In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously • Hacker News Board

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#311

Post by mrleinad » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #241

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, but the GP comment was specifically saying that they had "never heard of any bank" offering the service of taking cash and depositing it into a provided account, which is weird because that is very much a standard service that brick-and-mortar banks provide. Either the other user was uninformed or my sarcasm detector is broken today.

> he GP comment was specifically saying that they had "never heard of any bank" offering the service of taking cash and depositing it into a provided account No, I said I had never heard of any bank offering the service of taking all the account numbers of all the bills I have to pay and paying them for me out of my bank account.

In Argentina there's a service named "Pago Mis Cuentas" (Pay My Bills). You can add all your services (gas, electricity, cable, internet, taxes, etc).

When there's a new bill for the services you added, it's displayed on a list with checkboxes right beside each one of them. Check the ones you want to pay, click Pay, and you're done. It's linked directly to your bank account. The website was created by a bank consortium.

Is a service like that what you're talking about?

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#312

Post by dane-pgp » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #206

stickfigure wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incorrect, the battle is partly won... Not in the slightest. You can mandate that people accept cash, but you can't force people to pay with it. The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. So let's figure out what kind of benign future we actually can build. "Everyone decides to use cash again" just isn't going to ha…

> The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. In classic HN fashion, everyone disagreeing with this is focused on their own solipsistic perception of the relative merits, technical and otherwise, of cash versus electronic payments. But convenience always wins. The not-yet-evenly-distributed future is represented by App…

> You literally wave your wrist over a point-of-sale terminal and confirm on the screen. Once this experience is cloned and brought downmarket by a combination of Android, Fitbit, and no-name Chinese manufacturers on Amazon...

You won't even need one of these trademarked devices on your right hand if the Chinese brave new world is rolled out over here. Imagine the unique biometric markers of your face being used by an AI to link you to your government-run wallet.

https://www.businessinsider.com/a-tiktok-from-china-shows-fa...

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#313

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #310

heavyset_go wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In response to the 2012-2012 financial crisis in Cyprus[1], the Cypriot government decided to take 47.5% of uninsured deposits over the amount of €100,000 in the Bank of Cyprus, and all deposits over the amount of €100,000 from the Laiki bank. Greece did something similar with their bonds. "Haircuts"[2] are regularly floated as solutions in financial crises. Just because it didn't happen during the last crisis, doesn…

Conversely if your house burns down 100% of the money under your mattress is now worthless.

I have a cache of money from Switzerland that became worthless recently (well, I can still exchange it at the Swiss National bank someday). That kind of hurt. Also, I have some Indian money that is definitely worthless no matter what now.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#314

Post by chrissnell » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

caylus wrote: post #81

adriand wrote: post #57

I agree that this needs to be taken very seriously. However, the author overstates his case significantly when he writes: > Doing this to someone—a small business owner in BC, a public servant in Winnipeg, a student in Halifax—who made a small donation to support the convoy is a clear abuse of power. However: > The RCMP, banking sector and federal government said Monday that account-freezing powers bestowed under the…

If anything this reinforces the author's point about the dangers of lack of transparency of "digital jail". How do we know that statement is true? It's hard to hide who has been jailed (though "disappearances" come close), whereas we have no choice but to take the word of the entity which we have granted unchecked power that it has not abused that power. There's also plenty of wiggle room in their statement - they sa…

This is indeed a problem. We have major news outlets who function as propaganda mouthpieces of regimes. They're happy to carry the water for the regime and declare "nothing to see here!" and these days, they often do it with a "fact check". For the unsophisticated reader, this is very effective.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#315

Post by XorNot » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

bko wrote: post #255

heavyset_go wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero was blackballed in the US, and same with Monero conversion services like xmr.to. Coinbase refuses to support Monero. Turns out that governments do not like anonymous cryptocurrency at all.

