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There are two fallacies I frequently feel the need to debunk in this discussion. - Cash is anonymous - Cash is an "old" or "low" technology. When a serious c

There are two fallacies I frequently feel the need to debunk in this discussion. - Cash is anonymous - Cash is an "old" or "low" technology. When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Modern cash is high technology. Look at a UK or European note already. Holograms, nano-technology, advanced materials science... It's well past the point of being worth forging, and it is likely that future banknotes will use einks, embedded printable passive electronics to do all of the things people hope or fear of purely digital cash, such as time-out, store variable value, and be more traceable. The function cash really performs is a resilience buffer for person to person transactions that works independently of electrical power and Internet. Smart people at the top are never going to let that slide, because it would be national security suicide and practically inviting civil unrest. Cash, in evolving forms is here to stay, but it may not have all the properties we think it has and defend it for.

coldtea 3y ago
>When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime". Your buying something is not logged anywhere, for example.
- grobbyy 3y ago
  You fell for a simple fallecy. The line isn't that cash is used in a major crime. It's that someone in power wants someone in prison. 1. You might not be involved in a major crime but you might be a suspect. Lots of innocent suspects get convicted. 2. You might be a whistleblower. Lots of whistleblowers get framed. Etc. "If I've done nothing wrong I have nothing to hide" didn't work out well for Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. A lot of the reason many of us want privacy preserved is to prevent a similar path here. Totalitarian governments don't always pop up overnight on a revolution; they often creep up on you. The creeping process is also often: 1. We'll track X with major checks on privacy; it will only be used for terrorism and child abuse investigations and held in a secure vault 2. We're just doing a better job of sharing / using data we already collect Neither off those is objectionable, but together, you end up in a distopia.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime". Exactly. Almost all cash transactions remain anonymous because there's no criminal investigation involved. Most people are honest and just going about their business with friends and family. That's how it should be. A cost bar for tracing is a desirable feature for non-authoritarian societies. Digital currency mediated by bank apps, active cards, smartphones or whatever, makes for "convenience" but also zero cost to spy on people who are not criminals. And that's a problem. So maybe it is here. Or there. I'm not sure where you're standing :)
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Exactly. Almost all cash transactions remain anonymous because there's no criminal investigation involved. It's disingenuous to even suggest that the traceability of cash transaction is even remotely close to that of credit cards and e-payments, and that what keeps them anonymous is that "there's no criminal investigation involved". It's the exact opposite: cash transaction are anonymity friendly by nature, and only when there's a great need, and with quite an effort, like in a criminal investigation, are they attempted to be traced, and even there it's more difficult exacty because of the nature of cash making it more difficult.
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      That's exactly what I am saying. You are repeating my own argument back to me and labelling it "disingenuous". You've misunderstood something, somewhere. Do please read again with care.
hasty_pudding 3y ago
> Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked Is this true? When I buy something from my local gas station is there a system in place tracking every serial number exchanged on the cash?
- 34679 3y ago
  Not in the US. There are no laws requiring businesses to do so. Why would employers spend the resources required for such a thing?
  - grobbyy 3y ago
    Because it's basically no resources. If they're not doing it now, they'll be doing it in a few years, and if not banned, selling the data. It's literally adding a 50 cent camera to a cash register.
    - hasty_pudding 3y ago
      where do you set up the camera to track the serial numbers and the person's identity that they're being given to?
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Some scenarios I hope you see as obvious: - you take out cash from an ATM. The machine is loaded with sequential or logged order of SN that can be matched to withdrawals and times. - you take that cash immediately to a vending machine or supermarket auto-checkout that takes notes. The machine scans all notes it ingests and can match them to timings and purchase details. - Even a small shop might have a camera at the till, along with a UV light frequency used to check for forgeries. Obviously as the time between withdrawal and re-appearing in a system grows the strength of the association gets lower, as notes change hands. But in a serious crime investigation that doesn't matter, it's a good-enough capability to warrant chasing.
    - seszett 3y ago
notso411 3y ago
[dead]
mdp2021 3y ago
> anonymous ... you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash That is not the point. The point is in the contract - e.g., that you are not accepting to untick a "do not track" flag. That circumvention is always possible is not what matters there.
Fredkin 3y ago
> Smart people at the top... Who exactly? Where are these people in power defending physical cash or recommending an alternative monetary medium resilient to grid failure?
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  You know that's the best question anyone has asked me on HN. I simply said "smart people at the top". I didn't say there were any.
dazc 3y ago
What the police and other authorities 'can do' is a world away from what they 'actually do', in 99% of cases. You could be unlucky if your crime passes a certain threshold or affects someone with power but, most of the time, it will not be investigated with the resources of the state.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Exactly the feature desirable to everyone in society. Including the police. I had a funny conversation with some LE types the other day (in the context of something we call "fly-tipping") about how, in theory, everyone who litters could be brought to book because they leave their fingerprints all over stuff. Nobody in forensics is ever going to do that unless it's a very serious case. Nobody wants to be compelled to investigate some bs crime just because its possible. Make things too convenient and you've got China.
yyyk 3y ago
>how much the police can do to trace cash It doable but not at all trivial. >It's well past the point of being worth forging The news seem to indicate plenty of forgers still, e.g.: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/possibly-largest-ever-bust-of-banknote-counterfeiters-in-history-of-euro https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/poss... >it is likely that future banknotes will use einks einks are too expensive right now?
