WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:07.860 So this case sets up a perfect demonstration of anarchist theory and practice. The state claims 00:07.860 --> 00:15.640 to protect us from the criminals while simultaneously criminalizing the tools for the politically 00:15.640 --> 00:22.880 connected. They prosecute developers for writing code while ignoring the banks that actually 00:22.880 --> 00:29.020 launder the money for the actual cartels ensue wearing terrorists. The United States government 00:29.020 --> 00:36.960 wants to imprison a software developer for 45 years because he wrote code that helped people 00:36.960 --> 00:44.220 protect their financial privacy and Roman Storm's trial started on July 14th and what happened 00:44.220 --> 00:51.300 in that Manhattan courtroom will determine whether Americans can still build privacy tools without 00:51.300 --> 00:57.080 federal agents kicking down their doors. And this is the thing that they actually don't want you to 00:57.080 --> 01:01.880 understand about the case. The government is actually lying through their teeth about what 01:01.880 --> 01:08.200 tornado cash actually was. If you're a regular viewer of this channel that comes at no great 01:08.200 --> 01:14.520 shock but they're doing it because they're desperate to try to maintain their surveillance 01:14.520 --> 01:20.980 dragnet over every financial transaction that you make. Now Storm faces three conspiracy charges 01:20.980 --> 01:27.220 money laundering sanctions violations and operating and unlicensed money transmitting 01:27.220 --> 01:33.580 business. Now that last charge is where the desperation really really shines through. 01:33.680 --> 01:42.440 FinCEN the financial crimes enforcement network explicitly stated since 2019 that you need 01:42.440 --> 01:49.900 total independent control over users funds to be considered an actual money transmitter right 01:49.900 --> 01:57.720 and tornado cash never actually had control over anyone's money. Users deposited their own 01:57.720 --> 02:03.480 Ethereum and got a secret code and could withdraw it to a different wallet and the 02:03.480 --> 02:08.800 developers couldn't actually touch those funds even if they wanted to and that technical 02:08.800 --> 02:16.020 reality should absolutely destroy the case alone. But because it's the feds it's like playing chess 02:16.020 --> 02:22.440 with your opponent when your opponent has all queens instead of pawns. Again a kind of tired 02:22.440 --> 02:28.740 analogy if you're a subscriber but before any of the alleged criminal activity happened 02:28.740 --> 02:36.540 the tornado cash developers burned the admin keys to their smart contracts. Now that literally 02:36.540 --> 02:44.880 made it impossible for themselves or anyone else to control or modify that actual protocol. 02:45.260 --> 02:52.600 The smart contracts became immutable code running on Ethereum. The prosecutors of course 02:53.080 --> 02:59.980 want everyone to believe that these developers were running some kind of criminal enterprise and 03:00.720 --> 03:06.320 they couldn't even control it it was so crazy. The government claims that tornado cash actually 03:06.320 --> 03:14.480 laundered over one billion including 455 million from the North Korean Lazarus group after the 03:14.480 --> 03:21.160 Ronan Bridge hack and they're using these kind of scary numbers to try to distract from a very 03:21.160 --> 03:27.800 inconvenient fact buried in their own treasury department data. When you know governments 03:27.800 --> 03:34.140 desperately try to paint this tool as criminal they can't really hide that the overwhelming 03:34.140 --> 03:41.460 majority of users were actually law abiding citizens just trying to protect their privacy 03:41.460 --> 03:51.200 from the constant encroachment of government. Now tornado cash use cases for example were things 03:51.200 --> 03:57.000 like coin center actually used it to accept anonymous donations without exposing donors 03:57.000 --> 04:04.860 to things like extortion or targeted attacks. Ukrainians used it to donate to their country's 04:04.860 --> 04:11.460 defense without any kind of Russian intelligence tracking them down. Vitalik Buterin himself 04:11.460 --> 04:18.180 used tornado cash to donate to Ukraine for example. Regular people used it to keep their 04:18.180 --> 04:24.540 financial lives private from their employers but even more importantly to keep it private 04:24.540 --> 04:32.960 from stalkers and criminals and those who actually scan the blockchain looking for actual 04:32.960 --> 04:41.880 victims and you know given that prosecutors regularly prosecute those stalkers and scammers 04:42.540 --> 04:49.940 obviously they know this. The prosecution's desperation shows in their incompetence 04:49.940 --> 04:56.580 and they built part of their case on this damning quote about wandering 600 million. 