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The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the Madison County School Board in Ridgeland, Mississippi, regarding recent restrictions on 10 books, requiring students to obtain parental permission in order to read them.

The 10 books in question address race-related or LQBTQ+ themes, and we are concerned that the district may have unconstitutionally targeted these books for the political views they express.

We understand that school districts can be subject to heavy pressure to censor books, which is why it is vital to have strong book challenge procedures. The district should strive to address the concerns of parents by explaining the pedagogical purposes of the library and instructional materials chosen by qualified education professionals, rather than by simply labeling them as supposedly problematic.

NCAC strongly urges the district to reconsider this policy and to adopt alternatives which do not endanger the rights of students to read and learn.

Please read our full letter to the Board here:

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Madison, Mississippi, School District Restricts Books on Race and LGBTQ+ Themes - Blogging Censorship

Censored

'Bleep, bleep, bleep.' What's going on? Is this a lesson on profanity? No - that right there is the sound of censorship, or the suppression of information. Censorship can take many forms, from burning books to restricting what information is available on the Internet for the citizens of an entire country. At its most basic, it's all about the control of information. Whoever owns the access to information can decide what people learn and what they do not. This can be governments, private companies, mass media - any group that in some way controls access to information.

But why? Well, a government or a private company may not want people finding out too much about their policies because the result could be a rebellion. Knowledge can be power. But can censorship be a good thing, too? Well, let's take a look, and then you can decide for yourself. We promise not to censor you.

In general, there are four major types of censorship: withholding information, destroying information, altering or using selective information and self-censorship.

Withholding information is a common form of censorship used by many governments throughout history. For many years, the United States government heavily censored information that came out of war zones because the government did not want citizens to turn against the war. The less citizens saw of the war, the more likely they were to believe it was a good thing.

Another common one is the destruction of information, like the book burnings used by the Nazis to physically eliminate information that went against their ideas. The act of trying to erase someone from history has a long precedent as well; ancient Egyptian pharaohs were known to destroy any records of rival pharaohs, even to the point of making their names illegal.

What else? Oh yeah, altering information is a good one. The former dictator of the USSR, Josef Stalin, was known to have photographs altered to remove images of people whom he had executed.

More commonly, altering information comes back to education, rewriting textbooks so that history only shows what you want it to. For many years, American history textbooks ignored the atrocities committed against Native American communities, and Japanese textbooks used to gloss over their brutal invasion of China during WWII.

And of course, there is also self-censorship, when people monitor themselves and stop themselves from giving the entire truth. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps you are afraid that the government will kidnap you for speaking against them, or perhaps you are afraid that you will be fired because a viewpoint is not supported by your employer. Encouraging self-censorship is one of the most effective ways for those in power to keep information quiet.

Regardless of how it's achieved, all censorship is seen as justified by somebody. Political censorship, for example, is used by governments to control the image of the state. For example, during the Cold War, the USSR needed the areas under their control to believe that they were winning and that life in communist Eastern Europe was better than life in the United States or capitalist Western Europe. So, the USSR carefully monitored writers, newspaper editors, television programs and other sources of information to ensure that only positive aspects of communism were depicted, along with the negative aspects of capitalism.

Another frequent source of censorship across history is religious censorship, where information is forbidden because it goes against religious ideas. One famous example of this was the trial and imprisonment of Galileo in 1633 for proposing that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which at the time was seen as heresy.

So, people in power who are afraid of the truth obviously like censorship. That means it must be pretty bad, right? Actually, many forms of censorship are not only accepted but embraced. For example, information regarding national security and military defense are often censored from the public. Many argue that if information on the movements of the United States military, for example, were made public, that an enemy would have an advantage and could launch brutal attacks.

And then there's moral censorship. The vast majority of TV networks are not permitted to show excessive violence or nudity, but it's not because somebody's trying to hide the truth from you, it's because somebody is trying to prevent kids from being exposed to things that kids shouldn't see. And then there are issues like child pornography, which we've decided is so immoral that it's actually illegal. Is it wrong of the government or mass media to censor child pornography? These are areas where censorship becomes a fine line where we, as a community, allow information to be suppressed for a sense of greater good.

