Re: Github, sanctions, and the IETF

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 4:32 AM Maisonneuve, Julien (Nokia -
FR/Paris-Saclay) <[e-mail]> wrote:

> EFF has expressed an interesting view on the code aspects, asking that the
> judicial actions don't mix the (GitHub open) software and the use which is
> made of it (the mixer) so as to respect "code free speech" (an unusual
> concept outside of the US).
>  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/code-speech-and-tornado-cash-mixer
> In any event the story is not finished.
> Julien.
>

EFF has a long history of taking positions that are bad and wrong.

Freedom of speech is not the same as 'freedom' to own lethal weapons and
parade them in the street. Nor is it the same as freedom to design and
deploy money laundering apparatus.

There are plenty of people who would like to hook their causes to mine. I
don't want their support because the benefit flows entirely in their
direction. Github is owned by a publicly traded US company, they have the
right to decide not to host source code for an apparatus designed to
facilitate money laundering.

What particularly gets up my nose is the attempt to rebrand money
laundering as 'financial privacy'.

If people want to deploy new types of cash, that is fine. But they have to
work out how to prevent their cash being used to finance assassinations as
Jim Bell proposed and to prevent their use to finalize ransomware payments
as Bitcoin and Etherum do and to prevent deployment of money laundering
systems like Tornado Cash.


There are good reasons to move away from the use of a source code
management system for workflow messaging. The fact that a hosting provider
responds to well documented evidence that the primary use of a project is
to launder money extorted through ransomware into the pockets of a
murderous communist dictatorship led by the dear leader is not.