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Abstract

Can the law tackle the legal challenges posed by disruptive technologies, or is the law constantly struggling to keep up with rapid innovation, forcing it into a reactive position? This question lies at the heart of the complex relationship between law and technology. As emerging technologies advance at an unprecedented rate, legal systems often struggle to address the challenges they pose. There is no better example of this in practice than the emergence of blockchain technology, one of the most disruptive innovations of the 21st Century. Blockchain technology refers to a decentralized and encrypted digital ledger enabling secure real-time transactions without a central authority. The applications of blockchain, though predominantly recognized in the financial sector for cryptocurrency, extend to various non-financial domains, including healthcare. Blockchain technology offers transformative opportunities, but also raises legal complexities, particularly regarding individual privacy rights and data protection. While current blockchain scholarship focuses on its criminal use and broad applications in cryptocurrency, this article contributes to the gap by investigating how courts and legislatures at a federal and state level in the United States have responded to the privacy concerns posed by blockchain technology. First, this article will apply the mosaic theory of privacy as a lens to determine if its application is a) possible, b) likely to be a sensible response to privacy concerns and c) whether case law indicates that arguments based on mosaic theory are likely to find favour with the courts. The mosaic theory, a principle of Fourth Amendment privacy, suggests that even non-intrusive individual data points may, when aggregated, form a detailed mosaic of personal information. Second, this article will address how federal and state legislation in the United States operate to protect individual privacy rights and how adequate these may be. This article focuses on the federal healthcare sector, highlighting blockchain's privacy challenges beyond finance, and the state of California, chosen for its large population and pioneering privacy laws, the California Consumer Privacy Act and the California Privacy Rights Act. This article concludes that while U.S. courts and legislatures have largely failed to address blockchain's privacy concerns, technology will likely continue to outpace the law, though federal legislation, when eventually enacted, may still offer meaningful solutions to these challenges.

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