Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thehub.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 849 posts

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

#391

Post by andrepd »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

Absolutely. For instance, pervasive CCTV isn't in itself a bad thing, but pervasive CCTV which can be (and is) accessed arbitrarily is a major major problem. I'm fine with CCTV which records to encrypted offline storage, which can be unencrypted by court order only, with as strong a probable cause as you would need for a wiretap or a search warrant.

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

#392

Post by BeefWellington »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #382
BeefWellington wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Have you sought out the information on whether it is or not, or just decided it wasn't? Re: violence: The scariest to me personally was someone attempting to start a fire in a building nearby to the convoy while duct taping the doors shut.[1] Dependin…

The arson link provided says "At this time, there is nothing linking the incident to the ongoing demonstration" Has that changed?

That's unclear. The arson unit is investigating is all I've seen and can't find any updated articles on it.

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

#393

Post by throwaway22032 »

decafninja wrote: post #381
throwaway22032 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the asymmetric centralised case of a reasonably established business accepting payments from thousands of people (and barely, if ever, issuing payments in the other direction) it's not. It's about the same, barring this hyperbolic stuff about "despising" coins. In the generalised case, e.g. I need to pay my friend, or a builder, or a taxi driver, or someone at a market stall - essentially any standalone human, it'…

I'm not sure I quite understand, but doesn't the bureacratic structure of cashless payments also provide the benefit of automatically documenting all your transactions for you so that you don't have to keep track of them manually? Unless, as I mentioned in another reply, your intention is to hide such transactions for whatever purpose - i.e. I know quite a few merchants use cash payments to avoid paying taxes. But th…

Meh. I don't really have a reply for this because we just obviously have really different worldviews so it's not going to really work.

There is no consumer, or merchant, or hiding of transactions, or taxes, or Venmo, or Paypal, or any of this stuff.

I'm standing next to you and you have an apple. I give you $1 for apple. I don't care about any of that other shit, it's like this whole invented set of problems that you've got a whole lexicon for.

Yes, if I buy something online I don't send cash in the post. That should be bloody obvious.

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

#394

Post by erichocean »

yellowapple wrote: post #264

This is why I roll my eyes every time someone goes off on some tirade about how cryptocurrency is a scam. Yeah, grifters exist. No, that doesn't make the most viable alternative we have to these centralized digital monetary systems any less vital. My BTC can't be frozen, and my ADA can't be seized during a traffic stop. I strongly disagree with the antivax protestors currently the subject of these measures; I think t…

> My BTC can't be frozen

Governments can make it a felony (jail time, fines) to interact with your wallet, effectively freezing it. And because bitcoins are infinitely traceable, governments can make any bitcoins that at any time originated from your wallet property of the state (i.e. any wallet held in an exchange that comes in possession of one of your coins can have those coins confiscated). Your bitcoins become frozen and/or worthless to 3rd parties.

Yes, you can try and operate outside that system by only transacting with wallets that are also frozen (or that are happy being frozen, transitively). Good luck with that.

Bitcoin's key functionality (all transactions are infinitely traceable) is the main reason it is so easy to regulate in the real world.

(The simplest approach for regulators implementing this system is to declare ALL wallets frozen, and to require public registration of wallets to unfreeze them, e.g. by being on an exchange with existing KYC laws. This makes all new private wallets useless prior to registration, and makes it a felony to transact with unregistered wallets. Exchanges would then literally prevent people from transacting with unregistered bitcoin wallets. Existing KYC laws are sufficient for governments to regulate bitcoins in this way.)

