When Mining Meets Mind-Reading: Laws That Would Obliterate a Rogue “Body-Crypto” Scheme

🧠 The Patent That Made Everyone Blink

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020060606A1/en

Microsoft’s WO2020060606A1 describes using your body activity—heart rate, brainwaves, even body heat—as proof-of-work in a cryptocurrency network. On paper? Innovative. In the wrong hands? A privacy apocalypse wearing a shiny blockchain badge.

🕵️ The Legal Tripwires

1. Privacy & Data Protection

GDPR (EU) – Collecting biometric data without explicit, informed consent? That’s a fast track to fines the size of small nations.

CCPA/CPRA (California) – Failure to disclose or protect biometric data = statutory damages.

HIPAA (U.S.) & PIPEDA (Canada) – Mishandling health-related signals? Double whammy: health privacy regulators + civil lawsuits.

2. Consumer Protection

FTC Act (Section 5) – Lying about what you’re doing with people’s brainwaves is “unfair or deceptive.”

State UDAP Laws – Every U.S. state’s attorney general would be sharpening their pens.

3. Cybercrime & RICO

CFAA & Wiretap Act – Intercepting or manipulating body-signal transmissions without consent = cybercrime.

RICO – If done as part of a fraud or extortion network, it’s racketeering territory.

4. Financial Regulation

SEC & CFTC – Market those tokens like investments? Securities or commodities fraud knocks on your door.

AML/KYC – Skip anti-money laundering checks? Bank Secrecy Act violations.

🔮 Global Fallout

From Europe’s ECHR Article 8 to Illinois’ BIPA biometric law, every major jurisdiction has a hammer waiting. Even authoritarian regimes don’t love rogue data thieves—they just want to be the ones doing the stealing.

💥 The Takeaway

Innovation isn’t a free pass to hijack humanity’s vital signs. A body-crypto system deployed nefariously wouldn’t just be shady—it would trip nearly every privacy, consumer, and financial law on the books. Regulators would have a feeding frenzy, and civil lawsuits would stack higher than your Fitbit step count.

So if anyone’s thinking of going full dystopia with “mind-mining tokens,” here’s your legal horoscope: bad moons rising, subpoenas falling like rain.