The First Amendment isn't a natural law or part of the cosmic order, it's a thingy written down by people 250 years ago that people could change if they liked.
Absolutist freedom of speech isn't a coherent ideology, because it condones its own destruction.
Conversation
It's hardly absolutist free speech to believe that publishing code to provide people with financial privacy is not violating any laws. Privacy itself is a right covered by multiple parts of the US constitution. Publicly publishing all your transactions is not a legal requirement.
1
Doesn't make much sense to claim that when the topic is a port of the traditional Zcash technology to an Ethereum smart contract...
1
The blockchain has a *PUBLIC* record of every transaction committed, of every Solidity contract executed.
2
Y'all shouldn't be acting surprised that making everyone look like criminals by using a money laundering machine is making everyone look like criminals.
2
Financial privacy is not money laundering. It's only money laundering if you're hiding the proceeds of a crime. That's how the term is defined and the laws are defined. People using it for other reasons were not violating any US laws.
1
Financial privacy is *automatic* if you use the legitimate, legally sanctioned banking system.
2
How exactly do you have financial privacy when your bank can see and sell your financial data along with their employees being able to easily view it? You also depend on them to secure your data. Privacy from governments is perfectly valid too. Governments are not benevolent.
1
It's called... privacy law?
If they're not good enough, ask your local Congressperson to make them tougher.
2
I'm not sure why you assume that I'm American. The person who was arrested in the Netherlands is not American either. Perhaps news to you but there are other countries in the world than the US and US law isn't international law.
Um... the thread is about the EFF defending the AMERICAN First Amendment.
1
A developer was arrested in the Netherlands, not the US. I highly doubt that any legal action will be taken against for publishing code on GitHub and using it in his courses. If he publishes it on Ethereum and people use it? Maybe they eventually would then.