> Also, in June—when the link says they began the investigation—it was publicly known Tornado was being used to launder money. If the developer kept working on it, they knew what they were doing.
People keep saying this in this thread. Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?
As usual, it's an argument for harming people that produce legitimately useful things that criminals pervert. It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US.
"Iranian authorities arrested Malekpour during his visit, accusing him of designing and moderating pornographic websites. Malekpour had designed photo uploading software, and according to his supporters, that software was being used without his knowledge for the creation of an adult website."
> It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US.
To be fair, I think most are arguing to restrict guns rather than ban. I’m not saying you did this, but many people deliberately distort that into “they wanna take all your guns” in bad faith.
Taking some leads to all. It's not something that should be compromised on. Gun restrictions won't end until ownership is so legally complex and time consuming that nobody can reasonably do it anymore. Of course it won't be an outright ban. That would never succeed. The frog in boiling water analogy applies here perfectly.
Would that really be a bad thing? Most other developed nations seem to get by fine with very strict rules on gun ownership, and coincidentally they have far lower rates for gun violence.
When something has far more capacity for harm than practical utility, it makes sense to regulate the crap out of it. Most people buying AR-15s in the US are not buying them to keep pests off their farm.
> Most people buying AR-15s in the US are not buying them to keep pests off their farm.
Now, explain why you think an AR-15 is so dangerous? Tell me why you’re so focused on that gun when it’s both not the major gun used in mass shootings[1], and when more homicides are committed with pistols[2].
I know quite a lot about guns, and I can explain the obsession. AR-15’s are hopped up 22’s. Literally. They take a 55-ish grain bullet and stack a lot of powder behind it. For reference the “not at all dangerous” 22 rimfire the government wants everybody to move to has a 40-ish grain bullet. What this means is low recoil, with good power. Coupled with relatively cheap ammo, you can sport shoot, compete and defend your farm with a single gun. Further, the AR platform is highly modifiable. I can swap uppers and change the caliber entirely. I can have an upper used for sport shooting, and a different one for hunting.
Not the GP but I read that sentence as an anecdote using the AR-15 as a well-known example of a common firearm that is seen by most non-gun-owners to be on the upper end of the scale between .22cal and RPG/50-cal machine gun in terms of power and/or risk of abuse. That is to say that I do not believe that the GP was actively making a point against the AR-15, just that they were using it as an example anecdotally to lace their statement with a touch of irony or euphemism.
I’ve just explained why, using your spectrum, it’s on the lower end.
I completely understand that guns are difficult to understand for non gun owners, they simply don't do any research. Couple that with the amount of research required to be knowledgeable takes weeks or even months for even the most competent of us. But imagine what you sound like to someone who is knowledgeable. It’s like someone challenging a PhD on knowledge. You should know what you’re talking about and if you don’t keep your mouth shut.
If you want actual visual proof that the AR-15 is on the lower end of the spectrum then watch this video, timestamped at multiple different locations:
FWIW the AR is fundamentally a platform, although in its pure form it does refer to the "underpowered" variant. Hunters might chamber 6.5 grendel, which is a nice intermediate cartridge commonly used to take down larger deer and elk. People who own firearms love the AR in part because it is so easy to change configuration and even caliber like legos. There are even AR chambered in .50 cal (but not that .50 cal).
If reincarnation exists, I hope that such people who are busy restricting others freedoms get all assembled together on a big island where they all get to live a very long life restricting each other to the ground, and when their nation makes Orwell blush, they get to live another 1500 years, enjoying each others company in a zero-freedom society, until they finally learn that it's not their f-ing business messing with others freedoms.
Edit. In this type of society, your freedoms are being gutted constantly for arbitrary reasons: one of your neighbors complains he's feeling unsafe around firearms so police comes and takes them all; another neighbor complains about cars making him feel uneasy, so you have to ride a bicycle; then a random passer-by complains about you using harsh words, so a court puts a non-removable collar on your neck monitoring your speech; then some worried activist complains about food and from now on you can get only approved food from the food-police. But you aren't wasting time: you complain about your neighbor's green lawn, then force him to live in a tent, restrict his water consumption for climate-concerns, make him reduce the size of his pets and so on. I'd argue the downward path of restrictions has no bottom.
At best, gun ownership should be viewed as a regulated privilege not unlike driving on public roads.
Everyone who drives has to be licensed to do so. There are different licenses controlling the use of larger vehicles on public roads. There are safety requirements vehicles must meet in order to be street legal. Every vehicle has a unique registration number tied to the owner.
All of these regulations have made driving considerably safer today than it was 80 years ago.
Czech Republic has had a gun tradition for ~500 years.
Homicide rates are lower than in over-regulated nearby Germany and quite a few other European countries. It’s even lower than some famously entirely gunless Asian countries.
The Czech Republic is a welfare state with universal healthcare, free university tuition, and other incredibly strong social safety nets in place. As a result, they rank #12 on the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index. More people living happy lives without fear of economic destitution is a good way to keep crime rates low. Desperation breeds antisocial behavior.
I'll never argue that the presence of guns directly cause gun violence. There are many factors at play. Strong gun regulations are one proven means to reduce gun violence, even if they are merely treating a symptom rather than the real disease. Unfortunately, making the necessary changes to truly solve the problem is even more of an uphill battle. I could see meaningful gun legislation passing within the next 10-15 years. But it will probably be decades before we solve our problems with inequality, healthcare, and education, assuming our entire democracy does not disintegrate first.
I never seen this "inequality-adjusted Human Development Index", but I'm certain Germany ranks higher on it than CZ, it is quite bit more developed than CZ in many areas. Many
Yet, they don't have shall issue laws, no constitutional rights like in CZ and USA, and their homicides (firearms or not) are somewhat higher. They border each other and have a long shared history going back a thousand years.
Seems regulations actually matter very little, except maybe appeasing the anxious that something is being done?
> Even foreigners from friendly nations can obtain a permit and carry, not even the USA doesn’t do it.
People admitted under ESTA can legally possess a firearm (state law still applies). The 2nd amendment rights are the same for Green Card holders as they are for U.S. citizens, and for everyone else there’s the hunting permit loophole.
What do you mean, even the USA doesn’t do it?
In Czech Republic you need to take an exam on weapons law, which you must take in Czech.
You are definitely right about this (many of my green-card friends have multiple weapons), and of course you're right about state law.
