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23 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 114 (2020)
Transparency Is the New Privacy: Blockchain's Challenge for the Fourth Amendment

handle is hein.journals/stantlr23 and id is 114 raw text is: Transparency is the New Privacy: Blockchain's Challenge for the Fourth Amendment Paul Belonick' 23 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 114 (2020) ABSTRACT Blockchain technology is now hitting the mainstream, and countless human interactions, legitimate and illegitimate, are being recorded permanently-and visibly- into distributed digital ledgers. Police surveillance of day-to-day transactions will never have been easier. Blockchain's open, shared digital architecture thus challenges us to reassess two core premises of modern Fourth Amendment doctrine: that a reasonable expectation of privacy upholds the Amendment's promise of a right to be secure against unreasonable searches, and that a reasonable expectation of privacy is tantamount to total secrecy. This article argues that these current doctrines rest on physical-world analogies that do not hold in blockchain's unique digital space. Instead, blockchain can create security against unreasonable searches, even for data that are shared or public, because blockchain's open distributed architecture does the work in digital space that privacy does in physical space to advance Fourth Amendment values such as security, control of information, free expression, and personal autonomy. The article also evaluates ' Assistant Prof. of Practice and Director, Startup Legal Garage, Center for Innovation, UC Hastings Law School. University of Virginia, J.D. 2010, PhD. 2016. I would like to thank Robin Feldman, Darryl Brown, Ric Simmons, Jonathan Widmer-Rich, Andrew Crespo, David Roberts, and the participants of the CrimFest! 2019 conference for their advice and comments. Maximilien Pallu, Cyril Kottuppallil, and Katie Lindsay provided excellent research assistance. My wife provided much needed support. 114

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