Tornado Cash Co-founder Reports Being Kicked Off GitHub as Industry Reacts To Sanctions (cointelegraph.com) 53
Roman Semenov, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, has reported his account was suspended at the developer platform, GitHub, following the United States Treasury Department's sanctioning of the privacy protocol. From a report: In a Monday tweet, Semenov said that despite not being individually named as a Specially Designated National, or SDN, of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control, he seemed to be facing repercussions from the Treasury alleging Tornado Cash had laundered more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency. As SDNs, identified firms and individuals have their assets blocked and "U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them."
Being identified as an SDN would seemingly include any contact for business purposes, which could extend to associations on GitHub. According to a joint statement from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council and Office of Foreign Asset Control, prohibited transactions could be interpreted to include "downloading a software patch from a sanctioned entity." Semenov called the move to suspend his account "a bit illogical." However, U.S. residents have been effectively barred from using the crypto mixer, given its alleged failure "to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks," according to Brian Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Being identified as an SDN would seemingly include any contact for business purposes, which could extend to associations on GitHub. According to a joint statement from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council and Office of Foreign Asset Control, prohibited transactions could be interpreted to include "downloading a software patch from a sanctioned entity." Semenov called the move to suspend his account "a bit illogical." However, U.S. residents have been effectively barred from using the crypto mixer, given its alleged failure "to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks," according to Brian Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Re: Microsoft: You're guilty until proven innocent (Score:2)
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If proven guilty, then Microsoft will need to share in that guilt. (face heavy fines, investigations towards additional criminal activists, possibly having their product sanctioned as well, being that their customer is guilty, they will no longer be getting money from them)
If not proven guilty, then Microsoft would had just lost a customer.
Companies in general have the rights to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Being a private company they are not bound to follow the US Constitution. So they can Ki
The net is closing (Score:2, Insightful)
All people who want any kind of anonymity are out of luck - the government will make sure every cent you spend is tracked and approved, and anyone who goes against that thought is an enemy of the state.
And now with 87000 new IRS agents in the wings, they will make sure every cent is taxed also, probably a few times over.
Re:The net is closing (Score:4, Insightful)
Revenue collection is a core function of government, because without revenue there is no government, and then strongmen will take over, and then they will have to reinstitute revenue collection, but largely as kleptocrats and tyrants, and then there will have to be a revolution and a collapse of revenue collection, and the new democratically constituted government will have to reinstitute revenue collection to function.
And so on and so on and so on...
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Just because the government can defecit spend does not mean they shouldnt try and close the tax gap. Is your suggestion they should defecit spend instead of enforce tax laws on the books? Are you an MMT fan also?
Part if this is just getting the IRS back up to speed so it can do it's job. How the IRS was Gutted [propublica.org]
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Governments have been using debt to pay for things since millennia. The train left the station a very long time ago. Even the Roman government borrowed money.
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Pretty silly though to artificially kneecap a sovereign nation's economy like that. One of the most critical economic tools of just being your own nation state is having control over currency and being able to deficit spend.
We can argue over how much a nation should do it but taking away the ability will just make the whole thing wildly unstable for purely ideological reasons, not economic ones.
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I'll ignore the massive financial problems that he caused, if you'll ignore the method he used to help balance the budget: "In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly removed most members of the major tribes of the Southeast to Indian Territory; these removals were subsequently known as the Trail of Tears." Stealing land *is* one of the traditional, historical methods of "balancing the books".
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And such laws would, at the point of the first natural disaster or economic crisis have to be repealed.
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Ah I see. So instead of deficit spending, big tax hikes. But just how big a contingency fund do you imagine having to have in a country as large as the US? And just how high a tax rate are you going to be willing to pay? And you somehow imagine this is less ruinous than sovereign debt?
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Just like almost all of the States do.
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I forget when, maybe 2010(ish?) a "balanced budget" thing was passed in Congress. To spread the pain, when money had to be cut, it was cut equally, one from column $lib and one from column $con (US definitions). It worked to an extent, but ofc as you insightfully mentioned, what constituted "balanced" and "deficit" did have to be "fine-tuned". With the added benefit that now each side can call each other evil when the rules are applied equally and they don't get their favorite $pork for their districts.
Re:Wrong way to look at it. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, stop with the Carlson/Hannity inspired bullshit. It's just more GQP projection [politico.com] based upon a fear that your deepest desires might come back to haunt you.
How about 87k agents attempting to ensure that wealthier people are properly paying their taxes? The top 2% of U.S. households (2.6 million of them) earn more than $387K/year, and there are 725,000 businesses with 20 or more employees. That means that if every single one of those 87,000 were auditing those groups each year and they're not [washingtonpost.com]), each one would be responsible for 30 household audits and 8 business audits.
But you want 10, to audit a sampling of 3.1 million entities, because that's how the GQP likes it [journalofaccountancy.com].
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You might want to walk that claim back, since the top 1% alone has $44 trillion in assets [federalreserve.gov].
They disagree [nytimes.com].
Which would be by I wrote "and they're not" and linked to a relevant article. Try instead reply
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Thanks for that link. I notice the top 50-99% has $92 trillion in assets and probably can't afford the team of lawyers that top 1% can. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who they'll be going after. Remember when this administration's election campaign swore that taxes wouldn't be increased on the middle class? They just did that too last week.
Re:Wrong way to look at it. (Score:4, Informative)
Ooooo, now let's apply that to general policing and really punch a hole in the veneer of civilization and rule of law.