I think what parent post was saying is that in Czech Republic (national not state level), foreigners can not only obtain firearms, but also carry (presumably concealed), which as I'm guessing you also know varies widely from state to state, and here in California from county to county.
Of course I'm mind-reading here, I could be totally wrong.
When my brother-in-law and his son come visit from Switzerland they love to go shooting. In fact they get bored with my stuff and rent things with more punch (e.g. .338 Lapua). We visited a friend of mine in TX, and the things you can rent there (e.g. .50 BMG), we've only heard myths of those in CA, no one's actually ever seen one.
What a country where you can buy as many guns as you could possibly afford but when you try and put up a clothesline or solar panels the HOA will come and foreclose on you.
Yes it would be. I've come to understand that if you are well-versed on history, you'll come to the conclusion that taking civilian access to arms is a slippery slope that absolutely should not be tried again. I'd rather history not repeat itself once more.
Here's a comedic piece by Awaken with JP, where he points out many historical events where within ~2-10 years of a government taking the guns away from the population then genocide occurred: "Why Guns Must Be Banned Now!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkNIoJ-9jY
This is the same guy who didn't know the difference between Infection Fatality Rate and Infection Fatality Ratio, then compared the The IF Ratio of Covid to the IF Rate of the Flu and proclaimed the Flu was deadlier because math, and straight faced didn't realize he had two orders of magnitude error.
Then he post a video making fun of his video getting removed due to misinformation that he never retracted or corrected.
I am claiming this guy puts huge amounts of one sided misinformation out there including this video.
1. Mass shootings are committed by those brainwashed by government psy-ops programs to motivate the masses to outlaw guns so they can become tyrannical.
2. Only tyrannical governments enact gun control
3. Gun control leads to extermination of a population.
4. The USA is following this pattern and I guess the left is essentially compared to Hitler or Stalin rising to power to perform genocide after they successfully disarm the right.
He never mentions once all the countries with successful strict gun control and free societies such as most of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia. As though by enacting more strict gun control will lead to genocide always with complete surety.
His whole channel is an exercise in Brandolini's law and he's is most definitely a huge part of the problem.
The funny thing I am a gun owner and support the second amendment, but everyone seems to forget the "well regulated" part of that amendment and the fact that currently there are many "arms" we are not allowed to own, the same ones the military uses. Do you think everyone should own a machine gun if they want? How about a rocket launcher? What about a nuke? We already draw a line at certain arms moving that line or adjusting the regulations around it would not be without precedent.
Would it shock you to learn that mass shootings aren't the results of guns, but actually the result of mind-altering medications by pharmaceutical industry that are legal - but 1) in the clinical trials showed an actual increase in suicide [e.g. you're less likely to kill yourself if you didn't take the medication], and 2) that homicide (and homicidal ideation) are also increased due to these medications?
But we don't hear about that? Why? Because pharma, at least in the US, is something like 80% of the advertising revenues of all mainstream-mass media channels - so it's one of the big elephants in the room that they prevent from society being alerted to; health and education institutions have also been corrupted by pharma and their profits.
Otherwise, your arguments are still only at the shallow level - and don't address or even acknowledge that gun control, or gun rights being enacted, may in fact be an authoritarian effort - and most always implemented through the guise of "doing what's good for society."
So is it possible that in Canada, where the Trudeau government is planning to implement a mandatory gun buyback program [for certain guns to begin, but illogically, and that does practically nothing to reduce crime] - using fear mongering and opportunities of US atrocities or Canadian atrocities that the vast majority of weapons used were illegally obtained firearms] is aiming for tyrannical control - or you can't even open your mind to that possibility? If not, it makes me wonder what relatively shallow and skewed information/propaganda/perspective you've been exposed to?
The “well regulated” means “proficient, properly equipped, well trained, functioning as expected” or similar. You have to assess that phrase in the context of 18th century English.
It has no relation whatsoever to what “regulation” means nowadays.
> Do you think everyone should own a machine gun if they want? How about a rocket launcher?
But almost everyone can own a machine gun or a rocket launcher, where not forbidden by state law. Just pay a $200 transfer tax and wait 3-12 months for the ATF to process your transfer form.
>It has no relation whatsoever to what “regulation” means nowadays.
So it doesn't mean background checks or proper record keeping? The meaning of the word has not changed since the 18th century and certainly doesn't mean no rules whatsoever.
>But almost everyone can own a machine gun or a rocket launcher, where not forbidden by state law. Just pay a $200 transfer tax and wait 3-12 months for the ATF to process your transfer form.
So no nuclear arms or chemical / biological arms correct? The right to bear one is infringed.
Machine guns only if made before 1986, no new machine guns due to FOPA. So extremely limited supply and high cost along with the 3-12 month wait is due to more extensive background checks along with a high tax. The right to bear one is infringed.
Missile launchers are approved and taxed not only for the launcher but each round and you also must get a federal explosives permit for the rounds. The right to bear one is infringed.
State are also allowed to regulate them even more so, kind of like state level assault weapons bans and handgun laws? The right to bear one is infringed.
If you are ok with that kind of heavy regulation then doing that for semi-auto assault rifles or hand guns should not be an issue correct? That was my point, the second amendment does not mean you can own any arm you want and the heavy regulation on title 2 weapons, explosives and WMD's seems to work well in preventing their use in crimes without leading to tyranny and genocide.
>That was my point, the second amendment does not mean you can own any arm you want and the heavy regulation on title 2 weapons, explosives and WMD's seems to work well in preventing their use in crimes without leading to tyranny and genocide.
my argument would be that it does mean you can own that things.
Bans on nukes, etc should be added as amendment to constitution if they're not allowed. They are arms. Should be easy to pass the amendment if the overwhelming majority agree.
The fact you can't buy a nuke isn't some gotcha on legitimacy of restrictions. Clearly nukes should be legal until the constitution is amended to exclude classes of arms and the hughes amendment for post-86 machine guns is blatantly unconstitutional.
No right is unlimited and this has been upheld many times. From the decision Columbia v. Heller [1] which was delivered by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito all conservative and and actually struct down some restrictions:
(2) Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller's holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those "in common use at the time" finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
I mean if we're just deferring to whatever the supreme court interpretation is today (which by the way, changes all the time), why even have a debate? Just spend your time reading court proceedings. We're both aware the supreme court has upheld infringements.
