The post Privacy on trial as Samourai Wallet cofounder lands in jail for writing code appeared com. Samourai Wallet cofounder Keonne Rodriguez received the maximum sentence this week of five years in prison for writing code. As a developer sits in a jail cell for building privacy tools, many in the Bitcoin community, including Max Keiser, are pushing for a full pardon. Crypto crackdown: Beyond campaign promises Donald Trump vowed during his campaign to put an end to the crackdown on crypto. To a certain extent, he’s been true to his word. Since he’s been in office, he’s pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Binance’s founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, and issued a flurry of executive orders, such as the debanking order to put an official end to Operation Choke Point 2. 0. But the arrest and conviction of Samourai Wallet developers shows the continued clash between privacy, code, and the law, even with the White House’s pro-crypto pivot. And the contrast is harsh, as one Bitcoiner pointed out. While banking giant JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle something as heinous as sex trafficking allegations in 2023, without a single top executive being jailed, the coder behind a Bitcoin privacy tool is convicted to serve five years’ hard time. As Bitcoin-centric tools developer Foundation, commented: “The current administration often speaks in support of Bitcoin, yet the Justice Department continues to pursue policies that may predate this administration targeting privacy technologies and open-source developers. Open-source developers deserve protection, not persecution.” What is Samourai Wallet? Samourai Wallet is a privacy-first Bitcoin wallet, co-founded by Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. It lets users mask their transaction histories and identities by using mixing features like Whirlpool and Ricochet. The Department of Justice alleged that Samourai processed more than $2 billion in transactions and laundered over $100 million in criminal proceeds, including funds linked to hacking, fraud, drug trafficking, and murder-for-hire. The.