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It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash

by a3_nm 9y ago

It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced and is widely accepted. It's something that would be impossible to bootstrap today if it didn't already exist. Hence, it's crucial to keep it alive.

Cyphase 9y ago
> Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced ... I just wanted to point out the possibility of tracking serial numbers on bills. Obviously it's not going to be as reliable, at least not now, but it could be made more so; for instance, if there was a sudden movement to use more cash for privacy. Of course, that seems unlikely; most people like the convenience of plastic/digital payments, and there's a lot of market pressure pushing people toward those payment methods, so deploying the infrastructure for more reliable cash tracking probably isn't worth a whole lot. But I haven't exactly run the numbers, and there are other possible incentives, so who knows..
- mc32 9y ago
  It is possible to track the serials, if they wanted to; however, except for banks, I have not exchanged cash with a retailer who scans the bills at the point of transaction and if they did, they'd also have to tie a given ser no with me at the time of purchase. Since a particular bill will go through many hands, it'd be like trying to figure out who made a change on a system when it was done by 'root' or 'administrator' where the whole team logs in as root or admin. Basically attribution would be kinda inaccurate.
  - sverhagen 9y ago
    Sigh, but Google will find a way...
    - rbg246 9y ago
      No they won't it would be too high cost, it's easier to make it very convenient to use your phone or card for payments and 95% of people will follow suit.
      - Chronic42 9y ago
        Just like you deposit up to 40 bills simultaneously into an ATM, Google will deploy similar scanners at POS checkouts. In fact it is faster since the cashier does not have to manually count. Simply insert into the cash reader, and it spits out the correct change. Combined with your loyalty card for discounts, they have your identity. Don't want a loyalty card? I hope you enjoy paying 5-10% more for your grocery purchases.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      They'll build a "better" cash register which bundles counterfeit money detector and serial number scanner in the same package. Combined with facial recognition on the cameras and accurate timestamps on both CCTV and the cash register, you have your perfect money tracking system right there.
  - 0x45696e6172 9y ago
    Something like half of the supermarkets in Denmark scan all money bills they receive supposedly with the purpose of defeating counterfeit money. However it could easily do OCR on the serial as well. Combine that with CCTV records, and and it does not offer much more privacy than credit card payments. Ironically I started to appreciate it, after I received a fake bill from a different store.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced Not really; bills are individually identifiable and can be tracked by either party to the transaction, and even if the payment medium isn't tracked, the transaction can even tracked by other means (e.g., cameras + facial recognition.) It's only really untraceable if you assure privacy of the location of the transaction, and neither party to the transaction chooses to track it, and even then if the next party out on either side is tracking, a lot can be revealed.
- rbg246 9y ago
  So you need someone scanning notes, logging locations, watching for patterns to infringe on your privacy, this sounds like it's private except if you are under targeted surveillance.

by a3_nm 9y ago

Cyphase 9y ago

> Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced ... I just wanted to point out the possibility of tracking serial numbers on bills. Obviously it's not going to be as reliable, at least not now, but it could be made more so; for instance, if there was a sudden movement to use more cash for privacy. Of course, that seems unlikely; most people like the convenience of plastic/digital payments, and there's a lot of market pressure pushing people toward those payment methods, so deploying the infrastructure for more reliable cash tracking probably isn't worth a whole lot. But I haven't exactly run the numbers, and there are other possible incentives, so who knows..

mc32 9y ago
It is possible to track the serials, if they wanted to; however, except for banks, I have not exchanged cash with a retailer who scans the bills at the point of transaction and if they did, they'd also have to tie a given ser no with me at the time of purchase. Since a particular bill will go through many hands, it'd be like trying to figure out who made a change on a system when it was done by 'root' or 'administrator' where the whole team logs in as root or admin. Basically attribution would be kinda inaccurate.
- sverhagen 9y ago
  Sigh, but Google will find a way...
  - rbg246 9y ago
    No they won't it would be too high cost, it's easier to make it very convenient to use your phone or card for payments and 95% of people will follow suit.
    - Chronic42 9y ago
      Just like you deposit up to 40 bills simultaneously into an ATM, Google will deploy similar scanners at POS checkouts. In fact it is faster since the cashier does not have to manually count. Simply insert into the cash reader, and it spits out the correct change. Combined with your loyalty card for discounts, they have your identity. Don't want a loyalty card? I hope you enjoy paying 5-10% more for your grocery purchases.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    They'll build a "better" cash register which bundles counterfeit money detector and serial number scanner in the same package. Combined with facial recognition on the cameras and accurate timestamps on both CCTV and the cash register, you have your perfect money tracking system right there.
- 0x45696e6172 9y ago
  Something like half of the supermarkets in Denmark scan all money bills they receive supposedly with the purpose of defeating counterfeit money. However it could easily do OCR on the serial as well. Combine that with CCTV records, and and it does not offer much more privacy than credit card payments. Ironically I started to appreciate it, after I received a fake bill from a different store.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced Not really; bills are individually identifiable and can be tracked by either party to the transaction, and even if the payment medium isn't tracked, the transaction can even tracked by other means (e.g., cameras + facial recognition.) It's only really untraceable if you assure privacy of the location of the transaction, and neither party to the transaction chooses to track it, and even then if the next party out on either side is tracking, a lot can be revealed.

rbg246 9y ago
So you need someone scanning notes, logging locations, watching for patterns to infringe on your privacy, this sounds like it's private except if you are under targeted surveillance.