soloActivist
There are many stakeholders with much to gain from the mass collection of data
Right but they need our permission because they want to hold on to power. This is what Snowden covers when he talks about cover for action w.r.t. surveillance programs. They need the anti-terror excuse. They rely on it. Where does that excuse come from? This article covers it well.
It’s not that long of a read. But I thought this was a gem worth quoting here:
One of the senators, Russ Feingold, said during the debate preceding the vote on this law [US Patriot Act]:
“There’s no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home at any time and for any reason, if we lived in a country where the government had the right to open your mail, listen to your phone conversations or intercept your e-mail communications… the government would probably discover and arrest more terrorists, or would-be terrorists, than in the past. But it would not be a country we would want to live in.”
He was not listened to by his colleagues, and was the only senator not to vote for the PATRIOT Act
I should also mention he was a democrat (not relevant to the point, but noteworthy nonetheless).
This is not to dismiss what you’ve said. But the “unthinking masses uncritically accepting the convenience” will be under the influence of the idea that anti-terror justifies it. A forced-banking policy will acquire the 55-65% you mention under that premise. The convenience of electronic payment is just the lubrication that will demotivate resistance. In fact I suspect we already have a majority believing the anti-terror narrative both as justification and the effectiveness of it.
I was trying to recall where I read about that. Search is terrible. Took some digging but found it here:
When “such engagement” is required to exercise human rights, I’m not as quick as you to call that optional. I expect to have all of my human rights simultaneously satisfied together in aggregate.
A mandate can be explicitly written or merely implied. If you need food to survive, for example, and a law were to say all food distributors must refuse cash, you can safely call that an implied mandate to use a bank. Or would you say they are off the hook for the human rights consequences, perhaps on the basis that people can freely refuse to buy food and opt to grow their own food?
art.4 & art.23 (employment)
Are you suggesting that the ban on cash wages is not a banking mandate because it’s an “engagement”, despite exercise of human rights articles relying on that engagement? Consider that art.4 entitles people to be free from slavery and couple that with art.23 which states: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment”. In Belgium, it is illegal for an engineer to receive cash wages. But it is not illegal for a domestic worker to receive cash wages if that has been established as a common practice in that trade.
Do you see the issue? An unbanked engineer can freely refuse to work and live on welfare (if offered by their gov assuming no disqualifying requirements due to their ability to work), but then they must give up their rights under art.23. And even then, how do they get their welfare payment? See below.
art.25 (housing & social svcs)
Consider that no real estate transaction can involve cash, by law. Yet, art.25 states:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services
I highlighted social services as well as housing because social services in some countries refuse to pay cash to beneficiaries. You cannot get financial aid without a bank account.
Regarding utilities, is that also what you consider to be an optional engagement? That people do not need water and power service? This may be debatable but I believe the right to housing likely includes a right to energy in regions where a box with walls+roof is insufficient to prevent freezing. I believe housing implies having a warm space. So when the energy supplier refuses cash, is that not a mandate to use a bank? If you are wondering where the gov comes into play in this case, it would be when the utility supplier refuses cash then sues the unbanked consumer in court for non-payment. When the court finds the energy contract to be “legal” and sides with the utility company, that’d essentially be a case of the gov mandating the use of banks.
It’s also worth noting that the UDHR is not limited to govs. The private sector is also bound by the UDHR.
Anyway, this is all quite far off from the original question in the OP, which remains unanswered.
(edit) And what about tax?
Some govs require taxes to be paid electronically. Tax is by definition a mandate. Both income tax and property tax must be paid electronically. There was a guy in Germany to was denied the option to pay his radio licensing fees in cash. IIUC, that’s like BBC, a mandatory tax. You could perhaps argue that income tax is optional because income is optional, and that property tax is optional because home ownership is optional, but I’m not sure the same can be said for radio fees in Germany.
There is no public ledger for cash. There is no attack surface on the devices of yourself or the other party by which your cash transaction can be compromised. There are no electronic records to exfiltrate unless one party proactively deliberately records a transaction. And if they do, there is no non-repudiation. There is no risk that any cryptanalytic advances can later expose the whole history of all cash transactions or even a chain of cash transactions. Cash transactions leave no trace unless you do them under surveillance.
This is the thread covering it:
https://links.hackliberty.org/post/2983664
Apparently the hospital eventually agreed to the patient not using the app but demanded the patient agree to an indemnity that the hospital would not be liable if they fail to reach him quickly.
I don’t quite recall the context I had in mind when I wrote that post 1 year ago, but Belgium (for example) has enacted a law that all suppliers must accept electronic payment. It’s not just shops or b2b situations. It all-encompassing including self-employed freelancers. Even someone who rents part of their home out must give the tenant the option to pay electronically.
Also in Belgium: employees and contractors can only accept cash payment if they happen to work in an industry where that is common. So if you’re not (e.g.) a domestic worker, receiving cash wages is generally banned. At the same time, no matter what the situation is, a cash transaction can never exceed €3k. Buying a house cannot involve 1 euro of cash, which is strictly banned from all real estate transactions.
Many water and utility companies refuse cash. So if you consider the right to housing to include a right to water and power, then those consumers are being forced to use a bank. But that’s not apparently government force.
There is a slight renaissance of feature phones (aka dumb phones) lately. The main drive is self-control. People trying to shake free of an addiction. Tech illiterates of course like smart phones as well but you have the security factor backwards. The smartest consumers favor feature phones precisely for their superior security.
So I believe feature phone users largely fall into the following demographics:
- social media addicts looking for escape
- tech-literate street-wise people who understand the vastness of the attack surface and risks of smartphones with knowledge about mass surveillance programs and loss of control (this demographic does their e2ee comms from a PC)
- tech illiterates
(edit) To a lesser extent:
- (policy/child protection)? I think I heard some schools (and districts thereof) are banning smartphones from very young children
- those who simply have no compelling use case
- pro-environment ethical consumers who oppose e-waste and the ecocide from the designed obsolescence that impacts all smartphones (even Fairphone needs to make progress here)
- the extreme poor. The US has a “Lifeline” program to give gratis smartphones to poor people, but I’m not sure they’re all aware of it, or whether the program keeps up with the chronic need for software updates that require hardware replacements (designed obsolescence)
