Click on each Section to expand an explanation.
Section 1: Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution of the United States is hereby amended to remove from the Clause the words “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin.”
Explanation: This is the clause which grants Congress the power to “coin money and regulate the value thereof.” The Tenth Amendment reserves to the States and the People all rights/authorities not enumerated to the federal government. Repealing this section returns monetary authorities to the people.
Section 2: Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States is hereby amended to remove from the Clause the words “make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
Article I, Section 10 says: “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title …”
The phrase of concern, “…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;…” prevents the people of the several states from entering into enforceable agreements where the exchange is measured in units other than the U.S. Dollar. An example of such an agreement might be wages paid in a crypto currency such as Bitcoin or Ether. Such an agreement is currently not enforceable in court because a debt can only be “extinguished” by “tendering” payment in “legal tender.”
Together with the Congress’ Article I, Section 8 authority to coin money and regulate its value, this is the foundation of the monopoly on legal tender – both public and private – currently enjoyed by the Dollar. While some states are beginning to allow local tax obligations to be extinguished by tendering payment in crypto, this is a form of public debt. Accepting crypto for tax obligations grants that crypto unit legal tender status for a public debt, not a private one.
This monopoly on private legal tender is the essential obstacle to the Blockchain and crypto-currencies fulfilling their promise.
Section 3: The Congress shall make no law, nor the Executive exercise any authority, respecting legal tender for payment of private debts. The monetary authority of the Congress shall be limited to the assessment and payment of taxes and the issuance and settlement of public debts.
Explanation: This section permits Congress to establish a monetary unit for the payment of taxes and the issuance/settlement of public debts. As the people coalesce around an alternative form of money (such as Ether or Bitcoin, as two possible examples), especially preferring employers who pay in crypto, the government will discover that it must defend the value of its monetary unit in order to obtain the crypto currency needed to obtain goods and services.
Since 1971 the United States Government has allowed the banking system, led by the Federal Reserve, to systematically devalue the U.S. Dollar. By accepting dollars for our labor, the devaluing of the dollar leads to the devaluing of our labor. We see this as our dollar buys less and less in terms of basics like food and shelter.
As long as the dollar enjoys the protection of legal tender laws there is nothing to force the government and the banking sector to protect the purchasing power of the dollar. By restricting the authority of legal tender laws to only taxes and public debts, the people’s choice of alternative forms of money will force the Congress to ensure its monetary unit remains competitive in terms of how much of our basic needs – food and shelter – it will buy compared with alternatives such as a crypto-currency.
Section 4: The right of the people, to conduct and account for commerce, by the monetary unit, and in the manner of their choice, is a right fundamental to ordered liberty.
Explanation: This section adds to other enumerated rights (e.g. speech, religion, etc.) the right to use modern technology (e.g. the Blockchain) to manage economic arrangements as people deem to be in their best interests. The Bill of Rights does not enumerate ALL rights enjoyed by the people, but does enumerate those rights the people consider fundamental to their freedom. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the government from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” This section speaks directly to the history of Supreme Court rulings on what rights are considered fundamental to the idea of liberty.
This section expressly establishes the development and use of Blockchain-based crypto monetary units and payment mechanisms as a protected liberty. This, then, triggers a process known as ‘strict scrutiny’ of laws which infringe the protected liberty. The government is permitted to enact constraints on the exercise of the protected liberty, but under challenge must show a compelling government interest, and that the restrictions are the least restrictive means to promote that interest.
Section 5: The holdings of gold or silver of the United States Treasury shall be accounted for on a public ledger. Congress shall make no law, nor the Executive exercise any authority, respecting the availability of such public ledger to the people of the United States.
Explanation: Governments have traditionally treated information about gold and silver reserves as having to do with national security. As a result, this information is often treated as “classified” – preventing the true picture of the national treasury from informing economic decisions. This section requires that the United States’ gold and silver holdings be accounted for on a public ledger, and prevents the Congress from using law, and the Executive from using Executive Orders, to classify such information.
Section 6: No law in the United States, nor the authority of any Executive, shall prohibit private custody of any private crypto currency. All crypto currency held on public exchanges shall remain the sole property of the person attested on the public ledger. The Bankruptcy laws of the United States shall not be otherwise impaired by this Section.
Explanation: This Section prohibits the government from disallowing private custody of crypto currencies in “cold-wallet” storage. This is a device similar to a USB drive, but with security features built in to the device. It also places crypto currency balances held in public “Crypto Exchanges” out of the reach of bankruptcy court should the exchange enter bankruptcy.
In Spring of 2022 it was reported that Coinbase – a major online crypto exchange in which members can buy, sell, and maintain balances of both fiat dollars and crypto currencies – might confiscate from such balances in a bankruptcy proceeding.
