Is Tornado Cash illegal?

I'm staring at my MetaMask right now, holding about 1.5 ETH that I desperately want to anonymize before sending it to a fresh cold storage address.

Last year—around late 2023—my main public ENS address got completely doxed by a wildly overzealous server admin. Since then, every single small purchase or random token swap I make is basically public entertainment for strangers. I just want some basic financial privacy. Nothing shady. Naturally, my brain went straight to the most famous on-chain mixer out there.

But here is my actual, sweat-inducing roadblock: is Tornado Cash illegal?

I keep reading completely contradictory stuff online. Some people swear that merely interacting with the protocol instantly flags your wallet forever. Others confidently insist the open-source code itself is just neutral speech and completely safe to run. I almost sent a test batch of 0.1 ETH yesterday. My finger hovered over the confirm button for ten agonizing minutes. I froze. You don't want to accidentally get your assets frozen by centralized stablecoin issuers just for wanting a clean transaction history, right?

I tried mapping out the actual legal boundaries based on the major August 2022 OFAC sanctions, but I really feel out of my depth here.

My Current Understanding of the Risks

Before I make a horrific mistake that permanently bricks my main wallet, I need real guidance from those of you who actually understand on-chain compliance.

Where I need practical help:

• If I am a non-US citizen (living in the EU), do these specific OFAC lists actually criminalize my local on-chain activity?
• Are major tier-one exchanges currently freezing user accounts that show indirect, downstream exposure to those blacklisted router addresses?

I really don't want to ruin my setup over a simple privacy measure. What should I do here?