If I create a new type of leather wallet and then North Korea uses it for money laundering, can I be charged for "facilitation"? What about if I discovered electricity, which lead to money laundering?
- How core to the illegal money laundering is the use of your product? (For a leather wallet, probably not very).
- did you target illegal money laundering in the design of your product, or market your product so as to specifically attract illegal money launderers? (Almost certain not for your leather wallet).
- is the use by criminals to launder money a significant portion of your sales (or use of your services) (probably not).
- are you actually aware of your product/service being used for money laundering? (Maybe?)
- if you are aware and there is significant use of your product/service for illegal money laundering, have you taken reasonable steps to prevent or discourage such use? (Given you flagged North Korean money laundering as your example, such steps could include: Blocking access to your site from North Korea, refusing to ship to countries that don’t enforce sanctions against North Korea, investigating if small tweaks to the design are possible that would make your product/service less useful to money launderers without significantly reducing its usability for other people).
If you create a new type of leather wallet that just happens to be used for money laundering, that is not a crime.
If you create a new type of leather wallet specifically designed with the goal so that it's easier to smuggle stuff, you can and should be charged for aiding and abetting if they can convince the jury that you did this knowingly with this intent.
If you do the latter and simply want to claim that it just so happened without your intent, well, the courts are there to resolve this dispute, but it can go both ways - especially as soon as there's teamwork and some record of communications, there's often evidence to support or contradict claims of intent.
Like, if you made tests where you run your new wallet through various popular models of airport scanning machines testing whether they succeed at detecting something hidden, and advertise the specific airports which do/don't detect it, that would be some evidence about your likely intent.
If you take part in production, delivery, sales, or distribution of said in North Korea: yes. If you provide North Korea with designs of technology restricted by sanctions: yes. If at least one seventh of all electricity you generate is used for criminals: yes.
The line is defined by governments, law enforcement, and the courts. The judge may dismiss all charges if they see fit, and the government can add or remove legislature to criminalize or decriminalize certain behaviour within the bounds of constitutions and international treaties.
I am not saying that governments automatically get the benefit of defining what "Good" is, but if you're going to make the claim they're wrong, you have a very hard, uphill battle ahead of you. If you believe in it, stick to it. Civil disobedience, comes bundled with accepting that the system will blow back against you.
I think that they are doing this purely to hurt crypto. They keep adding new laws when they see an opportunity where crypto could become more useful... it's like a frog in a warming pot.
Where is the line here, and who defines it?