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by tgflynn 1409 days ago
It could be the first of many. Up until yesterday we lived in a world (by which I mean the Western World) where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open source code. It appears that this is no longer the case. This is how the Overton window gets moved, one step at a time, not in huge leaps. And clearly there are powerful forces interested in moving it in a direction that would likely be detrimental to many of us here.
2 comments
clucas 1409 days ago
How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for writing open source code?"

The whole point of my comment was that he was probably arrested for more than that... Or at least, we should wait to see what the evidence against the guy is.

If you go around saying "the sky is falling! they're coming for the developers!" then it turns out the guy was actually doing bad stuff to help launder money, you're going to make it that much harder to get people's attention when there is an actual abuse of police power.

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tgflynn 1409 days ago
> How do you know that this guy was arrested "just for writing open source code?"

I don't know that, but that currently appears to be the case and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

EDIT: The title of the page is "Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash". So they are certainly making it appear that they consider having developed Tornado Cash to itself be worthy of arrest.

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InitialLastName 1409 days ago
The article doesn't actually say he was arrested for being the developer of Tornado Cash. It might be trying to imply that (or offer an explanation of what the connection is between the arrest and the investigation into Tornado Cash). All the article asserts is that he is suspected to be the developer of Tornado Cash, and that he was arrested "[under suspicion] of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering" via Tornado Cash. That could (and likely does) mean that he was involved in far more than just development.
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chii 1409 days ago
> where no one had ever been arrested just for writing open source code.

But was he arrested for _just_ the code he wrote? Or more, and the code was just an ancillary property of the person being arrested?

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