Now, for some, the Internet is seen as something that should be unlimited, unrestrained and completely uncensored. It is the ultimate portal for sharing information, and we've seen how powerful that can be. The Arab Spring, a series of revolutions in the Arabic-speaking world that toppled entire governments, was sparked by social media. But again, where do we draw the line? Are racism, violence and hate suddenly acceptable just because they are on the Internet? Sometimes we decide that we need more access to information, and sometimes we decide that we need just a few more 'bleeps.'

Censorship is defined as the 'bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.' Actually, that's just censorship in action. The suppression of information is something that has occurred throughout most of human history in some form or another. Censorship has been used to protect military secrets, hide truth from people to keep them oppressed, prevent ideas that contradicted accepted religious or scientific ideas or even preserve common morals. Censorship can be imposed by someone in power, or it can be a personal choice. A lot of censorship is seen as oppressive, but most societies agree on some level of censorship against immoral and illegal ideas. So, where's the line? 'Bleep.'

When you are finished, you should be able to:

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Censorship History, Types & Examples - Study.com

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Censorship is the suppression or deletion of material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor.

Typically censorship is done by governments, religious and secular groups, corporations, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of classified information, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship within the censoring community, though can be by outside observers. The term "censorship" often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy.

Censorship is closely related to the concept of freedom of speech. It is often associated with human rights abuse, dictatorship, and repression.

The term "censorship" is often used as a pejorative term to signify a belief that a group controlling certain information is using this control improperly or for its own benefit, or preventing others from accessing information that should be made readily accessible (often so that conclusions drawn can be verified).

Confiscation of a forbidden book (poetry by Sergei Yesenin) in Gulag. Painting by Nikolai Getman, provided by The Jamestown Foundation.

The rationale for censorship is different for various types of data censored. Censorship is defined as the act or practice of removing obscene, vulgar, and highly objectionable material from things we encounter every day. Whether it is on TV, in music, books, or on the Internet censorship is an inescapable part of our lives. There are five main types of censorship:

A National Geographic Magazine censored by Iranian authorities. The offending cover was about the subject of love, and the picture hidden beneath the white sticker is of an embracing couple.[1] February 2006.

The Rhodesia Herald of September 21, 1966.

Wieczr Wrocawia" - Daily newspaper of Wrocaw, People's Republic of Poland, March 20-21-21, 1981, with censor intervention on first and last pages --- under the headlines "Co zdarzyo si w Bydgoszczy?" (What happened in Bydgoszcz?) and "Pogotowie strajkowe w caym kraju" (Country-wide strike alert). The censor had removed a section regarding the strike alert; hence the workers in the printing house blanked out an official propaganda section. The right-hand page also includes a hand-written confirmation of that decision by the local "Solidarno" Trade Union.

In wartime, explicit censorship is carried out with the intent of preventing the release of information that might be useful to an enemy. Typically it involves keeping times or locations secret, or delaying the release of information (e.g., an operational objective) until it is of no possible use to enemy forces. The moral issues here are often seen as somewhat different, as release of tactical information usually presents a greater risk of casualties among one's own forces and could possibly lead to loss of the overall conflict. During World War I letters written by British soldiers would have to go through censorship. This consisted of officers going through letters with a black marker and crossing out anything which might compromise operational secrecy before the letter was sent. The World War II catchphrase "Loose lips sink ships" was used as a common justification to exercise official wartime censorship and encourage individual restraint when sharing potentially sensitive information.

An example of sanitization policies comes from the USSR under Joseph Stalin, where publicly used photographs were often altered to remove people whom Stalin had condemned to execution. Though past photographs may have been remembered or kept, this deliberate and systematic alteration to all of history in the public mind is seen as one of the central themes of Stalinism and totalitarianism.