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > einks are too expensive right now? Maybe yes. But track their falling cost and you'll see where the price point intersects with near disposable cost. European transport tickets made of cheap plasticised card only took a couple of years to incorporate RFID - that's already a long way toward low cost "intelligent cash". For a brief few weeks in the 1980s we had "phone cards" with stored, decrementable value that you could use a few times. Purely passive and using an optical technique to see where pressure had been applied to plastic (which turns milky). In Hungary in the communist era I saw tram tickets using ingenious mathematics (an ephemeral mechanical key set by the driver) and punched paper holes to provide multi-use. It's amazing what can be done to make cheap or even disposable portable artifacts to transfer value.
  - yyyk 3y ago
    >track their falling cost I do recall that patents/trademarks/tech are owned by E-Ink inc., and one of the biggest reason for the cost is them gouging the market? That mechanism can keep high prices for a long time.
    - braunboffel 3y ago
      > I do recall that patents/trademarks/tech are owned by E-Ink inc., and one of the biggest reason for the cost is them gouging the market? That mechanism can keep high prices for a long time. recall? gouging? You mean you have data showing is not just simple volume issues?
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Go to bank, take out 100's, to small mom and pop get change... problem solved. Further it is highly unlikely that if some bill I got out of ATM finds it way to a crime scene or something that they will be proof of anything a defense lawyer would shoot that down in about 2 secs >> It's well past the point of being worth forging Not really. >>future banknotes will use einks, embedded printable passive electronics to do all of the things people hope or fear of purely digital cash and those should be opposed as well
poisonborz 3y ago
You mix things up. Most of the tech you describe is about making sure that bank note is not fake. The tracking part is ad-hoc and shoddy, works only in dense urban settings, closed systems like banking or a big supermarket. Cash usage itself is anonymous.
solatic 3y ago
You're making an argument which is a variant of "if I'm not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to hide." Privacy is a worthwhile value in and of itself, not least of which because different people have different notions of what "wrong" is and their conception of "wrong" changes over the course of their life. An example list of completely legal transactions which you might not want someone in your life knowing about: a) You don't want your spouse to know that you bought some beers / fast food / pornographic magazines / cigarettes / other vice b) You don't want your employer to know that you saw a therapist / oncologist / family planning services c) You don't want your parents to know that you bought contraception d) You don't want your car insurance provider to know that you purchased a repair from a mechanic (i.e. you don't want your rates increased). Making payments in cash is making a decision for them not to be entered in some database which may be hacked and sold for profit to someone who values their interests more than your privacy.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  With respect, you're reading too much intent into my words. I am vehemently pro-privacy. In fact I seriously consider over-intrusive authoritarianism to be a mental health disorder and have read somewhat into the works of Adorno etc [0,1] (cue a dozen responses bemoaning how everything done at Berkeley in the 1960s is now-debunked leftist rubbish) Part of that is helping people to have a realistic but not paranoid view of technological society. My work also means I help people who have serious crimes or security issues to solve, and have legitimate investigatory needs. I think privacy violations are not rooted in economic greed, but in unboundaried, controlling impulses that get encoded into technology. Hope I am responding respectfully and appropriately, sorry if I got you wrong. BTW, in a safe way (ie not online) take one of those "authoritarian personality tests". It will shock you how much we have hidden in ourselves just ready to be provoked by demagogues or disinformation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-health/201711/what-you-can-expect-authoritarian https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-he...
huytersd 3y ago
Cash is very easily tumbled or made anonymous. It’s as simple as going to a casino, buying a large number of chips and then cashing those chips out again.
23B1 3y ago
The only fallacy here is that you expect anonymity to be 100% provided by cash.
dahart 3y ago
What are you responding to? Cash is anonymous, by and large. That’s a fact, not a fallacy. I’ve never in my life seen any shops track serial numbers of cash transactions, nor associate them with me. I’m skeptical that anyone does it, but I welcome any evidence of this dubious claim that you’d like to provide. Having your face capture by a camera does not track the bills you used, nor the items you purchased. You’re spinning a mostly false tale. E-money on the other hand tracks everything you buy, what you buy, when you buy, what you paid, where you bought it, and that information is used to construct a valuable profile of your purchasing habits. That profile is used for advertising. But it could also be used to deny insurance claims. Should be illegal, but I knew someone who worked for a credit card company that informed me they were thinking about how to do this legally. E-money is tracked on everyone for everything by default, and cash does non of this. It’s insanely expensive for the police to try to trace cash, and they can only do it for one criminal at a time. They do not, and cannot, track everyone’s cash. Spending profiles captured via e-money tracking are captured by private corporations and they are offered for sale. Any criminal cash tracking by police is used solely for capturing criminal and is otherwise not available to anyone else. > Modern cash is high technology Again, who’s even arguing? This is a straw man, the context is digital money. There was no debate about how much technology is used for printing bills. > Cash, in evolving forms is here to stay So you say? I’m not going to argue or pretend to make predictions, but one thing we know for absolute sure is that there is a downward trend of cash transactions globally.
gn4d 3y ago
> Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked lmfao what. Unless someone is committing large scale crimes involving bands, no one is tracking some small bills between private citizens, some stores, more citizens, et al. For the vast majority of people, cash is anonymous. No advertising company or government is obtaining tracking data on your purchase of an apple and a cup of coffee with cash.

