Comment on He Built a Privacy Tool. Now He’s Going to Prison.
solrize@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Not gonna watch an hour of video but from the blurb,
I had the pleasure and heartache of interviewing Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet, an open-source, non-custodial privacy wallet, who goes to prison this week because of the privacy tool he created.
Maybe some web searches could help figure out what happened. There are certainly tons of bitcoin wallets out there whose implementers didn’t encounter such problems.
PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Guy basically made a Tor for crypto so transactions can’t be directly linked between users, and the government charged him with a bunch of bullshit claims and completely ignored the law to destroy it.
An openly hostile judge and prosecution making charges even though they were completely aware they had no legal basis, plus legal costs in the millions piling up, the guy pled guilty to “conspiracy” to money laundering (admitting he knew his tool could be used for that end, even though he didn’t take part in any of it) and took 5 years instead of the 25 years they wanted to give him.
If he was tried and lost, it would set a very dangerous precedent for every single privacy service… it’s funny how this idea of a product creator being responsible for its misuse never reaches the gun industry though…