Recommended Citation
Jim Harper,
A Law Enforcement Paradigm for the New Form of Money,
17 Case W. Res. J.L. Tech. & Internet
A2
(2026)
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jolti/vol17/iss1/2
Abstract
Over the last two centuries, transfers of money have evolved from movements of tangible things to digital communications events. Over the last half-century, financial surveillance law has taken root. The product of the two trends is a comprehensive, global financial surveillance regime that has substantial costs in both dollar terms and in values such as privacy, free speech, and autonomy. Those costs appear to vastly outstrip the benefits of such surveillance. Along with its infirmity as policy, general financial surveillance stands on shaky constitutional ground in the United States. It impedes the full development of digital forms of money and the benefits they offer. Privacy “tiering” in digital money and cryptocurrency cannot correct the imbalance.
To replace broad financial surveillance, this article proposes a new paradigm for the new form of money, a system through which law enforcement agencies could query digital transactors for investigative purposes. In a communications channel parallel to private transaction channels, law enforcement requests could be transmitted selectively from anywhere on the globe to transactors anywhere else, inviting them to help suppress and punish criminal activity. Such a system would maintain or strengthen law enforcement capabilities while obviating the existing, broad and costly financial surveillance regime.
Through a discussion of the system’s social and criminological dimensions, this article reveals and outlines its technical sides. Questions include the effect of such a system on secrecy in law enforcement investigations, and the prospect of legally mandating responses to law enforcement queries. Because a system for communicating law enforcement queries to global transactors would be “retail,” it would allow for political feedback loops that cause law enforcement practices and priorities to hew more closely to public values than the current, opaque, “wholesale” financial surveillance system. Digital money and cryptocurrency transaction models could be tuned to more acutely protect privacy while maintaining a channel for communication with law enforcement.