what they deserved. The fact that you divide the tech world into evil cryptobros vs good citizens is telling.