It was in December 1938 when a young physicist from Vienna named Lise Meitner discovered the process of nuclear fission which later led to the development of the atomic bomb. At the time of discovery, Meitner didn’t know that it would lead to one of the darkest days in human history and eventually lead to the deaths of millions of people.
On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan, where it is estimated more than 135,000 lives were lost. Just a few days later, on August 9, another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki that claimed almost 64,000 lives.
Meitner did continue her research in the field of nuclear reactions but wanted to disconnect herself from all work that led to the creation of weapons of mass destruction.
Historians and veterans have been divided on who to blame for the atrocity. While many say that Japanese aggression was the instigator, others believe this was the US boisterously advertising to the world the power it was yielding.
Amid the commotion, did anyone blame Lies Meitner for the lives claimed by the atomic bombs? Should she have been put behind bars for the destruction?
You must be thinking, what has this got to do with coding? I believe this part of history is contextually important for understanding what I am about to say in this oped.
THE WAR ON CODE
In 2019, a group of developers made a tool that could mix Ethereum crypto tokens from different wallets in order to offer anonymity for the transactions to the users. The tool is called Tornado Cash and just recently, it was sanctioned by the US Treasury because it was used by bad actors to launder around $7 billion since its inception. The tool was also used by a North Korean hacker group to launder dirty money which the US Treasury mentioned while sanctioning Tornado Cash.
To the shock of the developer community, one of the alleged developers of Tornado Cash was arrested in Amsterdam by the Netherlands crime agency, FIOD, over suspected involvement in facilitating money laundering via Tornado Cash.
Basically, the developer got arrested for writing the code without a shred of evidence that this person was directly involved in the laundering case.
Code is speech and as per the First Amendment of the US constitution, every citizen has freedom of speech and reserves the right to freely express themselves in society. So, if that’s the case, is this arrest justified in any way?
This isn’t an isolated incident. Back in 2010, the US stock market crashed because of an algorithm that tricked the market and resulted in a $1 trillion loss in just a little over 30 minutes!
The code for the algorithm was written by a developer named Jitesh Thakkar who was later arrested for writing the code that was used by someone else. Though Jitesh was acquitted in 2019, this set the precedent that writing codes can get you into trouble with the authorities.
Since the incident, there have been many developers who have been prosecuted for writing code that was used for cybercrime. While some were directly involved with the crime itself, there have been many who were mere scapegoats.
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In the Tornado Cash case, the authorities said that coding may be punishable if the code is written for the sole …….