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

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

#571

Post by imtringued »

DeathArrow wrote: post #510
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…

>The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. But you can't as long as the cashless society is forced upon you. At most you can try to take refuge on currencies which aren't controlled by governments like crypto. But since crypto is very volatile, it isn't a practical thing to do. You can try to buy precious metals or other things you can easily sell for cash if the need arises. Too bad nobody invented a stab…

Freicoin? It is dead because nobody wants to use crypto as day to day currency. Meanwhile the physical chiemgauer is doing well in its region.

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

#572

Post by danuker »

pkd wrote: post #442
ta_abcd wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a resident of the city in question, lets talk facts(whatever that means) if you care to read on.. Almost nothing was shut down as a result of this protest. You could travel over 99.5% of the city and forget a protest was taking place. Almost anything that was shut down, was shut down voluntarily. Only the 3-4 blocks immediately adjacent to the Parliament buildings (where else do you go to protest your federal gove…

There are many many low income housing buildings in Centerrown. It's interesting to me that you characterize the condo inhabitants as rich people while it's actually cheaper to buy a condo downtown than to buy a house in Barrhaven in the suburbs! All the rich people are actually living in mansions away from Centertown. The injunction worked for 2 days, but the lack of enforcement meant that it was blaring horns again…

> impossible to sleep

Looks like someone else's fundamental rights were impacted.

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

#573

Post by trevormcneal »

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…

somehow people with the cognitive capacity of a rotten potato would call you science denier for being pro freedom. I'm not talking about vaccines and such, but being pro freedom as in being against a survilance state which can fuck you up at any time and has total control using coercion over all aspects of your life.

We got at such stage in history which is impossible even to have an honest debate about freedom without having legal problems and risking our careers to just end. Let's hope internet still a safe place for this for a while.

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

#574

Post by trevormcneal »

jakobdabo wrote: post #13
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…

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient, it's hard to beat that. We need more constitutional human rights. It's not okay to take or freeze somebody's money/property without any court decision. Edit: some of the answers assume that I'm against cash or that by saying "battle is lost" I mean cash is gone; My point of "cashless winning" is tha…

AFAIK in US you need a fair trial before being punished, this is on the 10 amendments.

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

#575

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

> But convenience always wins.

It's very inconvenient if you can't buy food or pay your bills.

>We need better legal protections for electronic payments and banking. Cash, for better or worse, is on the way out.

if a person loses access to their account by government or banking ruling then they cannot take part in electronic payments. What is your solution to this? I mean obviously the solution is that governments and banks cannot just turn off access to your account, but that is not an answer, you need to explain all of the processes that will need to support this possibility, because obviously banks and governments do need to turn off access to accounts at times.

But if we allow cash as a fallback, then we already have a system that works. All the various rules and processes about cash have been worked out long ago, over generations!

replacing the security that cash provides for people not to starve or freeze because of any number of possible problems would be an incredibly expensive and error prone process.

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

#576

Post by malka »

i_like_waiting wrote: post #531
DeathArrow wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than crypto, you can store some money in a foreign bank account with a debit card attached and withdraw from the ATM when you need.

afaik its complicated to create bank account in country where you don't live no? I always had to provide proof of address or something, from that country, which is complicated if you are not millionaire with property here and there.

In the UE it is quite easy

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

#577

Post by malka »

trevormcneal wrote: post #574
jakobdabo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient, it's hard to beat that. We need more constitutional human rights. It's not okay to take or freeze somebody's money/property without any court decision. Edit: some of the answers assume that I'm against cash or that by saying "battle is lost" I mean cash is gone; My point of "cashless winning" is tha…

AFAIK in US you need a fair trial before being punished, this is on the 10 amendments.

You money does not have constitutional rights.

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

#578

Post by ladallada »

romaniv wrote: post #164

> The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done. This is such a great point. I'm not sure why it needs to be made over and over again, but it seems that's the only way it doesn't get buried. Let's play a game. I will be the institution, you will be the person. You will get ability to record me with your cellphone and post stuff…

I'm all for putting more transparency and reasonable bounds on the process formally, but I think you're missing two points:

1. While having formal bounds would be great, in this case, it hasn't been shown yet that they applied force unreasonably and beyond what those bounds should be. Some people want to believe they froze assets of innocent bystanders or small local donors, but that's just conjecture right now.

2. In your example, am I also blocking the biggest commercial boarder crossing between Canada and US? If so, I'm surprised you've not yet thrown tear gas at me, put me in handcuffs and physically forced me to move. And that instead you chose to simply freeze my bank accounts until I move.

I say that, because again, while I do like what the article points out, yes freezing assets is a big deal, and yes having bounds and guards and protections from abuse is important, I'm all for that. But my impression in this case is actually the government is trying to limit the blast radius and choose the lesser of two evils in order to force the convoys to stop blocking the boarder and major roads.

Instead of tear gas and physical force, which often impact a ton of innocent protesters that are legally and peacefully protesting, they went for a more targeted approach, where by blocking bank accounts you can be more specific exactly who you target, and it is also a more civil way to force you to move.

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

#579

Post by CryptoPunk »

pshc wrote: post #286
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…

This reminds me of all the posts on HN about running your own email server. Admirable but ultimately negligible. Cryptocurrencies will provide solutions that actually scale to these problems in time, but HN’s still not ready to hear it.

HN's bias against cryptocurrency is a useful counterweight to the massive profit-motivated hype surrounding it.

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

#580

Post by mellavora »

ddingus wrote: post #78
chowells wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. Cash is no answer without sufficient legal protections. And if you have sufficient legal protections, cash mostly just buys you inconvenience. The problem isn't businesses going cashless. The problem is leaving structural control over money to profit-seeking enterprises.

We can fix that, and it is being addressed. Cash is a great answer to a whole lot of basic commerce, small scale, freedom style, between adults just adulting. The problem IS businesses refusing cash. The public really does not benefit and we have not shown we are able to avoid abusing electronics. One day maybe. Right now? Not a chance. Cash remains necessary and the costs are not crazy enough to warrant all the abus…

Care to address how civil forfeiture is being addressed?

This 2015 post suggests that in 2014, civil forfeiture exceeded burglary.

> Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually... Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, .... According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_...

I'd love to see evidence that the tide is turning, hopefully you have some.

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