The code was taken down by a private company, freedom of speech is not protected on GitHub or Twitter. Additionally, American laws do not extend to other countries. It was the Dutch who arrested him.
You should start by understanding the basic facts and relations and not engage in hyperbole like "knowingly publishing open source software, that would be scary" because this is not at all what happened here.
I appreciate your optimism about freedom of speech being unaffected but this is not as cut and dry as an individual running a money laundering business, if that is what you think Tornado Cash is. We do not hold Tor exit nodes responsible for the illicit activity on the dark web and we definitely do not hold Tor developers responsible.
Some talking points raised here:
He's actually wrong in that it executes on the ethereum blockchain. It actually executes on Optimism, a layer-2 solution, and they are quite concerned for their own situation.
He also says that there aren't people tied to it, but who was collecting the contract fees (beyond gas)?
The first reports on this situation originated from non-crypto sources so it should be easy to find them. A lot of the more in depth discussion is coming from crypto camp because it negatively affects all those users and their privacy.
A human paid to deploy these contracts, a human keeps the fees. This is not a "fully autonomous" contract. It is not an attack open source. There is a difference between writing code and running code, or making it runnable. Blockchain creates new scenarios we hadn't considered before, but common sense can still be applied.
A more reasonable assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA8slTX2tyE
The only fees taken are relay fees, which can be anybody - not necessarily the developers. The conversation steers back to whether it is illegal to run a Tor exit node and whether it is illegal to develop Tor the open source project. Tornado Cash can be republished without relay fees, with zero governance, no token, would that be acceptable?
If you support evil, there will be repercussions. Your participation in the pool is sufficient material support. We have laws, adjust to obey them or risk getting in trouble.
What is sad is that you use and reuse hyperbole as a talking point
not morally, ethically, or legally
Typically this is followed up with a misunderstanding of the DVD-CSS decision, or a misrepresentation of Marilyn Hall's decision that code is speech somehow means code is free speech, but I'll bite. What precedent do you imagine holds that code is somehow free speech?
Please understand that I'm going to look it up and I'm going to push back.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
The debate is pretty settled that code and language should be protected by 1st amendment as free speech. Based on this precedent, we should not be cheering on the barring of the open source project and it’s developers.
It is less clear if the execution and use of code should be free speech, and how to regulate code and language when the sole goal is illicit. Like anarchist cookbook, 3D printed guns. But to argue this, you will have to argue the sole goal of Tornado Cash is to aid in illicit behavior. There are many licit users of the protocol, like with Tor, who just want to seek privacy in their online communication.
The issue comes down to whether sending and receiving private keys in an encrypted way over the internet should be protected or not.
> or a misrepresentation of Marilyn Hall's decision that code is speech somehow means code is free speech
Predictably, you referenced Marilyn Hall's decision that code is speech, and misrepresented it as support that code is free speech
Literally exactly what I said you would do
Do you disagree with the widespread reporting on the outcome of this case?
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bernstein-vs-the-US-Departm...
> Bernstein v. the U.S. Department of State, landmark legal decision (1996) that set two important precedents in the field of digital technology. First, it ruled that U.S. government regulations that barred the export of encryption software were unconstitutionally restrictive; second, it declared that software source code can be a form of protected free speech.
and
https://casetext.com/case/bernstein-v-united-states-dept-of-...
> The district court found that the Source Code was speech protected by the First Amendment, see Bernstein v. Department of State, 922 F. Supp. 1426 (N.D. Cal. 1996) ("Bernstein I")
The Tornado Cash case is all about money laundering, the fact that there was code to automate the process is besides the point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
The bigger problem is whether republishing the source code would make you a target of the sanctions. If a user republishes the source code on Ethereum, pirate bay, Gitlab, or another host then it is reasonable to assume their actions might be interpreted as “supporting the Tornado Cash project” which makes them a target of the sanctions. If a user modifies the code and republishes it probably will fall under same risks.
https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/02/the-establishment-claus...
Tornado was shutdown because they were knowingly supporting sanction violations. The developer was arrested in a country that does not have the same freedom of speech we do in USA
The crypto commodity community will have to learn that they are part of the larger society and accept that they will not always get things their way. If you want things to change, you'll have to adjust how you approach these differences, and more than likely give up some of the absolutist views to meet in the middle.