04:57.020 --> 05:03.560 This case has a ton of holes but that one is really kind of a big one 05:03.560 --> 05:10.700 as they completely basically misread their own evidence and the quote wasn't from a 05:10.700 --> 05:16.960 tornado cash developer it was actually a forwarded message from a coin desk reporter 05:17.520 --> 05:22.960 asking for a comment in the case. Now they've been caught red-handed manufacturing evidence 05:22.960 --> 05:27.860 yet they're still pushing forward because this kind of whole show that they're doing 05:27.860 --> 05:34.600 is more about precedent than anything else and the kind of great career that the prosecutor 05:34.600 --> 05:40.720 or the United States Attorney, Assistant United States Attorney can have once the case is 05:40.720 --> 05:47.160 actually over with. If publishing software maintaining a website actually makes you liable 05:47.680 --> 05:54.400 for how strangers actually use that software then Linus in fact should be arrested because 05:54.400 --> 06:02.040 people who use Linux sometimes do illegal things with it and every Bitcoin you know core developer 06:02.660 --> 06:08.740 becomes liable then as criminals for criminal use of Bitcoin and every Ethereum developer then 06:08.740 --> 06:17.340 should face prosecution by that logic when someone deploys a scam token. Now keep in mind that 06:17.340 --> 06:23.900 conspiracy charges are the federal prosecutors kind of favorite weapon because they don't need to 06:23.900 --> 06:30.180 actually prove you actually committed the underlying crime just that you actually agreed 06:30.180 --> 06:36.920 with someone somewhere to commit said crime. They've used conspiracy charges to imprison 06:36.920 --> 06:43.800 activists who never actually touched a mom or prosecute protesters who never actually threw a 06:43.800 --> 06:50.260 rot and now they're using it against a developer who never laundered a dollar. The feds love 06:50.260 --> 06:58.880 conspiracy charges because they can rope anyone you know tangentically I should say 06:59.380 --> 07:06.900 connected to that person to make them flip on bigger targets or other people writing code that 07:06.920 --> 07:13.120 someone else uses for crime becomes conspiracy running a website where illegal things happen 07:13.120 --> 07:20.580 becomes conspiracy. The bar is so low that breathing in the same room as an alleged criminal 07:20.580 --> 07:27.420 practically makes you a co-conspirator in their eyes and the government's legal theory gets more 07:27.420 --> 07:33.880 insane when you examine their kind of conspiracy charge in detail. They're not even 07:33.880 --> 07:41.200 alleging Storm ever communicated with the North Korean hackers their theory is that by writing 07:41.200 --> 07:48.740 public code and promoting its use he entered a criminal conspiracy with people he ever met 07:48.740 --> 07:55.440 never talked to and couldn't stop them from using his software even if he actually wanted to. 07:55.660 --> 08:02.180 Judge Catherine Polkfala asked the prosecutors a pretty good question that exposed 08:02.760 --> 08:10.420 their entire scheme here and that was why isn't WhatsApp prosecuted the same way? 08:11.160 --> 08:17.480 People definitely use WhatsApp to coordinate crimes. The prosecution's answer kind of showed 08:17.480 --> 08:23.980 everything. They instantly claimed that tornado cash was different because it was a financial 08:23.980 --> 08:32.540 institution and that it failed to register with FinCEN in a reversal. They dropped that charge 08:32.540 --> 08:40.000 entirely after FinCEN itself contradicted them in the samurai wallet case. So, you know, 08:40.080 --> 08:46.980 communication from timing really shows their kind of political desperation and all that. 08:46.980 --> 08:55.720 OFAC sanctioned tornado cash in August of 2022. CoinCenter sued and won in March of 2025. 08:56.380 --> 09:03.680 Those sanctions were ruled illegal in July of 2025 just days before this trial. 09:04.180 --> 09:09.340 The government actually dropped their appeal completely. They know they had already lost the 09:09.340 --> 09:14.260 legal argument but they were pushing forward with the criminal charges anyway because 09:14.260 --> 09:19.120 they need to kind of terrorize developers that are still out there into compliance. 