Protecting the First Amendment rights of coders to develop and publish code is a core EFF value. It’s also one where we’ve played a central role in developing the law. So, we were happy that the court in the Tornado Cash lawsuit dismissed a government objection and accepted our amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs.
The case, Van Loon v Department of Treasury, arises from the U.S. Treasury Department’s decision to put Tornado Cash, an open-source project, on its specially designed nationals (SDN) list. As a result of that listing, the project was taken down from GitHub. Developers were deeply concerned that they might face charges and fines for simply participating in it.
Our brief draws on decades of legal and practical experience with open-source developers to explain why putting the open-source project on a sanctions list could set a dangerous precedent and violate First Amendment protections for code development.
EFF long ago helped establish that publishing computer code is protected speech under the First Amendment. As we explained to the court, whenever the government seeks to restrict our speech—including code—based upon its content, its actions are subject to the highest level of scrutiny and must be done in the least speech-restrictive means available. The Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) failed this test when it included the open-source project in placing “Tornado Cash” on the SDN list.
By way of background, the SDN designation made it a crime to interact with any part of Tornado Cash, which the government knew included the open-source project published and collectively developed by dozens of developers on GitHub. The SDN listing not only chilled those developers’ speech, it also understandably caused Gi
[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.
Read the original article: