Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor turned whistleblower, has publicly endorsed a legal defense fund for Roman Storm, co-founder of the embattled cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash. 

What Happened: In an X post on Tuesday, Snowden encouraged his followers to contribute to Storm’s cause.

Snowden, who has been residing in Russia since his espionage charges in the U.S. in 2013, shared Storm’s call for support and tweeted, “Privacy is not a crime.”

Storm announced his intention to set up a fundraising campaign via a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in a bid to secure legal representation. Last year, Storm faced legal troubles when the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with money laundering related to his involvement in Tornado Cash.

The service, which gained popularity for allowing users to anonymously move Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), faced severe backlash when the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) prohibited Americans from utilizing it, citing its exploitation by criminals for money laundering activities. Both Storm and his colleague Roman Semenov were accused of laundering over $1 billion in illicit funds, leading to the arrest of another developer, Alex Pertsev.

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Why It Matters: Advocates for Storm and Pertsev have expressed concerns that their arrests represent a broader threat to open-source software creation. The fundraising website for their defense claims these arrests could have dire implications for developers across the industry.

Snowden’s stance on privacy was further underscored during an event last year where he criticized the U.S. government’s actions against Tornado Cash as “deeply illiberal and profoundly authoritarian.”

Last week, Snowden, took a dig at JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon following the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval of a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) ETF.

Snowden in a tweet on X said, “Wild how the SEC approving a Bitcoin ETF was all it took to transform the CEO of JPMorgan from the King of Money into that guy who spends one half of every interview insisting “I don’t care about Bitcoin,” and the other half sobbing that it stole his wife and shot his dog.”

Photo via Wikimedia

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