Re:Tornado Cash and collateral damage
by selfhoster11 on Friday August 19, 2022 @05:42AM
(#32519092)
>* Tor & encrypted messengers: the whole "going dark" paranoia from mid-2010s
It's not paranoia if they really were out to get you (and largely succeeded, it seems)
Re:Tornado Cash and collateral damage
by highwaylights on Friday August 19, 2022 @03:14AM
(#32518281)
Just to reiterate, the primary reason for those items to exist is not criminality, even if they are useful to criminals.
This is not true of something like Tornado which exists primarily to launder dirty money, even if it has fringe legitimate use cases.
How does TC launder money? It's a privacy tool that hides the origin of cash, but when you cash out through an exchange you still need to prove the origin of cash. It's good to avoid others snoop through my wallet though.
Re:Tornado Cash and collateral damage
by highwaylights on Friday August 19, 2022 @04:36PM
(#32525660)
I’m not overly familiar so I don’t want to assume something that’s not accurate, but I’m assuming cashing out at an exchange is entirely optional.
* Tor & encrypted messengers: the whole "going dark" paranoia from mid-2010s
* Knives, guns, explosives: mass shootings and domestic terrorists; "nobody needs military style weapons"
* recreational drugs: see the War on Drugs which is really a war on poor non-White people
* cash: see the death of the €500 note
* masks: see the anti-mask laws intended to target the KKK
Note that I'm not claiming that society should never be able to regulate tools. Certainly I don't want the disturbed guy down the street making Ricin in his garage. We should keep in mind though that the tools themselves are value-neutral; it is the people who use them that give them a value.