09:19.700 --> 09:25.260 The Ninth Circuit had ruled in Bernstein v. Department of Justice that source code is 09:25.260 --> 09:30.860 actually protected speech under the First Amendment. Ian the Sixth Circuit affirmed this 09:30.860 --> 09:38.140 in Junger v. Dali, establishing clear precedent that writing code is as constitutionally protected 09:38.140 --> 09:44.500 as writing a book or a newspaper article. Yet here's the government trying to imprison 09:44.500 --> 09:50.980 Storm for exercising that exact same right. The government wants to try to create a world where 09:50.980 --> 10:00.080 writing privacy software makes you responsible for every criminal who ever uses it while banks, 10:00.200 --> 10:07.740 for example, that process billions in real cartel money, get small fines and are taken care of 10:07.740 --> 10:14.940 and there's no executives that actually end up in handcuffs. The SWIFT network processes massive 10:14.940 --> 10:21.320 amounts of illicit funds including transactions with sanctioned Iranian banks, for example, 10:21.620 --> 10:27.940 and nobody arrests SWIFT, board members, and bustles. I don't see anyone with a problem with 10:27.940 --> 10:35.360 them. Legacy financial institutions get regulatory slaps on the wrist when something does happen 10:35.360 --> 10:42.240 for actual money laundering while a developer who wrote non-custodial privacy code 10:42.240 --> 10:48.780 faces 45 years in a federal prison with a really dangerous people. The store maintained the 10:48.780 --> 10:55.320 tornado cash's website and that made the protocol easier to use. Prosecutors claimed that this 10:55.320 --> 11:01.260 proves criminal intent and again becomes a criminal conspirator. Anyone who fixes a bug 11:01.260 --> 11:07.880 in Tor commits a felony by that same logic and anyone who answers a question about Monero on 11:07.880 --> 11:14.440 Stack Overflow joins a money laundering conspiracy. This is the level of stupidity that we're 11:14.440 --> 11:21.700 actually dealing with here. The system is so backwards that the possibility of conviction 11:21.700 --> 11:28.820 is actually in the 90% for all of those who actually go to trial. The government keeps 11:28.820 --> 11:35.700 insisting that Storm should have implemented KYC and demanding he collect user information for 11:35.700 --> 11:40.840 a protocol that was designed to some degree to protect privacy, which makes no sense. 11:41.220 --> 11:46.920 They're literally prosecuting him for not building a surveillance stool, like throwing a safe 11:46.920 --> 11:54.060 manufacturer in prison for refusing to install a government backdoor for said safe. 11:54.060 --> 12:01.120 They want every financial tool to double as a surveillance device feeding data to the same 12:01.120 --> 12:09.360 bureaucrats who use your tax dollars to build their kind of an opticon demanding you thank them 12:09.360 --> 12:15.440 for that actual privilege. They lie when they say the thing they fear is money laundering 12:15.440 --> 12:20.800 and what actually terrifies them is losing the ability to surveil every transaction 12:21.200 --> 12:30.340 to freeze assets at will to financially unperson anyone who challenges their authority. 12:30.580 --> 12:36.180 And I mean the word in the literal sense, not like the stupid YouTube self-sensory way. 12:36.940 --> 12:43.420 They watch Canadian truckers, for example, get their bank accounts frozen for protesting. 12:43.420 --> 12:51.180 In part, power depends on financial surveillance. Every authoritarian regime in history has wanted 12:51.180 --> 12:56.780 to control money flows because controlling money means controlling people and controlling people 12:56.780 --> 13:04.240 is power. The Bank Secrecy Act started in 1970 claiming to stop tax cheats and then expanded 13:04.240 --> 13:10.460 to target drug dealers and then terrorists. And now they're coming for software developers. 13:10.460 --> 13:17.380 You know, it's absolute insanity. For all of human history, until about 50 years ago, 13:18.240 --> 13:25.440 give or take, your financial transactions were private by default. But now they want to imprison 13:25.440 --> 13:34.580 anyone who dares write code that restores that basic human right of privacy. The developer 13:35.360 --> 13:43.440 couldn't stop North Korea from using tornado cash any more than Tim Berns Lee can stop criminals from 13:43.440 --> 13:51.100 using the worldwide web. The protocol was immutable, running on thousands of Ethereum nodes 13:51.100 --> 13:59.340 worldwide, demanding they somehow prevent bad actors from using unstoppable code is demanding 13:59.340 --> 14:05.840 the impossible and then imprisoning them for failing to achieve it. And if you know the federal 14:05.840 --> 14:11.800 government, this is absolutely normal. It makes perfect sense. That's why I don't say the system 14:11.800 --> 14:17.000 is broken. It's not broken. It works exactly the way they wanted to. This trial is the 14:17.000 --> 14:29.320 government's admission that they've lost the technical battle, so to speak. They can't stop 14:29.320 --> 14:35.000 they can't shut down protocols running on decentralized networks. So what do they have left? 14:35.400 --> 14:42.960 Well, all they have left is throwing developers in cages to terrorize others into compliance. 