The content of school textbooks is often the issue of debate, since their target audience is young people, and the term "whitewashing" is the one commonly used to refer to selective removal of critical or damaging evidence or comment. The reporting of military atrocities in history is extremely controversial, as in the case of the Nanking Massacre, the Holocaust (or Holocaust denial), and the Winter Soldier Investigation of the Vietnam War. The representation of every society's flaws or misconduct is typically downplayed in favor of a more nationalist, favorable or patriotic view.

Religious groups have at times attempted to block the teaching of evolution in publicly-funded schools as it contradicts their religious beliefs or have argued that they are being censored if not allowed to teach creationism. The teaching of sexual education in school and the inclusion of information about sexual health and contraceptive practices in school textbooks is another area where suppression of information occurs.

In the context of secondary-school education, the way facts and history are presented greatly influences the interpretation of contemporary thought, opinion and socialization. One argument for censoring the type of information disseminated is based on the inappropriate quality of such material for the young. The use of the "inappropriate" distinction is in itself controversial, as it can lead to a slippery slope enforcing wider and more politically-motivated censorship. Some artists such as Frank Zappa helped in the protest against censorship. Although they usually failed, they did put up an argument against the censorship of other material.

An example of such censorship is, ironically, Fahrenheit 451. The book was themed against censorship, but changed heavily. A Ballantine Books version which is the version used by most school classes[2] contained approximately 75 separate edits, omissions, and changes from the original Bradbury manuscript.[clarify]

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Scientific studies may be suppressed or falsified because they undermine sponsors' commercial, political or other interests or because they fail to support researchers' ideological goals. Examples include, failing to publish a study which shows that a new drug is harmful, or truthfully publishing the benefits of a treatment while failing to describe harmful side-effects. Scientific research may also be suppressed or altered to support a political agenda. In the United States some government scientists, including NASA climatologist Drew Shindell, have reported governmental pressure to alter their statements regarding climate change.[3]

In Victorian England, portrayal of public officials, among other things, was forbidden. The Lord Chamberlain, an official responsible for censoring plays, created a scandal in 1873 by banning The Happy Land for its portrayal of Prime Minister William Gladstone and two other ministers in his cabinet. In response, Marie Litton, the manager of the theatre where it was performed, agreed to amend it to a censored version - and printed a script with the censored lines in all capital letters to make the censorship easier to spot.[4]

American musicians such as Frank Zappa have repeatedly protested against censorship in music and pushed for more freedom of expression. In 1986, Zappa appeared on CNN's Crossfire to protest censorship of lyrics in rock music, saying that harm will be done or unrest caused if controversial information, lyrics, or other messages are promulgated.

In countries like Sudan, Afghanistan and China, violations of musicians rights to freedom of expression are commonplace. In the USA and Algeria, lobbying groups have succeeded in keeping popular music off the concert stage, and out of the media and retail. In ex-Yugoslavia musicians are often pawns in political dramas, and the possibility of free expression has been adversely affected.

Music censorship has been implemented by states, religions, educational systems, families, retailers and lobbying groups and in most cases they violate international conventions of human rights.[5]

Copy approval is the right to read and amend an article, usually an interview, before publication. Many publications refuse to give copy approval but it is increasingly becoming common practice when dealing with publicity anxious celebrities.[6] Picture approval is the right given to an individual to choose which photos will be published and which will not. Robert Redford is well known for insisting upon picture approval.[7] Writer approval is when writers are chosen based on whether they will write flattering articles or not. Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley is known for banning certain writers who wrote undesirably about one of her clients from interviewing any of her other clients.[7]

Censorship is regarded among a majority of academics in the Western world as a typical feature of dictatorships and other authoritarian political systems. Democratic nations are represented, especially among Western government, academic and media commentators, as having somewhat less institutionalized censorship, and as instead promoting the importance of freedom of speech. The former Soviet Union maintained a particularly extensive program of state-imposed censorship. The main organ for official censorship in the Soviet Union was the Chief Agency for Protection of Military and State Secrets generally known as the Glavlit, its Russian acronym. The Glavlit handled censorship matters arising from domestic writings of just about any kind even beer and vodka labels. Glavlit censorship personnel were present in every large Soviet publishing house or newspaper; the agency employed some 70,000 censors to review information before it was disseminated by publishing houses, editorial offices, and broadcasting studios. No mass medium escaped Glavlit's control. All press agencies and radio and television stations had Glavlit representatives on their editorial staffs.