I am simply pointing to extensive case law affirmed by the Supreme Court that the right to bears arms in almost universally held to not be unlimited, which I agree with as do most even staunch conservatives.
There may be a disagreement on how limited the right is but your extreme viewpoint the even nuclear arms should not be regulated due to them not being called out explicitly in an amendment is obviously held by a very small extremist minority.
In my experience the nuclear arms argument is almost exclusively used to try and get the counterparty to admit somehow infringements are legitimate. It's an attempt to paint the counterparty as extremist, when perhaps you mean more directly to accuse the writers of the 2nd amendment as extremists (and they were).
> your extreme viewpoint the even nuclear arms should not be regulated due to them not being called out explicitly in an amendment is obviously held by a very small extremist minority.
I'm not asserting nuclear arms shouldn't be "regulated." I'm asserting the method by which their regulation is legitimate, in my opinion, would be a constitutional amendment. You're attempt to paint me as an "extremist" is predicated on the false assumption that I've argued nuclear arms should not be regulated at all, when in fact my only assertion is that any regulation should be done in a way that makes it evident to the reader of the amendment that they are not protected.
The reason the nuclear arms argument is used is because its a logical argument and breaks through the ridiculous assumption that the second amendment in an unlimited right.
Do you or do you not believe the right to bear a nuclear arm should be infringed?
Its sounds like (I think) yes you do believe it should be infringed but disagree with the current laws technical implementation. You are an extremist in that most people agree with the current law and do not think a new constitutional amendment is needed to regulate nuclear arms.
2) IF it is to be done, how can it be done legally.
I think we can answer (2) without the prejudice of opinion of (1). My opinion on (2) would be the right to bear arms should not be infringed until the constitution is amended to state the right to bear <whatever words have the effect of excluding nuclear arms> shall not be infringed. I believe there would be little political difficulty in passing an amendment excluding nuclear arms, and if it helps us depend much less on implicit interpretation then it's good for everyone. Hopefully it would shut down some of these gotchas that try to drive a wedge in towards legitimizing other infringements by trying to get the counterparty to relent banning of nukes is constitutional under the currently written constitution (not saying that's your argument precisely, but I've seen it a lot).
You did not answer #1, do you believe the right to bear nuclear arms should be infringed? Can you answer?
Yes this is a gotcha question, which is the point, the strict reading of the second amendment says "Arms" the whole point is a logical exercise in whether that literally means all arms or if it is in fact not an unlimited right to all arms.
Making an amendment for every new form of arm would be a colossal waste of time if we can just agree that the second amendment is not an unlimited right as almost everyone understands it to be including conservative Supreme Court justices. This is actually settled case law and is "legal" your assertion that it is not legal is a farce so #2 is a non-issue except in an extremists mind.
Here we observe the devolving into ad-hominem calling the counterparty an extremist. If painting your counterparty as an "extremist" is how you want to make your point, that's your prerogative, and I'll give the you the benefit of the last word and never having to deal with me ever again. So after replying to my statement below (or not) rest assured you can feel well knowing you have the last word to an "extremist", which is of course whoever disagrees with you. You can walk away feeling proud and strong your name calling was necessary to make your point.
>You did not answer #1, do you believe the right to bear nuclear arms should be infringed? Can you answer?
No. I believe as the constitution is currently written they cannot be infringed. I believe if the 2nd amendment is amended they could be. Of course, if the constitution says arms aren't protected it would be a lot harder to call it an infringement. I also completely reject this notion of you holding the second amendment hostage which suggests our options are accepting legitimacy of implicitly banning nukes (and by extension, perhaps other unnamed things), or accept all arms. Clearly an amendment excluding nukes is an alternative.
>Making an amendment for every new form of arm would be a colossal waste of time if we can just agree that the second amendment is not an unlimited right as almost everyone understands it to be including conservative Supreme Court justices.
I don't agree with this interpretation. Again if you just want to defer to the courts that is fine, but I don't see the point in debating. You can simply say "my argument is whatever the latest interpretation of the supreme court is" and we both understand it's not really up to debate that the supreme court agrees with you that nuclear arms are bannable.
>Making an amendment for every new form of arms
I mean you don't even have to do that, you can change the second amendment to say "firearms .50 cal or smaller and knives" or say "excludes anything that a reasonable person would presume would be used to be killed 10+ people in a single activation of the munition." We can debate the wording aforementioned, maybe you don't like the exact phrases I used, but if we can word laws against these things then we can certainly make an amendment.
>would be a colossal waste
You might be the first person in history who simultaneously wants restrictions on nukes but thinks it's just too much work to solidify the framework banning them from people you don't want to have them. If the belief is banning nukes saves humanity or whatever I don't see putting pen to paper as a waste of time (and if universally agreed, not even that politically difficult.) Amending the constitution to exclude nukes would make this a lot more clear and less of a precarious position of being dependent on implicit interpretation by the courts, so I don't see a downside.
>the strict reading of the second amendment says "Arms" the whole point is a logical exercise in whether that literally means all arms or if it is in fact not an unlimited right to all arms
Yes my position is that it literally means all arms. If someone says something I think is absurd (I do not think the literal interpretation of the second is absurd at the time of its writing, but many would), I don't simply choose to re-interpret what they wrote to convince myself they implicitly did not mean what they said.
>assertion that it is not legal is a farce
Of course what's currently considered by most to be "legal" is whatever the supreme court says it is, I'm growing tired and bored of you suggesting any other opinion is a farce. It's pointless to debate, just go read the court proceedings if that's your position. It's worth noting at various times the supreme court changes its mind on what is legal, what is considered legal (or illegal) today could be considered different tomorrow upon appeal to the supreme court. I don't think it's inconceivable at some point the courts may take on more literal interpretation of the constitution, which could result in a constitutional convention (which some may argue we are due for).
And a second note on this point: supreme court justices themselves disagree on what's "legal" so even the majority opinion could be considered legal by one justice and illegal by the other. But of course a minority opinion justice is allowed to have these opinions of dissent and I am not... because that would make me a farce unlike the dissenting judges.
Your position is an extreme, therefore you are extremist, this is simply a fact, very few people believe the second amendment gives citizens the right to bear nuclear arms. I am sorry if using the word extremist correctly hurts your feelings.
>You might be the first person in history who simultaneously wants restrictions on nukes but thinks it's just too much work to solidify the framework banning them from people you don't want to have them.