14:43.680 --> 14:51.440 It's the same exact tactic that slavers use to keep others from helping them run away. I mean, 14:51.440 --> 14:58.460 you make an example of one to terrorize the rest into submission. So ask yourself, 14:59.240 --> 15:02.800 if that is true, who then are the non slaves? 15:05.970 --> 15:13.640 Like the prosecution reveals the fraud at the heart of their financial surveillance regime. 15:14.120 --> 15:19.640 They claim that these laws protect us from criminals while exempting the biggest criminals, 15:19.640 --> 15:27.300 which is the banks that launder billions, the government that prints money to fund endless 15:27.300 --> 15:33.820 wars, the Federal Reserve that steals purchasing power through things like inflation. The real 15:33.820 --> 15:40.380 crime is building tools that let people opt out of their system. And if Storm loses this case, 15:40.600 --> 15:46.660 like every privacy tool becomes a potential criminal liability, VPN developers, Github, 15:46.660 --> 15:54.120 contributors, encryption programmers, they all face that threat of federal prosecution 15:55.000 --> 16:01.560 if any criminals actually use their code. The feds will claim it's about stopping crime, but 16:01.560 --> 16:08.320 I would argue that's the least of the issue. Actions speak louder than words and they're sick 16:08.320 --> 16:14.960 of people having, you know, the few shreds of privacy that they currently have and they want 16:14.960 --> 16:22.760 to extinguish them. They can't allow them to even have that. How long till in-camera houses 16:22.760 --> 16:29.520 are mandatory? Like we already have them on all the street corners. All of this in their attempt 16:29.520 --> 16:35.660 to try to ensure that every transaction flows through surveilled channels where they can 16:35.660 --> 16:42.420 monitor, freeze and confiscate at will. The jury in this case really isn't just deciding 16:42.420 --> 16:49.880 Storm's fate. They're kind of deciding whether Americans can build tools that preserve 16:49.880 --> 16:56.040 fundamental human rights. This is like we've been transported back to the 90s with the 16:56.040 --> 17:03.940 crypto wars all over again. They're deciding whether code remains free speech or becomes 17:03.940 --> 17:10.460 criminal conspiracy. They're deciding whether we're accepting total financial surveillance 17:10.460 --> 17:19.020 as a price of participating in some corrupt modern society that's totally surveilled. 17:19.660 --> 17:24.320 And Michael Lewin, a developer in Texas, is already suing the Department of Justice 17:24.320 --> 17:31.240 because he's afraid to even publish his privacy protocols. He knows that under the Southern 17:31.240 --> 17:38.360 District of New York's theory of publishing code in Texas makes you liable for prosecution 17:38.360 --> 17:45.500 in Manhattan if any New Yorker actually uses it. The chilling effect has really already 17:45.500 --> 17:50.240 began. If you want to share the privacy tools you're using, drop them in the comments before 17:50.240 --> 17:56.820 they criminalize them. Nylist, who's a good friend of mine, hosts a bunch of tools on his site 17:56.820 --> 18:05.380 that you can find. The Getia, if you look, this has nothing to do with hiding criminal 18:05.380 --> 18:11.340 activity. We're talking about preserving the basic human right to conduct private transactions 18:11.340 --> 18:18.520 without government surveillance. The government dropped their appeal on the sanctions because 18:18.520 --> 18:26.260 they knew they'd lose. They changed the charges mid-case because Fincent contradicted them and 18:26.260 --> 18:30.660 they misrepresented evidence because they're desperate. What they're doing is persecuting 18:30.660 --> 18:37.900 someone to set a precedent that code is a conspiracy and that privacy is a crime and that 18:37.900 --> 18:44.940 anyone who goes forward is committing the worst crime that could ever be basically committed 18:44.940 --> 18:50.880 and Storm faces 45 years for writing code that worked exactly as it was designed, 18:51.060 --> 18:56.980 code that protected journalists and activists and ordinary citizens from surveillance, 18:57.500 --> 19:04.460 code that did nothing except restore a fragment of the privacy that we all had in the past and 19:04.460 --> 19:10.980 we're all entitled to. And the US government doesn't like that and they want to strip it. 19:11.400 --> 19:13.840 That's what this case is really about at the end of the day. 19:15.280 --> 19:18.620 I'd like to know what you think about all this. Let me know in the comments. 19:19.480 --> 19:22.820 As always, thank you for watching to the end and I'll see you in the next video.