This reporting was imprecise. If an exchange such as Coinbase were to enter bankruptcy it would not be the exchange, but rather the bankruptcy court, which would decide the nature of the exchange’s assets and how they would be discharged in order to pay the exchange’s creditors. In disclosures to its investors, Coinbase noted that the exchange’s members might be treated by a bankruptcy court as an ordinary “unsecured creditor.”
This would render the exchange no different than a legacy bank. When one deposits fiat dollars into a legacy bank, the money goes on the bank’s balance sheet as a cash asset – meaning the money is owned by the bank. The corresponding liability is to the depositor on demand – usually at the bank’s ATM machines. The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 provides a means by which these monies can be confiscated should the bank need to be reorganized. This is often called a “bail-in” where the troubled bank’s “secured” creditors are paid (at least in part) by confiscating from depositors.
By stating that bankruptcy laws shall not be otherwise impaired, this section prevents the use of crypto currencies to otherwise “hide” assets from their proper disposition in bankruptcy proceedings.
The central case for crypto currencies is the immutable nature of the Blockchain’s record of ownership. But this advantage is lost if a bankruptcy court can treat exchange members as “unsecured creditors.” Owners of crypto currencies sometime resort to “cold-wallet” storage to secure against this risk of confiscation, moving small balances from “cold-wallet” to their exchange account. This Section secures against the risk the government will act to disallow cold-storage and otherwise be able to confiscate from public exchange balances in bankruptcy.
Section 7: No law in the United States, nor the authority of any Executive, shall prohibit private ownership of gold or silver. The authority to take private property for public use shall not reach private ownership of gold or silver.
Explanation: This section prevents confiscation of privately held gold or silver and any law or Executive Order from constraining private ownership of gold or silver. It forecloses the possibility of using eminent domain to seize privately owned gold or silver for public use.
Section 8: All data pertaining to the identity, and originating from the activities, of a person, shall remain the inalienable intellectual property of the person.
Explanation: The word “data” is used here in the technical sense known to Knowledge Management professionals. “Data” are discrete symbols (e.g. letters forming words or numbers representing measurements). When diverse data are brought into context with each other, “information” is created.
Currently, the “bits and bytes” which comprise data are “owned” by the owner of the computer system on which the data is originated. Practically speaking, this means a person’s social media posts, reactions, web searches, emails, etc. are technically “owned” by the technology provider, not by the individual.
These providers – Big Tech – then license access to this data. “Aggregators” who pay for access to the data combine it with other data sources to create “information rich” contexts which are then statistically analyzed to create knowledge about the tech platform users.
This section settles the question of data ownership once and for all. The essence of data ownership is the ability to sell or license the data – which is, again, the bits and bytes representation of discrete symbols (names, dates, amounts, etc.). By establishing individual data ownership as a principle of constitutional law, Big Tech will be forced to educate its users about how “their data” is aggregated into “information” such that “knowledge” can be discovered. U.S. Persons will then be “opted out” by default from all knowledge discovery objectives, and be able to negotiate appropriate remuneration for use of their data for other knowledge discovery objectives.
Section 9: No law in the United States, nor the authority of any Executive, shall prevent a person from discovering the possession of information attributable to the person by any agency of government in the United States.
Explanation: Various laws at the state (e.g. Public Records Acts) and the federal (Freedom of Information Acts or FOIA) levels provide means by which the People can discover information maintained by these State or Federal agencies. Documents disclosed by the government in compliance with these laws often redact certain information based on provisions in these laws allowing certain kinds of data to remain hidden.
This Section prevents governments from using these provisions to shield disclosure as to their possession of information that attributes to the identity of United States Persons. In practice this will force governments to at least respond with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ as to whether they possess information in which a Person has an intellectual property right interest.
While there may be compelling governmental interests in maintaining this information, and in not disclosing the nature of the information to the Person, the intended result is to guarantee the Person’s ability to seek judicial review as to whether the government’s interests are compelling enough to overcome rights otherwise protected by laws such as FOIA.
Section 10: The execution of the laws of the United States shall not be predicated solely on statistical inference.
Explanation: This section prevents law enforcement from relying solely on Artificial Intelligence when executing the laws of the United States.
The danger posed by AI to civil liberties is found in law enforcement using AI as the sole basis for a search or arrest warrant. AI is an execution of basic principles of Knowledge Management. Data is collected from various sources and brought into context with other data to create information. What AI claims to “know” is always the result of sophisticated statistics done on this information.
The problem lies in the essential limitations of AI. Unsupervised learning can only discover apparent correlations – it cannot judge as to the significance of the apparent correlations. Supervised learning requires human intervention to interpret the data. As such, its correlations arise from the biases of the interpreters.
While no one appears to be advocating for a replacement of judges when approving warrants, if judges are allowed to accept only the statistical inferences of AI when evaluating an application for a search or arrest warrant, we have effectively replaced them even if their formal role remains. Judge Learned Hand warned us in 1944 that liberty must first remain the priority of each individual.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.