Censored pre-press proof of two articles from "Noticias da Amadora", a Portuguese newspaper, 1970.

Some thinkers understand censorship to include other attempts to suppress points of view or the exploitation of negative propaganda, media manipulation, spin, disinformation or "free speech zones." These methods tend to work by disseminating preferred information, by relegating open discourse to marginal forums, and by preventing other ideas from obtaining a receptive audience.

Sometimes, a specific and unique information whose very existence is barely known to the public, is kept in a subtle, near-censorship situation, being regarded as subversive or inconvenient. Michel Foucaults 1978 text Sexual Morality and the Law (later republished as "The Danger of Child Sexuality"), for instance - originally published as La loi de la pudeur [literally, the law of decency], defends the decriminalization of statutory rape and the abolition of age of consent laws,[8] and as of July 2006, is almost totally invisible throughout the internet, both in English and French, and does not appear even on Foucault-specialized websites.

Suppression of access to the means of dissemination of ideas can function as a form of censorship. Such suppression has been alleged to arise from the policies of governmental bodies, such as the FDA and FCC in the United States of America, the CRTC in Canada, newspapers that refuse to run commentary the publisher disagrees with, lecture halls that refuse to rent themselves out to a particular speaker, and individuals who refuse to finance such a lecture. The omission of selected voices in the content of stories also serves to limit the spread of ideas, and is often called censorship. Such omission can result, for example, from persistent failure or refusal by media organizations to contact criminal defendants (relying solely on official sources for explanations of crime). Censorship has been alleged to occur in such media policies as blurring the boundaries between hard news and news commentary, and in the appointment of allegedly biased commentators, such as a former government attorney, to serve as anchors of programs labeled as hard news but comprising primarily commentary.

The focusing of news stories to exclude questions that might be of interest to some audience segments, such as the avoidance of reporting cumulative casualty rates among citizens of a nation that is the target or site of a foreign war, or the values of natural methods in the prevention, treatment, and curing of disease, is often described as a form of censorship. Favorable representation in news or information services of preferred products or services, such as reporting on leisure travel and comparative values of various machines instead of on leisure activities such as arts, crafts or gardening has been described by some as a means of censoring ideas about the latter in favor of the former.

Self-censorship: Imposed on the media in a free market by market/cultural forces rather than a censoring authority. This occurs when it is more profitable for the media to give a biased view.

In this form of censorship, any information about existence of censorship and the legal basis of the censorship is censored. Rules of censoring were classified. Removed texts or phrases were not marked.[clarify]

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In this form of censorship, censors rewrite texts, giving these texts secret co-authors.[clarify]

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Under US law, the First Amendment protects free speech and freedom of the press to some degree. Radio broadcasts are under constant scrutiny. This amendment does not mention many things, one being obscenity (a term usually applied to sexual material), but the common interpretation ignores this aspect using the argument that there is no social value deemed applicable to it. This applies only to the government and government entities; private corporations are under no such restriction.

Main article: Censorship of maps

Google Earth censors places which may be of special security concern. The following is a selection of such concerns:

Censorship in the Internet - In January 2007, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge issued an order to Brasil Telecom and Telefonica preventing public access to an intimate video of model Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend Renato Malzonithe on the YouTube site. Cicarelli and Malzoni had sued YouTube the previous year and got an injunction for the removal of the video, but it was still appearing. YouTube staff were eventually able to prevent the video from appearing on their site.[9]

Wikipedia itself is unavailable to Internet servers in certain countries, such as Iran, China, and North Korea, due to Internet censorship. [10]

Censorship of nudity

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Censorship | Psychology Wiki | Fandom

The Ethereum community has been divided over how to best respond to the threat of protocol-level transaction censorship in the wake of the United States government sanctions on Tornado Cash-linked addresses.

