The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an outstanding digital rights group, has submitted an Amicus report in support of Roman Storm, a developer of the Crypto Tornado Cash privacy protocol (Torn).
Storm has been accused of conspiracy to facilitate money laundering, operate a money transmitter without license and violate sanctions in relation to their work in the Tornado cash protocol.
“The prosecution of the government raises greater concerns of civil liberties that could cool the future development of technologies that improve privacy more widely,” the EFF wrote in the report.
The EFF argues that the prosecution of Storm threatens open source innovation as the main problem in the case of holding developers on how their tools are used, instead of prosecuting the bad actors directly, it could have a chilling effect on the Privacy -centered software development.
“Almost all privacy and anonymity protection software tools are two -use tools. Like a physical or paper cash mask, they provide necessary protections, often criticism for users, but they can also be used by bad actors to help hide your crimes. ” wrote.
In the prosecution of the storm, the Government depends on the International Law of Emergency Economic Powers (IEEPA), which allows it to impose economic sanctions and restrict transactions during national emergencies. This application, argues the EFF, is inappropriate.
“If the government believes that it is appropriate to criminalize these technologies, it must seek relief from Congress and not trust IEEPA and the other laws deployed in this prosecution, or, what is worse, to start even more removed auxiliary activities of any criminal act in Criminal laws. The scope of these laws, ”wrote the EFF.
If Congress wants to regulate tools such as Cash Tornado, the EFF argues, it has the authority to approve a law that clearly distinguishes the legal use of illegal, but the Prosecutor’s Office in this case does not provide that clarity.
The torn token increases almost 50% in the last month, according to market data, on the optimism of a favorable result for storm.
Storm must return to the Court in April.
