What can you say about a country who unleashes violent riot police on students protesting against a literal 21st century genocide, which mind you their own government and university is directly involved in?
That it's a morally bankrupt 💩🕳️ that's what. So it should by no means shock you that this same 💩🕳️ now sentenced Tornado Cash's developer Pertsev to 5 years and four months in jail for the heinous crime of writing code. His lawyers now have two weeks to appeal the verdict.
I could go off for literal hours about this but let's start off how "if privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy." But you now what? No, this goes way deeper than just Tornado Cash, privacy or crypto. On the exact same day they sentenced Pertsev, the Turkish born and currently acting minister of justice and security of the Netherlands called out a journalist who was asking for video evidence and intended to interview students who had been beaten by the riot police, citing "Do you only want videos of the rioters who were ordered to leave or also of them harassing the Jewish community and throwing rocks and destroying the building...and wouldn't it be better if they send those evidence to institutions who are meant for that? If the police acted disproportionately, we will surely investigate it ourselves".
The students did in no way harass anyone, all they literally did was protest and demand their university to break all ties with Israel but ignoring their calls and confuse the situation with hocus pocus ''antisemitism'' accusations was of course the point all along. But apart from that, I'm actually wondering if this so called minister thinks she is still living in 'Turkiye' or something because I have never in my life seen anything like this in any West-European nation. The guy is now getting death threats btw and as he even notes himself, has not even published or even made a single second of content yet.
So I ask again, are you still shocked Pertsev was sentenced in this country? If you are you might want to take you hand off from that electric fly swatter. IMO Ryan Adams said it best:
"This is a sad day for the Netherlands....Today crypto privacy developer Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 5 years in prison by Netherlands court for developing an open source tool that allows people to keep their crypto transactions private. Today they made privacy illegal in an EU country....One judge called Tornado Cash a tool intended for criminals. How far we've fallen when our courts assume anyone using privacy tools is a criminal. Your courtrooms should be celebrating cryptographers as the stewards of the hard-fought democratic freedoms passed down to us from the enlightenment - instead you jail these patriots and strip the people of the only tools powerful enough to hold back a dystopic feudal age digital panopticon. If your free society bans privacy and jails developers then you no longer live in a free society. The Netherlands has fallen. The EU is slipping. Will American hold?"
That part about the judge's lack of brain and attempt to form a coherent sentence is actually important so I'll quote the exact sentence: "Tornado Cash in it's nature and functioning is a tool intended for criminals...the criminal user is fully facilitated." Well that seals it, guess I am a criminal now.
The saddest of all ironies? That Pertsev and his family moved from Russia to the Netherlands for more freedom. Well, that one didn't work, all eyes on Roman Storm in the US case as Ryan said. IDK if he is being ironic or not on that last question and not to spoil it for anyone of course, but you can bet your last Sat Roman will be sentenced as well and probably get off worse than Pertsev.
