U. S. Department U.S. Department of Justice
Published: 2021-01-21
Total Pages: 82
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Innovation can drive a society forward. But innovation does not occur in a vacuum. Public policy can establish background conditions that help the innovative spirit thrive--or create an environment in which that spirit is inhibited, or suppressed.Even in societies where transformative scientific and technological advancements are achievable, public policy again plays a critical mediating role. In the wrong hands, or without appropriate safeguards and oversight, these advancements can facilitate great human suffering. Just ask the political enemies of authoritarian regimes that deploy surveillance tools Orwell never could have imagined. Or, closer to home, listen to the child victims of unspeakable sexual exploitation whose images and livestreamed abuse are so easily transmitted across the internet.Technological innovation and human flourishing are complementary concepts, but the former does not guarantee the latter. Good public policy--and the fair and equitable enforcement of such policy--can help bring the two into alignment. And even as too much regulation undoubtedly stifles innovation (and human flourishing, too), the absence of law's protections can endanger progress across both dimensions. It takes careful consideration, and a deep and ongoing immersion in the facts, to understand when, and how, law should intervene. Once law's empire has established its root in a particular domain, it requires equally careful consideration (and humility on the part of government officials) to ensure that regulation goes no further than is required--that government action, in other words, reflects enforcement only of "those wise restraints that make us free."It should be no surprise, for example, that researchers within the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology "have been investigating blockchain technologies at multiple levels: from use cases, applications and existing services, to protocols, security guarantees, and cryptographic mechanisms." Or that the U.S. Department of Defense's recently-issued Digital Modernization Strategy specifically identifies blockchain technology as having "promise to provide increased effectiveness, efficiency, and security." Or that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently released a detailed vision for how it plans to deploy blockchain for food safety-related purposes.vi Or that--in the cryptocurrency space specifically--"the Federal Reserve is active in conducting research and experimentation related to distributed ledger technologies and the potential use cases for digital currencies," including by partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to "build and test a hypothetical digital currency oriented to central bank uses." Without doubt, cryptocurrency represents a transformative way to store and exchange value.But as the following pages make clear, despite its relatively brief existence, this technology already plays a role in many of the most significant criminal and national security threats our nation faces. As the Task Force has found, illicit uses of cryptocurrency typically fall into three categories: (1) financial transactions associated with the commission of crimes; (2) money laundering and the shielding of legitimate activity from tax, reporting, or other legal requirements; or (3) crimes, such as theft, directly implicating the cryptocurrency marketplace itself. Part I of this Enforcement Framework examines in detail each of those categories.
