Entrenching Privacy Through Speech

TalkJesse Katz, Eric AlstonSeptember 24, 2026

Jesse Katz, co-founder of Speech Without Borders, presents work with Eric Alston arguing that privacy technology on Ethereum should be protected as First Amendment-adjacent speech infrastructure, since US law currently treats privacy only as a derivative prerequisite for expression and association rather than an independent right. They argue Ethereum's Turing-completeness and the 'entanglement' of transactions as payment, vote, and identity signal make it impossible to isolate expressive activity without conducting the very surveillance the Constitution prohibits, and extend this reasoning toward future concerns about privacy of thought under augmented intelligence. Eric Alston adds that US privacy jurisprudence is a fragmented patchwork eroded by the third-party doctrine, and that technological change (thermal imaging, brainwave recognition) is outpacing institutional protections for private autonomy.

Topics

entanglement-of-expressive-and-transactional-activity-on-ethereum governance institutional-privacy-dilemma privacy-as-prerequisite-for-speech-and-association privacy-of-thought-and-augmented-intelligence protocols symposium-2026 technology third-party-doctrine

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