Edward Snowden Supports Legal Defense Fund for Tornado Cash Founder

According to Decrypt, whistleblower Edward Snowden has endorsed the legal defense fund for Roman Storm, the co-founder of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixing service. Storm announced on Twitter that he would launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) campaign to raise money for a lawyer. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice arrested Storm and charged him with money laundering for his role in creating Tornado Cash. The service allowed users to anonymously send and receive Ethereum but was banned by the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022, claiming criminals used it to launder money. Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since being charged by the U.S. government with espionage in 2013, is a privacy and cryptocurrency advocate. He retweeted Storm's plea, stating, 'If you can help, please help. Privacy is not a crime.' Snowden has previously criticized the sanctioning of Tornado Cash as 'deeply illiberal and profoundly authoritarian.' He also helped create the privacy coin Zcash and has spoken about the importance of using cryptocurrencies for privacy rather than as an investment.