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

#395

Post by walterbell »

Kalium wrote: post #327
walterbell wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole Foods created a dedicated checkout lane for cash during the pandemic, in some stores surrounded by a 6-foot plexiglass walls. It was usually the fastest line. Now they are back to all registers accepting cash. > Will be interesting to see if SF authorities actually start trying to enforce this law or not. Great opportunity for a city journalist to assemble a news story. Collect footage to document their experie…

For a lot of businesses, the overhead that comes with handling cash isn't worth it. Especially smaller businesses that would really rather not deal with the risk of being robbed or having a staffer mugged for the nightly drop. Credit card processors charge a processing fee per transaction, but the overhead of physically managing cash and so on isn't free. I expect many stores will decide to stay cashless for that rea…

Businesses whose existence is contingent on cost management may find themselves replaced by those that can manage both top line (demand, revenue, culture, brand) and bottom line. Especially IF the economy continues to fragment into online escapism for the poor and 3D experiences for those with discretionary spending, aka "inequality".

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

#396

Post by throwaway22032 »

Nursie wrote: post #352
throwaway22032 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm literally sat at my desk inside my house with cash in my jeans pocket now. It's a total non issue. You probably have a bank card or phone in your pocket or on your desk. Some of us even use _note books_. Insane, I know.

> I'm literally sat at my desk inside my house with cash in my jeans pocket now. Which you, at some point, had to withdraw from an ATM. And which slows down your transaction time at a checkout. I do have a phone in my pocket. I would have my phone in my pocket anyway. It's great that it now means I don't need to manage bits of paper and metal too.

Neither of those are true, but yo, whatever, in your life I guess they feel like they have to be. Good luck, fellow space cadet.

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

#397

Post by mythrwy »

catgary wrote: post #354
mythrwy wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You link to CNN and globalnews though. Not really unbiased sources. And I think we have learned about "polls" over the past few years, at least I have, in the US elections. I have no doubt many Canadians are not happy about the protests. Maybe even most. But I don't believe these polls for one second. It looks like propaganda saying "see, everyone believes XX thing thing the government in power would like you to beli…

Jesus Christ, just go look at the Ipsos/Nanos polls. Do you think CNN made that up out of thin air? Those are reputable polling agencies. Barely 50% of CPC voters supported the convoy protestors methods.

Could be. Doubt "reputable polling agencies" in general though and CNN completely.

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

#398

Post by [deleted] »

noetic_techy wrote: post #39

Exactly correct. Anyone who is applauding this, just imagine the opposite political party in power using this against you or organizations you support. This is why no one should have been happy when executive orders became the norm in the US and congress did nothing. This is how you lose a senate and gain a Caesar, and look what happen to Rome eventually… Debanking someone who can now no longer pay for thier own defe…

[deleted]

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

#399

Post by 14 »

ransom1538 wrote: post #363
14 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the problem that I see as well. One can buy crypto but how do you convert to fiat currency if the government controls all the off ramps? This is the flaw with bitcoin as far as I can tell. Maybe one day someone on the darkweb will start selling goods like an Amazon style store where you can get anything you could on Amazon, like a drop shipping store, sent to your house for bitcoin. If you can link it on…

lol. I did some homework on this idea. Check this out: https://purse.io/earn/btc

That is actually pretty neat thank you for sharing. But I am a little confused after watching the video on it. It seems like you pay less for items with your bitcoin, do the people ordering hope that one day the bitcoin will increase in value and make money that way? Or is it just a way to buy bitcoin with items vs cash? Or a way to convert gift cards to bitcoin and that is the cost of business? I'm going to check it out farther but seems pretty neat. The only issue I see with this one is it is a site on the clear internet you would have to register to and they could be forced by governments to sanction accounts.

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

#400

Post by throwaway22032 »

XorNot wrote: post #303
tshaddox wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The original commenter is talking about a solution which would be vulnerable to the exact sort of "digital jail" being referenced in the article. They've added a central authority to their decentralized solution, in the form of the absolute classic way banks are used against people - by freezing accounts and deposits etc.

Nah, because you can just go to any money transmitter. Which is actually just anyone, if we didn't scare people off it by making payments this like, scary bureaucratic taxy AML'y thing.

I have online banking on my phone, if you wanna give me cash to send it to someone, no problem, why not.

Post reply on HN