The framework is already solidified under 18 U.S. Code § 831 and 832 there is no need to waste time trying to get an amendment passed. There are many more statutes than amendments to handle more specific issues such as this. The point of having statutes is so that a the constitution need not be amended for every new legal situation.
>I don't simply choose to re-interpret what they wrote to convince myself they implicitly did not mean what they said.
All amendments must be interpreted, they are far too short and vague to not be. In the case of the second it has been interpreted like all rights spelled out in the constitution, they are not unlimited. This has long historical precedent and the interpretation does change with the times as can be seen with obscenity laws with the first amendment and most recently abortion laws and the fourteenth, right to privacy is not unlimited, even Roe vs Wade made this point.
>Of course what's currently considered by most to be "legal" is whatever the supreme court says it is, I'm growing tired and bored of you suggesting any other opinion is a farce.
Suggesting that the supreme courts decision is not legal is again an extremist point of view to the point being farcical, you may disagree with the law as it stands, but its currently the law of the land in the legal sense and its the supreme courts job to interpret whether the regulation of arms is constitutional and thus far it has. The vast majority of people seem to agree that arms can be regulated under the second amendment it's just matter of specifics, which is where statutes come in and the debate over the specifics.
Enjoy the hocus pocus hand waving below of your counterparty trying to explain the why the framers' writing of the 2nd amendment implicitly meant to to allow the kind of logic that machine guns from 1985 are ok but not ones from 1987.
And that the founders had zero foresight to assume weapons technology would advance significantly beyond muskets. I mean really, do people think they were actual idiots?
To be fair, I doubt that they expected that nuclear weapons would be developed, and I'm sure they wouldn't be okay with chemical weapons either. But that's the strawman argument.
After all, the 2nd amendment was written at a time when civilian ownership of warships was okay, so I don't see how it shouldn't extend to all arms—past, present, and future.
I'll bite: Turkey — true (Armenian genocide). USSR — false (genocide against who? there were famines (btw in US too). all people suffered).
Though I know that the opposite is claimed by propaganda (at least, Obama failed to recognize Armenian genocide, and anything bad is easily believed without questions about USSR).
"Taking some leads to all" logic doesn't really follow.
If that idea applied then the US would already not have guns as many types of firearms (ex. fully automatic) and weapons (explosive munitions) are heavily restricted (and have been for a very long time).
Is anyone proposing without access to an AR-15, or any firearm for the matter, this mentally-troubled yet ignored by all the appropriate authorities youth would not have lashed out violently?
It's not too long ago homemade explosives were a seriously real threat in this nation (and others with much more strict regulations, such as the UK). Mass knife stabbings aren't that uncommon around the world, and driving a vehicle through a crowd remains one of the most effective means of violence readily available.
The point is... the tool isn't the problem it's the person. It's a figurative band-aid to think we can solve mental health issues by taking away objects and ignoring the actual core problem... which is mental health.
Stable, mentally healthy people do not commit these mass violent acts. Full stop.
Gun ownership has a long-term downward trend. Part of this is non-government factors like change in population from rural to urban, changing demographics, occupations, etc. But we can't rule out that part of this drop may be contributed by the additional barriers placed, such as great expansion of who is a felon, expansion of domestic violence firearm restrictions including some local agencies charging someone every single time a policeman is called out for DV no matter what actually happened, NICS (which can wrongly deny people who then have to appeal), increasingly difficult to navigate carry laws such as the gun-free-school-zone act that can incriminate someone for merely being within 1000 feet of a school with a gun. The no-fault divorce era has also seen the weaponization of spousal restraining orders during divorce, which have the effect to disarm while also being a bargaining chip and ace during divorce proceedings and a way to beat down your spouse with the court by leaving them helpless and disarmed even in many cases where the spouse has done nothing criminal. And then there is the attack on anyone who happens to have guns and gasp pot at the same time, as is seen in the federal charges against "FPS russia" who was disarmed because the feds didn't like he smoked a vape pen with his girlfriend.
There seems to be a somewhat slow boil in the United States, starting with the NFA, then the GCA, the hughes amendment, and a myriad of state and local laws.
There is expansion of the ban every time they add new types of "felons." The government has focused the past ~60 years years on greatly expanding who is a felon, and then enshrining that they do not have the same civil rights as others after serving their sentence.
I, for one, believe that felons should lose some rights. Personally I think felons should keep speech and voting rights, but anything related to violence should be prohibited.
But it does show a lack of respect for the rule of law, as well often a lack of empathy for others. The best predictor of whether you will commit a crime in the future, is if you've committed one in the past.
I think the hardest one to talk about is the non-violent sex offender -- CSAM and the like. They have a high re-offending rate, and rehabilitation efforts aren't very effective in this area. On one hand they're only a handgun away from being a violent offender, but on the other we don't want to lock them up for life.
>The best predictor of whether you will commit a crime in the future, is if you've committed one in the past.
This is called recidivism and it’s a product of fuckwads like yourself who write people off for life the first time they run afoul of the law. It’s a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy that people return to crime when society deems them as subhuman when they return from prison.
> On one hand they're only a handgun away from being a violent offender
You’re only a handgun away from being a violent offender by that simple logic. You’re literally talking about non-violent people suddenly becoming violent for no reason.
1) The deterrent effect of gun-laws on felons are questionable when obtaining arms is trivial for anyone. Although I won't argue the punitive aspect of "justice" still remains. Note that just because laws don't always work doesn't mean we shouldn't have them, but see below.
2) If the punishment does actually have a deterrent effect (which is questionable, but lets presume it is true), then it should have a deterrent effect on the underlying violent crimes like murder or assault with a deadly weapon. Assuming the punishments for murder and assault with deadly weapon are worse than felon-in-possession (and I would hope they would be), one would conclude the marginal deterrent effect against violent crime is minimal for felon-in-possession laws. On the other hand defending genuine threat to life with a weapon is generally legal, so the deterrent effect for felon-in-possession is nearly all constituted of felon-in-possession laws. That is the felon-in-possession laws likely have little to no marginal effect on preventing violent crime while they may have significant marginal effect on the ability of felons to legitimately defend themselves. Put simply, it moves armed self defense from "legal" to "super illegal" while moving violent crimes from "super illegal" to "more super illegaler" -- which just seems like an extremely poor tradeoff.