Over the last week, Ethereum community members have proposed social slashing or even a user-activated soft fork (UASF) as possible responses to transaction-level censorship on Ethereum, with some calling it a trap that will do more harm than good and others stating its necessary to provide credible neutrality and censorship resistance properties on Ethereum.

The heated debate comes after Ethereum miner Ethermine elected not to process transactions from the now U.S. sanctioned Ethereum-based privacy tool Tornado Cash, which has prompted members of the Ethereum community to worry about what would happen if other centralized validators did the same.

The Ethereum community is also debating the effectiveness of social slashing to combat censorship on the Ethereum network, as the strategy could lead to a chain split with some validators processing transactions on the censorship-less chain and the others validating only the OFAC-compliant chain.

Social slashing is the process whereby validators have a percentage of their stake slashed if they dont correctly validate the incoming transactions or otherwise act dishonestly.

This may become a significant issue if regulators require major centralized staking services like Coinbase and other major centralized pools, which together stake more than 50% of Ether (ETH) in the Ethereum Beacon 2.0 chain to only validate OFAC-compliant chains.

Founder of Cyber Capital Justin Bons argues thatslashing is a trap that represents a greater risk than the OFAC regulation and will not be a viable solution to tackle censorship at the protocol level.

In a 21-part Twitter thread on Monday, Bons said that social slashing exchanges may deprive innocent users of their deposits, which would violate their property rights.

Bons also said that too many validators complying with law enforcement on Ethereum would lead to a chain split, at the point at which censors start ignoring or do not attest blocks that contain OFAC violating TXs.

Founder of Ethereum podcast The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano wrote on Twitter on Saturday that collateral damage is inevitable in social slashing [...] its worth it to protect Ethereums credible neutrality and censorship resistance properties.

Meanwhile, Geth developer Marius Van Der Wijgen shared a similar sentiment stating that preserving censorship on the Ethereum network should be the Ethereum communitys highest priority:

If we start allowing users to be censored on Ethereum then this whole thing doesnt make sense and I will be leaving the ecosystem. [...] I think censorship resistance is the highest goal of Ethereum and of the blockchain space in general, so if we compromise on that, theres not much else to do, in my opinion, he added.

Related: Tornado Cash ban could spell disaster for other privacy protocols Manta co-founder

Crypto researcher Eric Wall added that to date, censorship resistance has served as a core property on the Ethereum network and that while were seeing some censorship on the front end, itll only get bad if censorship starts happening side Ethereum itself.

The Tornado Cash sparked censorship debacle has plagued the Ethereum community for over a week now.

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Ethereum community splits over solutions for transaction censorship - Cointelegraph

In response to the sanctions, advocacy groups such as Coin Center have come to the mixers defense arguing that the smart contract code is not a sanctionable entity.

With this new precedent, it is unclear if privacy coins such as Monero will face similar censorship. A hard fork update on Aug. 13 reportedly made Monero transactions harder to trace potentially closing any back doors law agencies used to track transactions.

The view that any cryptocurrency transaction is private by default is a common misconception. In fact, the opposite is true. Blockchain data is public and transactions are traceable. Crypto mixers and privacy coins were created to provide privacy for this open financial system. But both face different uphill battles. Before analyzing the likelihood of eithers success, we need to explain how they work, where they differ and the regulatory strategy game of financial censorship.

A crypto mixer, also known as a tumbler or blender, is a transaction mixing tool or service that anyone can use to obscure a crypto wallets source of funds. These tools were first created for bitcoin in 2013 but became a popular alternative to privacy coins once solutions like Tornado Cash made it available for a variety of cryptoassets.

There are two types of crypto mixers: custodial and non-custodial. Custodial blenders such as blender.io are central entities that take full custody of funds to mix transactions. Users pay a fee for the service and trust the entity to return their funds once the transactions are blended.

