In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
Young people may have never experienced actual freedom and privacy. Here goes.<p>I grew up in the 80s, in Europe. The only thing the government knew of me was that I existed and which school I attended, and absolutely nothing else. There were no recording devices anywhere. My actions, my communication, my spending, all private. I was still a kid though. My dad worked and got cash in hand. It was also common to obscure parts of your income that way, but only &quot;party money&quot;, as you don&#x27;t want to overdo this.<p>Society worked just fine, just to make the point that this supposed chaos of having pretty much no surveillance or data at all, did not lead to an abundance of crime, terrorism, or other issues conveniently folded under &quot;national security&quot;. Which just shows that justifications for surveillance really are razor thin. Same for their effectiveness in actual stopping all that bad stuff.<p>We all know what happened next, the rise of computing in business and government, and 9&#x2F;11 as a perfect excuse to do the largest data grab ever, and to never ever dial that back.<p>Then social networks and smartphones happened and anything ever is recorded, in the hands of private businesses, with back doors to the government. From knowing zero to knowing everything, it didn&#x27;t take long.<p>Same for finance. Where everybody freely transacted in a cash-based society, now it raises suspicion. You can&#x27;t just withdraw a lot of cash, send an amount to a friend, cross a border or even pay with big bills. There&#x27;s KYC and capital controls, you don&#x27;t transact with privacy, are you nuts? The world would fall apart.<p>We&#x27;ve all silently went along with it, because we&#x27;re all good people and only criminals are affected by this. Furthermore, we live in stable democracies under the rule of law.<p>Canada broke this expectation severely. Under the disguise of an &quot;emergency law&quot; they seized assets, redistributed them, forced private businesses to give up personal data, freeze bank accounts and block credit cards. Supposedly, even for second-hand interactions with protesters, such as donating to them. And shockingly, they do all of this with a straight face.<p>I don&#x27;t care how you feel about the protest itself. If it is indeed an illegal protest, you arrest the protestor, tell them which law they broke, and put them through the legal process. Which includes rights like the right to a defense, clear claims, a process by jury (or judge), and then a fine or prison time, based on earlier precedents and the book of law.<p>You don&#x27;t go and digitally &quot;cancel&quot; citizens without any form of process. If you believe this is warranted, flip the script and apply this arbitrary power to a protest that you do agree with. Say a right-wing government is in power, and there&#x27;s new BLM protests. Would you be OK with the government tracking every protesters, arbitrarily requesting private data from private businesses you interacted with, and then financially wipe you out without any process at all?<p>After this historical fly-by, we&#x27;ve learned that surveillance is additive. It never gets dialed back. We also learned that your private data is in no way private, also not when interacting with private businesses or your peers. We&#x27;ve learned that if technology allows for more surveillance it will be used and it will be abused.<p>Digital level abuse is a sight to behold. A cop doesn&#x27;t need to find you and carry you to jail and go through this annoying delicate process. No, a politician pushes a button and thousands of you will be dysfunctional. This thought is supposed to scare you, a lot.<p>All this while, your personal freedom and privacy is shrinking. Rapidly.<p>And we&#x27;re not done yet. We&#x27;re now entering the territory of what formerly would be considered conspiracy theories. I used to laugh at the following, but not anymore.<p>There&#x27;s crypto, which can be considered private, unregulated money. Digital money is inevitable so the government is waking up to the idea of digital (crypto) money issued by central banks.<p>This version would not be anonymous, hence this marks the death of cash and transaction privacy. Everything you will ever transact from here on out is known. And can be blocked from a single point, or subject to approval.<p>It also marks the death of private commercial banks. The central bank issues the currency as well as holds your &quot;wallet&quot;.<p>With this, some serious monetary policy can begin. Because crypto is programmable and monetary policy is running out of instruments, such is the health of our financial system.<p>Are you hoarding too much money? Let me turn that dial of interest rate to negative 20%. Low consumer demand? Here&#x27;s 100 new money for every citizen. Major environmental problems? Let me block the buying of oversized televisions directly from your wallet.<p>Far-fetched? I don&#x27;t think so. Think back of the 80s, the starting point. Think it won&#x27;t happen? Think Canada.<p>Let me remind you of the Panama papers. Did this huge group of people have their assets seized? Do any jail time? No. The big fish are cleared. All of this is for idiots like you and me.