Really, what tax rate changed? You wouldn't be referring to that bogus study [cnbc.com] that posited that the act would indirectly increase some costs for everybody -- and thus the middle class -- while completely disregarding any benefits that could arise so that there was no possible way for any change anywhere not to supposedly violate that pledge.
I'm surprised that Republicans didn't protest that if people's incomes rose in 2022-23+ they'd be paying more tax than in 2021, thereby violating the pledge. It's ridiculous.
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No they didn't [factcheck.org], you suddenly went from "no change in tax rates on the middle class" to "no indirect effects whatsoever on the middle class," then topped it off with "we're going to ignore any benefits provided to the middle class because otherwise the numbers don't work out for our claim."
You've been reduced to such a pathetic argument, you should be embarrassed for you
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They've done almost exactly what Biden said he would do in the State of the Union [whitehouse.gov]. If you ran off to the bathroom after the first sentence and missed the next ten that were part and parcel of that plan, that's your fault, not a lie.
And under my plan, nobody -- let me say this again -- nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in new taxes. Not a single penny.
I may be wrong, but my guess is, if we took a secret ballot in
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You got owned.
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I need to be sure [spiceworksstatic.com].
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You can thank Alexander Hamilton for this. He's the one who convinced Washington to create a national bank and of deficit spending. He said [usnews.com] "if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."
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"I like paying taxes. They buy me civilization."
(Don't know who that quote is from)
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Sad you do not care. (Score:1)
Pay your share "Super" Kendall and stop whining.
I pay my share, and have forever, because I could see which way the IRS was going, the IRS is the last agency you want to get sideways of. So (and I recommend this to everyone) pay all taxes due, and in fact try to not take every deduction possible to send up a little protection money as it were. You cannot win against the IRS, don't even try.
However I am not really the target anyway because I have enough money to actually dispute the IRS in court if any iss
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the IRS is the last agency you want to get sideways of.
While I don't disagree with your sentiment, I love the way it sums up how the American Gestapo works. You haven't even a prayer of justice if certain agencies target you.
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Did you run this new populism past the Republican Party [forbes.com] before you posted it?
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I pay my share, and have forever, because I could see which way the IRS was going, the IRS is the last agency you want to get sideways of.
So right there you admit that in fact if there was a lack of IRS enforcement you would just cheat and not pay your taxes, making essentially every other point you have made invalid and in fact totally making the case that increasing resources for the IRS is worth it and will probably pay for itself.
If we are so worried about the "side hustlers" having to pay their share of taxes we should pass a law that says you don't have to pay taxes up to a certain amount. Maybe a system of "brackets" where the more mo
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And now with 87000 new IRS agents in the wings, they will make sure every cent is taxed also, probably a few times over.
The IRS does not in fact levy taxes, they just make sure everyone is paying what they are supposed to.
I would personally like for people with only basic 1040's to not have to file anything since the IRS already has the info they need which would eliminate any chance of audits for a lot of the lower 50% of earners but that's 100% up to Congress.
Also those 87k agents can probably help make up the $160B tax gap from just the 1% of earners. [treasury.gov]
Even if you paid them all $100K a year they only need to collect $9B of
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I'd prefer an overhaul where people of any class do not get back more in tax money then they spend.
I find it interesting that we expect the rich to pay all our taxes plus enough to get money back depending on how many kids you have.
Honestly, though, the tax I hate the most is not a federal one but a state/county tax - and that is called property taxes. Property taxes are high enough to have people lose their homes over. Move it all to sales tax and have everyone pay their fair share.
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Yeah I have read quite a few interesting articles about switching the US over to a VAT consumption tax like the EU has for a number of reasons. With the income disparity we still have in the country there will always be people who pull more money from government services than they put in with taxes but to me that is a separate policy issue, we need better systems to get people out of poverty so they are making enough to contribute.
tax I hate the most is not a federal one but a state/county tax - and that is called property taxes
Agree on property taxes having a lot of bad outcomes, school funding dispar
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Yeah, yeah
Re: The net is closing (Score:1)
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As the oligarchy and corporations enjoy record wealth, despite a wealth disparity not seen since the time of the pharos', real workers today have less buying power then their counterparts in the 1980s. The oligarchy uses this wealth to buy off
Glad we don't use github and run personal servers (Score:2)
Glad we don't use github and run personal servers.
I seen the writing on the wall when perfectly working master branches were all renamed and labeled as wrong-speak.
Shame on them for even expecting to use it in the first place. I run an AI company and will defend against any possible future "sanctions" if our AI does something people don't like by not using their services.
I already know I will pushed and prodded the second we become successful or lower profits of an entrenched player, then all bets are off.
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"reeeeeee, a federal order came in to stop a securities fraud, that means i should say something about wrongspeak"
"any law being enforced for any reason is censorship, literally every possible outcome is orwell, reeeeeeeee"
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4/10 Improvement needed.
Directly talking about github banning a person when the organization (not the person) was sanctioned is *exactly* on topic of discussing githubs issue with meddling in what is supposedly an open service.
Tyranny, anyone? (Score:3)
Being identified as an SDN would seemingly include any contact for business purposes,j
Which means that the government has the power to arbitrarily declare anyone an SDN, and unperson them in much the same manner as a third world dictator. Good to know I live in the land of the "free".
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>Which means that the government has the power to arbitrarily declare anyone an SDN, and unperson them in much the same manner as a third world dictator. Good to know I live in the land of the "free".
The Republicans think the 5th Amendment will prevent this.