3) In a world where arms are trivial to obtain (felon or no), if people can't be trusted in public not to kill others they should not be released from jail. The idea people would be ok with killing others (or other armed violence) but too scared to break the law to 3d print a gun just seems ridiculous. Releasing people who legitimately are believed to be a threat to the public in the event they obtain weapons just seems bat-shit insane to me. If you want a half-step of probation under which no weapons are allowed while they are closely monitored by a PO, to me that makes more sense. But a free man off probation can be assumed to be able to get weapons whenever they like, so we can't be releasing people to be free if we expect them to kill others with weapons.
4) >The best predictor of whether you will commit a crime in the future, is if you've committed one in the past.
I mean that's probably true. If someone owns a pot plant today, it's not unreasonable to guess they will own one tomorrow. Which if they own guns at the same time, is federally a felony. Of course many of those people were never a particularly worrisome threat, that is until you made that illegal which in your own words turns them into people likely to commit crime again. It's the government taking peaceful people committing a victimless crime and damning them into situation where by your own admission makes them more likely to be trapped into a world of crime in the future (perhaps because felony record hurts their job prospects).
> CSAM and the like.
And here's the nuke everyone likes to drop as a bad faith effort to force others to specifically defend CP offenders rather than generically non-violent criminals. If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children, then they need locked away forever or somehow gone from society. Otherwise, they need their rights restored when they are returned. I'd really prefer not to have a conversation revolving around these kind of offenders, because I find it is often just a clever trap to try and make someone out to be a supporter/defender specifically of people involved with materials involving disgusting acts to children. And of course even these people have civil rights, but defending them is so incredibly unpopular (I admit I don't enjoy advocating for their rights), so it's a cheap and easy win to introduce in a debate system with upvote/downvote to grey out comments.
I'm of the personal opinion that crimes against children should require some nexus to the physical abuse (i.e. the person that did the filming, abused the child, etc) because digitally planting evidence for this kind of crime is so incredibly trivial for police and so rapidly turns the opinion of jurors and everyone against the subject that in effect it's almost like a blank check for police to put anyone they like in jail for a long time without finding an immediate nexus to the abuse of a child or even any witnesses / claims by the child or their family. People merely found with a photo and the cop says "I promise I did not put it there, I am a good honest person" always sat very poorly with me, and I can't help wondering how many innocent people have been convicted of these offenses.
5) If we're going to cherry pick offenses, I'd like to point out owning scary mushroom or an undersized lobster is a felony as well. You may argue crimes such as even those make one more predisposed to violence, but even if that were true I would argue there must be _some_ amount of time (10 years? 20 years?) without committing further crime when there is a regression back towards, within the noise of error, of the general public.
6) >But it does show a lack of respect for the rule of law
When it comes to matters of armed violence I'm far more interested in whether the person respects human life against unjust violence than I am generically about all laws such as whether they used a stock instead of a brace on a "pistol" (felony) or stood in front of a mining truck during a protest (felony in Arkansas I believe, if not one of the adjoining states). One could argue by your (and my) standard the US government should be disarmed.
I don't think you did a great job of arguing your point, because you conflated me with whoever you argued with in the past, and then are dumping your angst from them upon me.
I do think my post triggered you though. You may want to think about why you reacted so strongly to this.
> And here's the nuke everyone likes to drop as a bad faith effort to force others to specifically defend CP offenders rather than generically non-violent criminals.
It's not bad faith. There are roughly 750,000 sexual offenders in the US. In 2020, the US held around 1.2M prisoners, and has about 5.1M felons in the population at large.
> If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children...
I don't just believe it. There are studies to back it up. Note that the recidivism rates for sexual offenders below are vastly underreported as sexual offenses are not as likely to be reported as other offenses.
The question you didn't answer, is how to fix it -- but instead, blasting me for providing one, when you don't have a good faith solution yourself.
> If we're going to cherry pick offenses, I'd like to point out owning scary mushroom or an undersized lobster is a felony as well.
At any point in time, any passed law might be considered unjust in the future. The founding fathers said they wanted to make a "more perfect union" as a response to the punitive laws made by the Crown. MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends towards justice." as a response to the human injustices to slavery and Jim Crow.
But as a whole, we -- that is society -- believe that crimes against children should not be legal, and that's the view I take as well. Real CSAM (not any artistic rendering) means some child in real life is being abused in real life.
Yeah you focused your whole post here again on CP / child abuse, apparently your favor topic, rather than other points. It's just a cheap shot designed to try and make this about defending (or not defending) the civil rights of the most hated segment of society rather than generically non-violent felons, and you know it. If you bothered reading what I said, I did propose that if they were unfixable and a threat to children they shouldn't be released from jail, which fixes your concern about them getting firearms. I get the fact that laws are ineffective aren't an argument against them, but it is worth noting making handguns illegal does fuck all to stop those people from getting one after released. Anyone can 3d print the frame in a few hours and have the slide shipped off the internet. If they can't be trusted in public not to hurt innocents they really shouldn't be released.
> when you don't have a good faith solution yourself.
Hilarious because you clipped off the second half of my sentence in my quote where I provided the answer. If you believe CSAM offenders can't be rehabilitated and their crimes amount to torture/abuse of children, then they need locked away forever or somehow gone from society.
Your obsession with CSAM is bizarre, I might add. And the fact you glossed over pretty much all my non-CSAM related points pretty much goes to show your intent here.
>believe that crimes against children should not be legal, and that's the view I take as well
My argument revolves around civil rights after full release from jail+probation/parole/community control, not whether crimes against children should be legal.
>You may want to think about why you reacted so strongly to this.
I really don't appreciate what I've seen you and many others do which is try to make someone who defends the civil rights of people who are free and released as someone who somehow doesn't want justice for children. These kinds of accusations made under the veil of academic debate are just an intelligent version of slinging shit at the schoolyard.
No ban, just increasingly restrictive laws on ownership and use that end up resulting in something tantamount to a ban. Look at gun ownership in most countries in Europe if you want an idea of what the future could look like.
Then give some thought to what Europe was like in the early 20th century!
> Most guys I know here in the Austria boonies have a hunting rifle.
First of all, Austria is the only country in the European Union where firearms are only partially licensed.
Second of all... Sorry, what I really meant was to say was that European gun ownership (broadly speaking) is very different from USian gun ownership. Europeans generally need permits, reasons for ownership, training, et cetera just to own a firearm. Carrying is heavily discouraged, and often illegal without a permit... which the state is under no obligation to give you. Magazine size restrictions are rampant.
