The US Constitution provides protection against ex post facto laws. A retroactive punishment is unconstitutional. It may be argued that these github accounts did not belong to us citizens and thus were not protected. Or it may be argued that Microsoft was doing this of their own freewill and therefore the constitutional prohibition does not apply. But there is generally within the American psych a distaste for retroactive punishments such as this.
This is not an act of ex-post facto lawmaking by a legislature. This is the executive doing what it has been tasked with doing under a mandate supplied by Congress in accordance with it's role as laid out by the Constitution. The Courts are not likely to be swayed by this argument. I doubt the legislature will touch anything that enables money laundering with a 12 foot pole.
The novelty here is that prople are being forced to realize how destructive getting sanctioned is due to bearing witness to the power of the network effects involved. This was inevitable, no matter which way you cut it.
The executive was mandated to produce a list of individuals that can be consumed in oan actionable way by industry, such that it can prevent access to the U.S. financial system.
It did exactly that.
These companies got that list, their legal, risk, and compliance departments got in a huddle, and they laid out an action plan to try to get ahead of the regulatory action, while minimizing any risk of contamination or liability.
The government did not tell them to do that. Note, this is by design. The government telling them to would be unconstitutional. Rather, they acted in their own way, which to them rang as reasonable.
That is how it rolls. Is it fair? No. Is it right? Arguably not. Is it concerning? Hell yes.
Lots of things that some find distasteful are accepted though. Recently, along a similar vein, the whole "they're private companies, they can censor who they like" crowd made that clear. Hopefully none of them will be surprised or upset by this action.
