GitHub—GitHub removed Tornado Cash open-source repositories and developer accounts under OFAC sanctions interpretation
On August 8, 2022 GitHub removed the Tornado Cash open-source repositories and suspended developer accounts including those of US person Roman Storm following the US Treasury OFAC's August 8, 2022 sanctioning of the protocol's smart contracts. EFF, Coin Center and free-speech advocates argued GitHub's takedown went beyond legal requirements - sanctions targeted the protocol addresses, not the code, and US precedent (Bernstein v. DOJ) treats source code as protected speech. GitHub reinstated some repositories in archive-only mode in September 2022 after sustained criticism.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Encryption & Privacy | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Knowledge Access & Information Freedom | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Open Source | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.715 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.57)
Evidence (1 signal)
EFF criticized GitHub's Tornado Cash repository removals as exceeding OFAC sanctions requirements
EFF's August 2022 analysis and follow-up Coin Center reporting documented GitHub's removal of Tornado Cash repositories and developer accounts following OFAC's protocol-addresses sanctioning, and argued the removal exceeded what sanctions law required - source code is protected speech under Bernstein v. DOJ precedent.