How is this different from writing and publishing a virus/worm, which AIUI people have been arrested and prosecuted for even if they didn't engage in offensive use themselves but wrote it for the purpose of others to use to cause harm?
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The purpose of the code is sending money without publicly publishing all the details about it. You can share view keys with an entity that you're required to share the details of the transactions. Gives them proof of the origin and destination of the money which went through it.
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Also, who has ever been convicted of a crime for publishing an exploit / payload for research where they didn't cooperate with criminals or take any money from them? The person who got arrested after going to a US conference turned out to had done both of those things after all.
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There's a difference between publishing an exploit/PoC and publishing something intended to run autonomously to do damage once it's out in the wild.
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It was published to provide a way to send money privately. Sending money privately with no intent to commit crimes or evade sanctions isn't a crime. Publishing the code clearly isn't either.
Only thing that now makes it a crime going forward is they sanctioned the code itself.
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Signal facilitates something all reasonable people agree is a fundamental right: private interpersonal communication. Wielding money secretly is NOT something we all agree is a fundamental right.
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That's not particularly relevant. It's the law that's relevant and sending money privately isn't illegal. No legislature has deemed it illegal in the US. No judge has decided that there was something wrong with Tornado Cash. OFAC sanctioned the code. Not clear they can do that.
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They can sanction whoever they want. There isn't a procedure involving oversight. Sanctioning open source code rather than a company or individual is a first.
A better example than Signal would be SecureDrop which exists to facilitate leaks largely considered illegal by the US.
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The way this stuff works is not by any principles or precedents. There are not slippery slopes. Governments will fight things they deem threats. We fight back when the specific thing is justifiably worth fighting for, not when its coinbro cryptofash upset they can't launder money
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Around 1/4 of donations to GrapheneOS over the past couple years have been via Monero. We currently primarily send money to developers internationally via Bitcoin. An advantage of Monero, Zcash, Tornado Cash, etc. for that would be making it a lot harder for people to get doxxed.
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People can look at where Bitcoin donations to GrapheneOS go to find the wallets of the developers. Even if they use a dedicated wallet for GrapheneOS, they do have to do something with it. People working for an exchange or people who compromise data can then see who the devs are.