It doesn't need to be anonymous. Even if the state knows your public address, they can't confiscate your funds without you giving away your key. They can try to prevent people from accepting your funds but that's a lot harder to enforce

Why though? The transaction record is public in every possible way. You can trivially audit the origin of every single funds transfer in the history of Bitcoin. "Just use a tumbler" you say - except this is the government. They can just declare that they'll also be declaring that any tumbler accounts which receive blackballed currency are tainted and blackball everything which comes out of them too.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#316

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #213

mortenjorck wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. In classic HN fashion, everyone disagreeing with this is focused on their own solipsistic perception of the relative merits, technical and otherwise, of cash versus electronic payments. But convenience always wins. The not-yet-evenly-distributed future is represented by App…

> convenience always wins Until people discover that the next place they wave their watch has customized the transaction based on the previous place they waved their watch. It's all fun and games until a voice speaks behind the one-way mirror, shattering illusions of payment neutrality, e.g. the incident in Canada which prompted the original article.

Very few people will ever hit this. Ever. As a result most are unlikely to care very much. They'll think of those that do care as crackpots.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#317

Post by Arainach » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

ACanadian wrote: post #270

ripley12 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those things are true, and I live in Canada. I strongly support Trudeau's actions on this, and I'm sad that the government took so long to crack down on the "truckers". It's deeply damaging to civil society when a few extremists can shut down a city without consequences.

So I assume you were equally outraged not long ago at the blocking of rail lines by indigenous / environmental activists? The truckers were not violent. For real violence, look at the ax-wielding attackers in the recent incident at the gas pipeline site in BC. It is frightening how you and many other people so easily absorb state propaganda. Try thinking a bit about the circumstances here. Why did Trudeau go out of h…

Playing loud noise at all hours of the night is torture and has been recognized as such since at least the Geneva Convention.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#318

Post by throwaway28203 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #235

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard of any bank offering that service. I'm not a cash person, but this is literally how cash deposits work (in the US). You fill out a deposit slip with your account information, hand the slip and the cash to the teller, and that's about it. If you own checks, your check book probably came with some deposit slips pre-filled with your account information.

It sounds like you're talking about taking cash to your bank and depositing it into your own bank account, which of course you can do. The original commenter was talking about taking cash to your bank and somehow very quickly distributing it to everyone you owe money to this month.

I use autopay for all of my monthly bills.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#319

Post by catgary » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #145

Excellent article and one that I wish my friends would read. Recently on a hike I mentioned how upsetting Trudeau’s actions are, and none of my friends had any idea what was happening up in Canada, except someone talked about a few things that I don’t believe are true: truckers were violent, few Canadians supported them, etc. - I think those things are not true. As other people here have pointed out, cashless society…

No, poll after poll has shown that Canadians were overwhelmingly against the truckers [1], and a strong majority supported the use of the emergency act (there was even a point where bringing in the military polled quite strongly with Canadians). There have also been a multitude of reports of violence, including at least one case where protestors attempted to burn down an apartment complex with its residents locked inside [2]. I don’t think it’s possible to understate how poorly informed you are about this, and as a Canadian I really beg you to stop spreading misinformation like this.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/15/politics/fact-check-canadian-...

[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/8600592/truc...

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#320

Post by heavyset_go » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 2:46 AM UTC

14 wrote: post #267

jakobdabo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lost in the sense of look around how people are spending their money. I'm very happy for that law, and hope common sense will prevail and cash will be around for a long time. But you can't deny that vast majority of money transactions in the modern world is cashless. Hence my point that the battle is lost - if you take away average person's right of using their credit cards or bank accounts, how are they supposed to…

I just realized last night that the self check outs at Walmart don't accept cash, as far as I can tell, and that the only choice is to use their regular till but that is staffed by one person so it is always a long wait which is what I am sure Walmart has planned to discourage its use.

> I just realized last night that the self check outs at Walmart don't accept cash

The machines fall back to credit/debit only when they need to restocked with cash or coins, or if the machine needs to be serviced. Some stores don't want to pay for the labor needed to maintain their cash features.

The last time I was in a Walmart was over a year ago, but their machines took cash.