Blender.io was the first mixer to be sanctioned by US Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). It did not receive the same attention as Tornado Cash because it fell under the pattern of previous sanctions made against persons and entities. A North Korean state-sponsored hacker collective known as the Lazarus Group reportedly used the service after a hack against Axie Infinity that resulted in a $620 million loss.

Tornado Cash is an Ethereum based crypto blender that uses non-custodial smart contracts to mix ETH and ERC-20 tokens. Users send funds to smart contract addresses that organize them by amount and effectively mix the deposits through a zero-knowledge proof contract.

For example, say you want to mix 11 ETH. Since deposits are organized by amount, you could deposit 10 ETH to the 10 ETH mixer and 1 ETH to the 1 ETH mixer. Once funds are sent to each blender, the zero-knowledge proof would verify you sent a deposit to each one without revealing which one was originally yours. This essentially gives you the equivalent of a withdrawal permission slip for each mixer.

So if you were to use the permission slips to withdraw both deposits, it would be close to impossible for any outside observer to identify the correct source of funds. They would see a myriad of potential options.

The tool provides pretty good financial privacy by breaking the link between the sender and receiver. But its not perfect; theoretically, third party blockchain intelligence could use outside data and behavior models in an attempt to deduce which transaction history belongs to the tokens on your new wallet address.

On Aug. 8, 2022, OFAC added a list of addresses associated with Tornado Cash to the same list of sanctioned addresses where Blender.io ended up. This was in response to news that the Lazarus Group used the tool to launder $455 million in stolen funds.

OFAC used the same messaging and reasoning as it did Blender.io, but it did not acknowledge the key custodial difference between the two. In Coin Centers full analysis, they argue that Tornado Cash has two separate elements: The decentralized group of governing members they call Tornado Cash Entity and the immutable smart contract coin mixers they call Tornado Cash Application.

The Tornado Cash Entity cannot update or change the Tornado Cash Application because the original creators destroyed their admin keys. The smart contracts will exist as long as the Ethereum blockchain continues to operate. So even though the Tornado Cash website is down, anyone can spin up a new front end or interface with the smart contracts directly that lets users access the same mixers.

The problem is that OFAC included these immutable smart contract addresses in the list of sanctions. So there are now innocent Americans with funds still in these mixers. If they attempt to move the funds, they will be breaking the law and subject to penalty. And because the application is not an entity, it has no means to petition OFAC for sanction removal.

Coin Center further argues that because the Tornado Cash Application is not an entity, OFAC did not cite the proper authority to add the smart contract addresses to the sanctions list. This marks an unprecedented move with potential constitutional issues.

In response to OFACs announcement, companies agreed to censor anyone connected to these addresses. The decentralized finance app Aave blocked any users that had Tornado Cash funds sent to them in a dust attack. The team behind Uniswap later followed suite by banning 253 wallet addresses connected to the mixer. Circle also censored users by freezing 75,000 usd coin stablecoins in the smart contracts. The Blockworks Empire podcast explains how that is possible in a Twitter thread.

Privacy coins are cryptocurrencies that use a variety of approaches to obscure IP addresses, wallet balances and the flow of funds from public view. They differ from crypto mixers in that they make financial privacy less of a feature and more of a product. As a result, they only provide privacy to transactions made in a specific currency.

The two most popular privacy coins are Z-cash and Monero. Z-cash is a cryptocurrency that relies primarily on zero-knowledge proofs to shield transaction info. In October 2018, Z-cash announced that they fixed an 8-month-old bug in proofs that could have permitted an infinite inflation of supply. Due to transaction privacy, it was unclear how much was actually inflated.

Since this early stumble, z-cash has never returned to the highs of the 2017 bull cycle and currently ranks second to Monero in total privacy coin market cap. While monero was able to once again reach similar prices of the 2017 market, it failed to break its all-time high in 2021.

Monero is a privacy coin that offers financial anonymity through layers of privacy-enhanced blockchain encryption. Every transaction utilizes single-use stealth addresses to prevent the visibility of public address balances. So only users with a wallets private key can map its balance back to a public address. It also uses ring signatures to obscure the source of funds in a transaction by including random addresses in the verification signature.

