[Cryptography] Privacy, Code, and the Future

[John Levine]

It appears that Andrew Lee <andrew at joseon.com> said:
>What was Roman's intent?
>
>Was Tornado Cash built to protect users' privacy or to help adversaries
>like Kim Jong Un?
>
>From everything I’ve seen, it was the former.

We're getting a long way from cryptography, but to be blunt, that's not how it works.

Every industrialized country has laws about money laundering, on the well
founded basis that the main reasons people try to hide money are to evade taxes
or disguise the proceeds of crime. There are lots of ways that people try to
hide money, such as trusts in small islands willing to look the other way, but
they're usually illegal and we have regular scandals like the Panama Papers
which we find out who's hiding what.

Claiming that it was just for privacy is about as credible as saying that you had
no idea that the chemistry sets you sold that happened to contain charcoal, sulfur,
and saltpeter could be used to build a bomb.

I have no idea whether he persuaded himself that it was an innocent exercise but
it doesn't matter. If you don't want to go to jail for money laundering, don't
build tools to do it.

R's,
John