If you’re looking for free speech or privacy, move along
GitHub over the past week has tested the trust of its users by enacting policies that call into question its commitment to free speech and privacy.
On Monday, the Microsoft-owned biz removed the account for virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash after the US Treasury Department sanctioned the service for apparently helping to launder virtual currency since 2019.
GitHub appears to have had no choice but to do so under US law. However, the biz also disabled the personal GitHub accounts of at least three developers who contributed to the Tornado Cash repo, including Roman Semenov, Roman Storm, and Alexey Pertsev.
Via Twitter, Semenov wondered aloud whether writing open source code «is illegal now?»
Several cybersecurity and legal experts insisted that it’s not, citing a US court ruling that found code is expressive (Bernstein v. United States) and has the legal status of speech in the context of the First Amendment.
«While Tornado’s code is functional – mixing ETH transactions so they are harder to trace – publishing the code on its own is protected speech, even if that code can be used unlawfully,» wrote Kurt Opsahl, deputy executive director and general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, via Twitter.
«Thirty years of hard legal work to establish First Amendment protections around software distribution, blown up in a day by Github/Microsoft,» remarked Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University.
In response to an inquiry from The Register, a GitHub spokesperson suggested the company was obligated to do what it did.
«Trade laws require GitHub to restrict users and customers identified as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) or other denied or blocked parties, or that may be using GitHub on behalf of blocked parties,» a GitHub spokesperson said in an email.
«At the same time, GitHub’s vision is to be the global platform for developer collaboration.