In the United States, in many territories, we don't have equivalent policies. Many states allow for entirely permit-less ownership and carrying of firearms. We don't need to ask permission – that's the difference I'm trying to indicate here.
As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. It's not clear that gun laws themselves even enabled the rise of fascism or that they had any negative impact on quality of life. With widespread gun ownership early 20th century Europe could have been even worse.
> "The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on."
Events such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed some Jews really were willing to defend themselves with arms. The Jews were not cowards and the characterization as people who won't "mount resistance" is woefully wrong. It may be true they may have not been able to successfully overthrow the Nazis, but it is possible some of the oppressed may have survived another 10 or 15 minutes (in the Warsaw Ghetto, days) after initiating self defense and even if them being armed would have made things worse for them, that should have been their choice to make and not yours.
There is some sort of fundamental honor as well to allow to allow someone the tools to at least maybe shoot a Nazi on their way out, as one last act of resistance before certain death. Arms are a right even when desperate circumstance make it almost only symbolic.
Glad to know you're distancing yourself from the absurd opinion of this wikipedia article, which totally is a quote you never meant to support even though you intentionally framed it as part of your counterargument to the "tired" nazi gun control argument. I changed it to "the" rather than "your."
That argument is a bit of a straw-man though. Nobody is realistically claiming the Jews, or East Germans, or Soviet citizens, or Syrian citizens, could defeat their government with personal weapons.
The more reasonable version of the argument is that the unofficial purges, before the evil becomes fully embraced by the government (the Nazis), or where hidden and unofficial (the KGB), can be deterred by armed civilians. If you know the Stasi are coming to take you away in the night to certain death you'll be willing to fight, and if armed you have a real chance at inflicting casualties. And if every raid leads to dead troops and PR disasters the state is less likely going to get to the point where the terrorists adopt the mantle of government (Nazi Germany) and can then bring the sum total of state forces to bear.
tl;dr the argument is more about resisting unsanctioned or non-governmental terrorism so it doesn't become governmental.
No it doesn't. Here in Austria, only cops have pistols and semiautomatic arms virtually don't exist. However most of the guys I know have at least one hunting rifle.
Ever growing restrictions start creeping in. In many US states where handguns are hard to acquire it is now difficult to buy small caliber rifle ammunition that can be used in some handguns.
Take for example California's "safe handgun roster". They added a new rule that for every one pistol that is added three are removed. It's hard to construe that regulation as anything other than a backdoor attempt at banning pistols.
Discussions on the internet are tons of fun and extremely useful when we just ascribe whatever secret end goal on to organizations that we want. May I try? Actually, the majority of activist organizations are fronts for gun manufacturers to create a fear of them being regulated away to help push a buy-now mentality. claiming otherwise is bad faith distortion of reality!
To be Fair, based on the History of " restrict guns " it is clear no amount of restrictions is enough to satisfy those that want to restrict guns, confiscation and total ban is the clear end goal
it is NOT "bad faith" to say that, when there is clear evidence that no matter how many times compromise is reached they return the very next day asking for more and more restrictions
Factually false, if you believe this you are in an echo chamber. Yes, there are a few who want to ban guns, but I know many people, some of whom are gun owners, who support reasonable restrictions.
Trying to paint the entire movement with the views of it's most extreme members is absolutely bad faith communication.
There are some that over lap, but I am not a sport shooter, i own guns exclusively for self defense, most gun owners that "support reasonable restrictions" do so because they only care about maintaining shooting sports, and are fine with restrictions because normally they are targeted to self defense uses of fire arms.
There is also a small subset of gun owners that are ignorant of the current state of law and believe rhetoric like "closing the gun show loop hole" or other such non-sense.
None of this however changes the fact that the MAJOR organizations that support gun control, and big name politicians pushing for gun control have their implicit stated goal of total ban of the most common weapons in use today, (Semi-Auto rifles and pistols with capacities greater than 8)
So sure maybe they will allow people to have a black power musket, or some other such non-sense and you believe that classifies as "not a total ban" but to me that is a total ban
Again, not true. You need to get out of your filter bubble and meet more kinds of people. People own guns for many reasons and those different reasons do drive different gun usage.
A ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity pistols is not even remotely the same thing as banning all guns or even banning all non muskets. I don't think such a ban has popular support even among those who do support greater restrictions.
Are there countries where guns have been banned, and mass shootings increase?
Are there countries where banned guns have been allowed, and mass shootings increased?
Other countries have their own version of mass shootings. They often involve knives, explosives, or vehicles instead.
You trade one for the other. Mentally unstable/unhealthy people commit mass violent acts regardless of the tools available.
In practically zero cases of mass shootings was the assailant completely mentally healthy. Taking away one particular violent tool is not going to solve the mental health problem in this country.
Or, you get a bloodbath, like what happened in Kenosha, where everyone (except the first person who was killed) involved was convinced they were the good guy with a gun.
In the fog of war of an active shooting, nobody has any idea of who is the threat, and who is responding to the threat, and nobody has time to sit around and wait for 8 months for a jury to determine whether the shooting was justified or not.
We are going to have to agree to disagree on what happened in Kenosha.... Because your rendition of events as no match for what was reveled in trial, and other sources
When you're in an active situation you don't have time to wait 8 months for a trial to clear things up. Rittenhouse believed he acted in self-defense... And at the time, so did Huber, and Grosskreutz.
This seems to be a complete re-writing of the facts revealed from eye witness and video accounts of the events of that evening. The jury also seems to disagree with this alternate narrative.
It may be what some folks want to believe happened, but it is absolutely not the facts.
People absolutely have and occasionally do rush active shooters, which is what happened in the second part of the situation.
And if you don't ever believe that confronting an active shooter is ever the correct thing to do, why do you think having a gun will help you? Take your own advice and run away, you don't need a gun to do that.
When your in an event the person running TOWARDS the police being chased by a mob is generally not the criminal, just saying...
I do not believe that the people who attacked Rittenhouse believed that he was an active shooter they needed to stop, not for a moment do I believe that, nor did the jury, nor did anyone else that has a rational mind
Active shooters do not run toward police with their hands up
I think this sort of question is being argued with youtube-dl and we can see where it goes. The entertainment industry argues the purpose of youtube-dl is to pirate content. Youtube-dl argues that there are in fact many legitimate uses for it and this argument has so far prevailed.
In the case of WhatsApp, the app has many legitimate uses, notably speech, which is often protected as a right. In the case of Tornado Cash, the app's only use is concealing the origin of financial transactions, which some could argue is never a legitimate use (and which others would argue is a legitimate use). Maybe the final arguments will come down to this legitimacy.
> In the case of Tornado Cash, the app's only use is concealing the origin of financial transactions, which some could argue is never a legitimate use (and which others would argue is a legitimate use). Maybe the final arguments will come down to this legitimacy.
There are legitimate using an open ledger as Ethereum, privacy is a right.
Privacy should be a right, with limits (like all rights). I'm not sure where in the world privacy is a constitutional right beyond unreasonable-search-and-seizure.
Yeah, this line of reasoning is exceedingly silly. Stethoscopes can be used to help crack safes, should the people who make them be in legal jeopardy as a result? Good luck convincing anyone to invest in innovation in that kind of legal environment, my friends.
Demonstrating that there's one legitimate use should probably be sufficient in most cases. If you want to be uptight you can think about adding a requirement that the best fit use case must always be legitimate
If the law required communication providers to obtain licenses, and as a condition of those licenses to have credible controls against use by terrorists, and Whatsapp just scoffed at all that & went on being trivially used by terrorists, then why not?
>Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?
If the law is written by authoritarians they very well could be. What is legal has absolutely no relation to what is right, wrong, ethical or unethical. It depends entirely on the people passing the law.
Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent. So before they knew the Taliban uses it, not a crime. Now that they know? Well, kind of a grey area. I bet you could construct an argument that they commited a crime if any NEW feature/code commit somehow benefits the Taliban after they knew the Taliban uses it. It's legal for me to sell someone a car. It's no longer legal for me to sell someone a car if I know they are paying in drug money or they need it to have a new 'anonymous' car while on the run from the police.
Funny story. Drug dealers try to do this with analogs. They will go to a lawyer and get the lawyer's opinion that whatever benzo/fentanyl derivative they are ordering from Alibaba does not fall under the Analogs rules. They then try to argue if arrested that this shows that they didn't have criminal intent and went to great lengths to make sure that what they imported was not illegal drugs and hence no Mens Rea. Don't try this. It doesn't work. You have not found that 'one secret the Feds hate'.
>Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent.
That's what Ross Ulbricht was arguing; the creator and the operator of the biggest Dark Web drug marketplace called Silk Road but it didn't work out for him. Because you as an operator of a platform have liability of what your users do or in another words you need to take action in order to prevent illicit activities. Ross argued that he created neoliberal free for all marketplace but that the bad guys invaded it and ruined it. Ofc that was BS argument just like not regulating who is mixing funds and what kind of funds at your crypto mixer is also BS.
And just like Ulbricht set a great example for future darknet market operators to take OPSEC far, far more seriously, so too will this overreach of authorities drive authors and operators of tumbler/mixer software/services to do the same.
The authorities are stepping on their own dicks, here, in a manner of speaking. Most of the biggest darknet markets operate far better, and far more clandestinely, precisely because Judge Forrest threw the book at Ross.
And they're doing the same thing here. This really sucks for Pertsev, but going hard on him like this will set the standard for a brighter future in the fight against State-enforced financial tyranny.
That makes no sense and I don't think that lines up with liability.
Every hammer maker knows some people use hammers as murder weapons. Their continued manufacturing of hammers obviously does not constitute a criminal act.
This argument makes no sense, and while I'm not a lawyer, I doubt it actually has legal basis (at least in the US).
Mens rea isn't some radical idea. If hitting specific sales targets on Bushmaster AR-style hammers is tied to your bonus you might end up settling for $73 million when you get caught pushing them too hard and they're used in a bunch of massacres.
The developers of Tornado Cash don't directly profit from its use (the article claims that erroneously), it's a fully permissionless immutable smart contract without a fee component.
So this argument, while potentially valid, doesn't apply here.
I feel like this can only be true because you must have defined "launder money" to be any private usage of money (which isn't a sufficient definition of money laundering, to be clear). If you claim otherwise, then you need to be more specific with your reasoning.
To start: why would anyone need privacy--of communication or of shared resources (payment)--but for something illegal? If you have an answer for that for communication (which you claim to and of course should), then it also is the same answer for money.
Do you believe someone should be able to keep secret that they have some medical condition, and that that knowledge should only exist between them and their doctor? Well, fat lot of good that does when the doctor specializes in some specific issue and there is a record of you paying them.
Think it is sufficient to trust the bank, because you think their security and privacy are awesome? Well, that's the same argument for WhatsApp vs. something like Facebook Messenger: no need for end-to-end communication if you are willing to trust people.
FWIW, I didn't just say that and then drop the issue: I provided the step-by-step explanation as to why. I also certainly understand people disagree: that's why I felt the need to leave the comment at all ;P.
Providing infrastructure that money launders could use, or actually do use, is not categorically illegal. But the law establishes certain obligations to try to mitigate money laundering. There are controls you need to implement, expertise you need to have on staff, a level of sophistication that your AML program needs to demonstrate. And there are enforcement regimes with audits and licensing to backstop all that. It is not a free for all.
I am not sure how you expect to implement any of those without undermining the end-to-end nature of the private communication. Can you maybe explain how this would work in the context of the messaging application?
False. Here is the definition of money laundering:
1. The act of engaging in transactions designed to obscure the origin of money that has been obtained illegally.
2. concealing the source of illegally gotten money
Anyone can use a cryptocurrency mixer with legally obtained cryptocurrency.
Tornado Cash has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.
Anyone can, but realistically, it has probably been used almost exclusively for either laundering money or concealing the source of money used to purchase illegal goods. I can think of pretty much no cases where you would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it for something legal.
I'm not advocating for the developer to be prosecuted, I'm just saying in the eyes of the law, they probably won't see it in the way you are describing.
I can think of pretty much no cases where you would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it for something legal.
Why would you need a mixer? If you want to hide it from your friends just send it to a new address and then buy with that address. Who can prove that new address is yours?
Also if your friends then regularly snoop and trace every single one of your transactions so they can laugh at you for your purchases, I wouldn't consider those to be your friends.
I mean fair enough, you have contrived a legal example. Yes, I admit it does have valid use cases, I just don't think they're very common at all.