The Monero protocol was upgraded on Aug. 13. While the previous version of Monero offered a layer of privacy, its complete untraceability was debatable. In 2018, critics claimed that inputs in a signature ring could be deduced through a process of elimination. And in 2021, CipherTracer reportedly patented a method that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses to trace transactions.

Even if CipherTracer discovered real vulnerabilities, the extent of their impact is unclear. They didnt disclose their methods or success rate. This previous version still provided a degree of financial privacy in the sense that it blocked anyone not willing to pay CipherTracer.

But this disincentive is less resistant to state sanctions and censorship. Theoretically, the state is more willing to spend resources in an attempt to trace addresses especially if they suspect a connection to crime, or in some countries, political opposition.

In Canada, an effort was made to trace financial contributions to the trucker freedom convoy. The government ended up sanctioning 34 crypto wallets in connection to the movement, and Monero addresses were included in that list.

The Monero developers hope this update will close any potential vulnerability by increasing the number of transactions in a ring signature. But in response to the update, CipherTracer stated, While Moneros upcoming chain improvements are significant, the fundamentals of our approach to tracing probable source of funds will still apply after the fork.

If the upgrade does succeed in closing these back doors, there is concern that OFAC may take similar actions against Monero. In an interview with CoinDesk, a Monero contributor said that, at the moment, Im not concerned about immediate legal action.

There is no direct financial incentivefor developers, unlike [the situation with] the Tornado Cash developer, he said.

These comments seem to infer that the potential ability for the developer to profit from the use of these smart contracts makes him liable. Dutch financial crimes agency FIOD arrested a Tornado Cash developer on suspicion of laundering money through the tool. But it is unclear if that arrest was for his specific attempts to launder money or for his connection to others using it for that purpose.

Even though top privacy coins such as monero and z-cash are actively working to increase the privacy of transactions, they have not seen the same degree of adoption as leading layer-1 blockchains such as Ethereum. Many competitors, including Secret Network and Oasis Network, argue that the reason for this lag is that privacy coins do not offer a base layer of privacy that can be used to build Web3.

In 2020 Secret Network was the first privacy based blockchain to enable smart contract programmability. It lives in the Cosmos ecosystem and is working toward a vision of Web3 privacy. It has launched multiple apps such as the decentralized messaging service Altermail, and decentralized exchange SiennaSwap.

But Secret Network and its competitors face the classic challenge of an overcrowded sector. They still have a long way in overcoming the market dominance of Monero and Z-Cash. The threat of sanctions have motivated many in the Z-Cash community to explore creating their own smart contract programmability.

The battle against financial privacy feels like a game of whack-a-mole. So far, the state has tried two different tools. With crypto mixers, they used the regulatory sanctions hammer. And for privacy coins, they tried blockchain intelligence sleuths.

Their approach may be, if one financial privacy method is too popular with criminals or too hard to trace, they will just shut it down with the hammer.

Advocacy groups such as Coin Center may respond by challenging such actions in court, but that process will take years. The sanctions are very likely hurting innocent Americans in the meantime.

For other privacy solutions, they may use investigations to continue in their cat and mouse chase with developer upgrades.

User adoption, though, is a key element to this game. As more people are drawn to either mixers or privacy coins, the chance of tracing transactions becomes exponentially difficult. Switching analogies, its like the classic police chase down a narrow alley. If the suspect reaches a bustling parade, they can dust off and subtly slip away into the crowd.

If a privacy coin, mixer or base-layer privacy solution gains mainstream adoption, it could have greater resistance to censorship. State officials would struggle to find the political backing for sweeping sanctions or technology needed to crack privacy measures. And the potential Tornado Cash sanctions fallout for Ethereum validators may pull millions more into this conversation.

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Blockworks

Editor, Evergreen Content

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. He manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained.

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Crypto Mixers and Privacy Coins: Can They Resist Censorship? - Blockworks