1 day ago
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that U.S. government's prosecution of Tornado Cash "stretches transgression laws beyond their intended scope"
Jan 29, 2025, 5:33 a.m. UTC
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a salient integer rights group, has filed an amicus little successful support of Roman Storm, a developer of the crypto privateness protocol Tornado Cash (TORN).
Storm has been charged with conspiracy to facilitate wealth laundering, operating an unlicensed wealth transmitter, and violating sanctions successful narration to his enactment connected the Tornado Cash protocol.
“The government’s prosecution raises larger civilian liberties concerns that could chill the aboriginal improvement of privacy-enhancing technologies much broadly," the EFF wrote successful the brief.
The EFF argues that Storm's prosecution threatens open-source innovation arsenic the halfway contented successful the lawsuit of holding developers liable for however their tools are used, alternatively of prosecuting atrocious actors directly, could person a chilling effect connected privacy-focused bundle development.
"Nearly each privateness and anonymity protective bundle tools are dual-use tools. Like a carnal disguise oregon insubstantial cash, they supply needed, often captious protections for users, but tin besides beryllium utilized by atrocious actors to assistance fell their crimes," the EFF wrote.
In the prosecution of Storm, the authorities is relying connected the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which allows it to enforce economical sanctions and restrict transactions during nationalist emergencies. This application, the EFF argues, is inappropriate.
“If the authorities believes it is due to criminalize these technologies, it indispensable question alleviation from Congress and not trust connected IEEPA and the different laws deployed successful this prosecution, or, worse, effort to bootstrap ancillary activities adjacent further removed from immoderate transgression acts into the ambit of these laws,” the EFF wrote.
If Congress wants to modulate tools similar Tornado Cash, the EFF argues, it has the authorization to walk a instrumentality that intelligibly distinguishes ineligible from amerciable use, but the prosecution successful this lawsuit fails to supply that clarity.
The TORN token is up astir 50% successful the past month, according to marketplace data, connected optimism of a favorable result for Storm.
Storm is due backmost successful court successful April.
Sam Reynolds
Sam Reynolds is simply a elder newsman based successful Asia. Sam was portion of the CoinDesk squad that won the 2023 Gerald Loeb grant successful the breaking quality class for sum of FTX's collapse. Prior to CoinDesk, helium was a newsman with Blockworks and a semiconductor expert with IDC.
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