Why would you need a mixer? If you want to hide it from your friends just send it to a new address and then buy with that address.
Let’s continue the example. Imagine you use your shiny new NFT as your twitter avatar. Now anyone can see the wallet holding that NFT received funds from wallet x. Wallet x is your main wallet.
I disagree with that, as there are things you may wanna buy without making public you bought, that is still legal. For example, some specialist hobby you'd rather not want others to know about.
Imagine for a moment that you wanted to buy an NFT with legally purchased Ethereum from an exchange like Kraken or Coinbase, but you don’t want your friends to know you spent $2,000 on a jpeg. So instead of buying the NFT with your Coinbase wallet that is linked to your [ENS] name, you create a brand new, single-use wallet and use it to buy the jpeg. And instead of funding the single-use wallet from your recognizable wallet, you obfuscate the source with a mixing service.
1. Russian citizens or political figures wanting to donate to friends and family in Ukraine without being prosecuted / jailed / killed.
2. Not wanting to give your entire financial history to every single person you interact with.
Do you like such a privileged life that you can't imagine a government or adversary using knowledge about your finances against you? Do you think Russians trying to help friends and family should be restricted from doing so because Putin says so?
Let's arrest Satya Nadella, Tim Cook and Linus Torvalds for they are responsible of the three major OSes that are used for the computer related crimes.
> Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?
Of course not, because intent matters.
The team at WhatsApp works super hard to keep people who shouldn't be using it off the platform, so that everyone else can derive use and enjoyment. If WhatsApp was built as a platform to facilitate terrorist communication you're damn right you'd be held liable for working there.
Tornado was built, and is operated, specifically to facilitate money laundering. It has no other purpose but to conceal the source of funds which only matters if the funds were acquired illicitly. They do not now, and have not ever, attempted to stop the service from being used for this purpose - after all that's why it was created.
Because you don't want your crypto currency to be traced back to you... because then the VPN you paid for with it can be traced back to you... and sometimes the entire point of a VPN is so that connections cannot be traced back to you. The funds used to pay for the VPN were not acquired illicitly, but having it traced by to you _could_ be dangerous for you.
The VPN has every IP address you connect to it via. I fail to see how laundering your coins before paying for one is going to add any opsec. You are dependent on trusting the VPN for any security or anonymity it provides you.
Privacy is about much more than whether your transactions can be trade back to you - it's about who can trace them back to you. There's a huge difference between "VPN who already has all my IP addresses knows that I did business with it" and "Everybody on the Internet knows that I did business with this VPN provider". If you disagree, let's see you post your credit card history and tax returns on Hacker News - after all, your bank and the IRS respectively already have this information, so you're not gaining any OpSec by keeping it private.
For a lot of mixer transactions, your adversary is probably not the government - it's any hacker that you may want to prevent from knowing your Ethereum balance and the services you transact with.
If you don't mix your coins I can see you have signed up. If you do mix your coins I cannot. When I say I, I literally mean I could check the chain and see you were a vpn user. After mixing I (me) can no longer see if you are paying for a vpn. Hope that clears it up lol.
What if I don’t want my employer knowing I spent my BTC/ETH/etc on a porn website — so I want a way to disassociate the payment address they know from my spending account?
…or guns, alcohol, abortions, etc.
People have a need for privacy and disassociating spending from receiving for perfectly normal and legal reasons.
This seems like a better argument for using a system which is correctly designed. A public ledger is a bad fit for currency and layering kludges on top isn’t as good as a better design, especially when that exposes you to being an accessory to criminal activity.
There are cryptocurrencies that are private-by-default, eg. Monero and ZCash. It'll be interesting to see how that evolves and whether governments go after them as well, particularly since (I suspect) Monero is used for a lot more illegal activity than Tornado.cash.
The thing about Ethereum's public ledger approach is that it enables a lot of features - broadly advertised smart contracts, for example. Tornado.cash is literally an attempt to replicate the privacy benefits of ZCash inside of Ethereum's generalized blockchain. From a computing perspective that's quite interesting - you start with a public system and find a way to emulate a privacy within it.
Yeah, I’ve been surprised to see so many people prosecuted after using Bitcoin for serious things long after the privacy concerns were well-publicized. I guess it shows how many people fall for marketing.
Given how arbitrary the Tornado enforcement seems, fully private ledger cryptocurrencies will probably be declared criminal too. While this won't deter criminals from using them, it will deter normal people, as publicly offering goods or services in that currency would be illegal.
It's not hard to imagine that the end goal is CBDCs having a monopoly on legal privacy. (Privacy from your neighbor, not your government.)
It doesn’t seem that arbitrary if it’s true that he was directly profiting from money laundering as described.
It also doesn’t follow that a private ledger would be banned any more than, say, credit cards or PayPal are banned. The thing which would get them banned would be refusing to comply with KYC laws, which is a political choice rather than a requirement.
> It doesn’t seem that arbitrary if it’s true that he was directly profiting from money laundering as described.
It remains to be seen what they mean by this. Tornado doesn't extract fees, so the profiting couldn't be exactly direct.
> It also doesn’t follow that a private ledger would be banned any more than, say, credit cards or PayPal are banned.
I specifically said "fully private", not "private from your neighbor", to differentiate with credit cards or PayPal where users have no transparency or control over who sees their data.
> The thing which would get them banned would be refusing to comply with KYC laws, which is a political choice rather than a requirement.
It's not possible for a decentralized system to "comply with KYC laws". That's like asking that paper dollars require an ID to transfer. They can't do that, they are bits of paper existing in physical reality.
Similarly, autonomous consensus-based systems like cryptocurrencies and trustless smart contracts can't just say to users "sorry, I'm not able to serve you until I see your valid government-approved ID", they are "things" not "services with a helpdesk, a street address and a CEO".
That's some seriously circular reasoning: It only exposes you as an accessory to criminal activity because they've labeled it a criminal activity despite legitimate uses...
No, it makes you an accessory because you are mixing your traffic with criminals’ to help hide all of your activity. Everyone trying to hide criminal activity needs to use a mixer but only a small percentage of other users are going to pay for an optional service so the odds are worse that you’re more likely to attract attention to your transactions, too, just like you would if you were known to take home large quantities of cash from a mob-owned casino, too. Maybe you’re just a really good poker player but it’s more likely to make law enforcement curious than if you don’t.
People keep saying this in this thread. Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?