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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

#631

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

I have a hard time following this discussion because people are throwing around pretty dramatic statements without pause.

> It's hard to hide who has been jailed

None of the “influencers” we talk about are jailed. Nor does having your money frozen mean “jail”. It sure can be really bad and not without consequences, but even fully IRL we wouldn’t describe someone having all his possessions taken as jailed.

Then govs have been freezing account under many pretenses for decades, except we now have a chance to get the affected people to come forward and explain they’re getting shafted. That wouldn’t happen a few decades ago, there was no way the local news would touch a story about some random peeps getting frozen under a terrorist charge for instance. Do you really think it’s worse now for activists than decades ago ?

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

#632

Post by 34679 »

BeefWellington wrote: post #369
34679 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a large enough gathering of people, for a long enough time, there will always be some violence. That doesn't necessarily make the gathering violent and it doesn't mean the organizers had violent intentions. I've watched a few live streams from people just walking around, talking to protesters at the event and none depicted any violent acts of any kind. There also weren't any swastikas or rebel flags that I could…

Anyone claiming this was a "peaceful protest" is I think at this point choosing to ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Separately, at what point does a protest cease to be peaceful? What percentage of bad apples would satisfy you that this wasn't a peaceful protest? 1%? 10%? 50%? I'm curious because you can make that argument about pretty much any protest/disruption.

I don't believe there's a specific percentage, but for reference, I also believe the BLM protests were mostly peaceful, and I have plenty of video downloaded showing buildings burning and police cruisers being destroyed. Most of the BLM violence that occurred was initiated by police attempting to clear public spaces, including roads.

A crowd of people intent on harming others would be violent. I haven't seen any evidence that either protest included such crowds, police excepted.

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

#633

Post by Quindecillion »

14 wrote: post #252
AdrianB1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think some form of cryptocurrency could serve this purpose and move us away from relying on banks that act on behalf of the state. If such a crypto would exist, with enough stability, trust and ease to make transactions, the state would be so unhappy that day that it would make it illegal faster than light. Removing monopolies from the state are huge challenges.

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…

The idea of course is that eventually you would never need to convert back to fiat in the first place.

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

#634

Post by hughrr »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #376
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…

I had my only personal UK bank account frozen without warning for weeks. The first I knew of it was when the call centre wouldnt answer the phone for 45mins from the shop where I had just tried to use the card. Had to abandon the process and go home. Next morning, call the bank call centre, do security get told they cant talk to me. The processes to get the account activated was interesting, I couldnt complain to the…

Had the same thing with HSBC. I opened another bank account and keep a spare one going all the time.

Also always keep £500 rolled up in £20 notes somewhere. And make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

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

#635

Post by autoexec »

peterbraden wrote: post #622
jjav wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need better legal protections for electronic payments and banking. I can comfortably predict that can never happen. Electronic payments offer governments perfect and absolute surveillance and blocking ability. No government on earth will vote their fingers off that pie. The only freedom-compatible answer is to insist on cash.

This makes me sad, you are so confident that a government can never do the right thing, that the only solution you see is to prevent any progress, and anchor yourself to a local minima from the past. Society needs it’s members to believe that they can improve it, that they are represented by a government, and that they can influence it’s path. Anything less is an authoritarian regime. Such deep seated cynicism shows…

> Society needs it’s members to believe that they can improve it, that they are represented by a government, and that they can influence it’s path.

I'll believe in the benevolent government that rejects abusing their authority for the purpose of mass surveillance when I see one. I believe people still have the power to push for small/minor changes in government so long as those changes don't threaten the powerful. Anything else is pretty unlikely. You can call it cynicism, but it's been known for a long time that the only people who can substantially influence government are large corporations or the extremely wealthy (see https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...)

I still support the ideal that people should be able work within the system to challenge the entrenched powerful, but the evidence for it actually working in most cases isn't strong and my government has spent centuries making adjustments when they've been shown to be vulnerable in order to make it harder. I don't think people should stop trying for change, but at a certain point, you have to accept the situation you actually have while you try to find a realistic path to something better.

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

#636

Post by usrbinbash »

The thing about "non-custodial-money": Unless someone is willing to literally hide a small fortune under his mattress, there is really no such thing;

What's most peoples primary source of money? Jobs. How are these jobs paid? Usually as a wire transfer to some bank account. Custodial Money.

Sure, someone could go to the ATM every payday and then actually hide the money. But this comes with lots of serious drawbacks: physical cash can be damaged, stolen, even forgotten. The Blorkchain is only the digital form of the mattress; drives can get damaged, hacks can happen, keys can be forgotten. Plus, with its volatility, even if no catastrophe strikes, it may well be that the money lost a lot of its worth at the point when it's needed.

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

#638

Post by sebow »

conradev wrote: post #230
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…

How do you pay for digital goods with cash? Are you suggesting that every single online business that exists should have a mailing address to mail cash or checks, and have people to process them? I imagine that you pay for software in some form, as an example of a digital good. Do we need to go back to burning CDs and buying software in physical stores with physical money? Reject it all you want, but there is no goin…

This is a disingenuous argument.If you want to pay for software or digital goods you already probably have or want a bank account, a paypal or something.You're already in the ecosystem and nobody forces you to use cash everywhere.By the way >it isLet's do the opposite example now: Do you >needPeople want to think about cash/cashless in terms of black and white, yes or no.I used to be pro-cashless and certainly I am in some regards depending on the wanted product/service.Yet I limited my use to being restrictive because there are way more loopholes to be rendered bankrupt and have no money available.There are certainly risks to cash aswell, and yet more advantages when buying products/services in-person.

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

#639

Post by runeks »

ALittleLight wrote: post #567
jjav wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. Very much this. It is disappointing and scary to see tech people, of all groups, who like this idea. Cash is a perfect currency. It is strictly peer to peer, fully fungible, can't be blocked or censored by any party, anonymous, has no dependency on anything (still works when the electricity and internet are down).

Cash is kind of fungible, but not really. Every bill has a serial number, so every bill is unique. This is what it means when money is "marked" in a police investigation, they give bills with known serial numbers to bad actors in a criminal enterprise and then recover the bills at the other end of the enterprise proving the connection. In common practice it's fungible in the sense that one twenty dollar bill is as go…

> Every bill has a serial number, so every bill is unique. This is what it means when money is "marked" in a police investigation, they give bills with known serial numbers to bad actors in a criminal enterprise and then recover the bills at the other end of the enterprise proving the connection.

This has nothing to do with fungibility unless a bill’s serial number affects either your ownership of the bill or whether the bill will be accepted as payment.

Fungibility is related to being indistinguishable for the purpose of economic transactions, not being physically indistinguishable.

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

#640

Post by sebow »

ladallada wrote: post #589
allisdust wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds fair as long as you are representing my views. When the coin flips I will get the unfairness of it. This is what current supporters of the regime (I guess we can now call it that) don't understand yet.

You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss. My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your protest show a little bit of civil disobedience, like break a few windows, burn a fire can, chant loudly through the night keeping everyone awake, or block some roads. Something to really get people to pay attention and really listen to what you have to protest a…

> You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever.

One of the reasons the right to protest is a fundamental one is because laws are made by people, for people, in the service of the public good and well-being of the citizens.

If the people protest against the laws then that's their right, the people and their will is above the law, the law is not above the people's will as a whole.

This is almost universally true, and you cannot make the argument of 'shutting down the right to protest' on the pretext of breaking a law, because protests are ultimately motivated on laws or policies being changed.Nobody protests forever.

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