Tornado Cash Incident: A Look Back at the Emergence of Encryption Software PGP - After Years of U.S. Investigation, Technical Restrictions Finally Relaxed

The man arrested by the Dutch regulatory authority, Alexey Pertsev, has been confirmed as the developer of the privacy protocol Tornado Cash, causing a stir on crypto Twitter.

Code War

Renowned KOL and UpOnOnly host Cobie

"Welcome to the code war."

Bankless founder Ryan Sean Adams

"A person being arrested and jailed because criminals used the open-source code he wrote is not a valid reason in any free society."

Adam Cochran, Partner at Cinneamhain Ventures

"What the hell is going on? We need more details on this, it's insane. Code represents freedom of speech, and unless there's something we don't know, someone being arrested just because the privacy tools they developed were abused is a crazy overreach by the government. Privacy is under attack."

Yearn core developer banteg

"Breaking news! The founder of a gun manufacturer arrested for assisting in a shooting; the founder of a knife company arrested for aiding stabbings; the founder of a pressure cooker manufacturer arrested for aiding terrorism."

Note: The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing involved pressure cooker modifications.

Stefan George, Co-founder of Gnosis

Stefan George referenced the case of the online communication encryption software PGP Pretty Good Privacy, which ignited a 10-year code war.

PGP inventor Philip Zimmermann is a modern legend in cryptography. PGP uses symmetric and asymmetric encryption to provide privacy and higher levels of security for online communication, making it one of the first software applications to widely implement public-key cryptography.

PGP was introduced in 1991, but during the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the US and its allies imposed export controls to prevent significant technology leaks. Encryption technology and software were classified as US munitions, and many Western countries restricted the export of encryption technology. The US suspected Zimmermann of being compromised by the Soviets, alleging violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

However, authorities eventually dropped the investigation in 1996, and export controls were lifted in 2000, with Western democratic countries abandoning restrictions on high-strength encryption codes.

Stefan George stated:

The Tornado Cash development team is talented, bringing much-needed privacy to Ethereum. I hope this event serves as a reminder that writing code is freedom of speech and technology is neutral. We must make regulators and the public understand the advantages of what we are developing. In my view, anonymous transactions should be a default setting.