coldtea 3y ago

>When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime". Your buying something is not logged anywhere, for example.

grobbyy 3y ago
You fell for a simple fallecy. The line isn't that cash is used in a major crime. It's that someone in power wants someone in prison. 1. You might not be involved in a major crime but you might be a suspect. Lots of innocent suspects get convicted. 2. You might be a whistleblower. Lots of whistleblowers get framed. Etc. "If I've done nothing wrong I have nothing to hide" didn't work out well for Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. A lot of the reason many of us want privacy preserved is to prevent a similar path here. Totalitarian governments don't always pop up overnight on a revolution; they often creep up on you. The creeping process is also often: 1. We'll track X with major checks on privacy; it will only be used for terrorism and child abuse investigations and held in a secure vault 2. We're just doing a better job of sharing / using data we already collect Neither off those is objectionable, but together, you end up in a distopia.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime". Exactly. Almost all cash transactions remain anonymous because there's no criminal investigation involved. Most people are honest and just going about their business with friends and family. That's how it should be. A cost bar for tracing is a desirable feature for non-authoritarian societies. Digital currency mediated by bank apps, active cards, smartphones or whatever, makes for "convenience" but also zero cost to spy on people who are not criminals. And that's a problem. So maybe it is here. Or there. I'm not sure where you're standing :)
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Exactly. Almost all cash transactions remain anonymous because there's no criminal investigation involved. It's disingenuous to even suggest that the traceability of cash transaction is even remotely close to that of credit cards and e-payments, and that what keeps them anonymous is that "there's no criminal investigation involved". It's the exact opposite: cash transaction are anonymity friendly by nature, and only when there's a great need, and with quite an effort, like in a criminal investigation, are they attempted to be traced, and even there it's more difficult exacty because of the nature of cash making it more difficult.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    That's exactly what I am saying. You are repeating my own argument back to me and labelling it "disingenuous". You've misunderstood something, somewhere. Do please read again with care.

hasty_pudding 3y ago

> Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked Is this true? When I buy something from my local gas station is there a system in place tracking every serial number exchanged on the cash?

34679 3y ago
Not in the US. There are no laws requiring businesses to do so. Why would employers spend the resources required for such a thing?
- grobbyy 3y ago
  Because it's basically no resources. If they're not doing it now, they'll be doing it in a few years, and if not banned, selling the data. It's literally adding a 50 cent camera to a cash register.
  - hasty_pudding 3y ago
    where do you set up the camera to track the serial numbers and the person's identity that they're being given to?
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Some scenarios I hope you see as obvious: - you take out cash from an ATM. The machine is loaded with sequential or logged order of SN that can be matched to withdrawals and times. - you take that cash immediately to a vending machine or supermarket auto-checkout that takes notes. The machine scans all notes it ingests and can match them to timings and purchase details. - Even a small shop might have a camera at the till, along with a UV light frequency used to check for forgeries. Obviously as the time between withdrawal and re-appearing in a system grows the strength of the association gets lower, as notes change hands. But in a serious crime investigation that doesn't matter, it's a good-enough capability to warrant chasing.
  - seszett 3y ago

notso411 3y ago

[dead]

mdp2021 3y ago

> anonymous ... you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash That is not the point. The point is in the contract - e.g., that you are not accepting to untick a "do not track" flag. That circumvention is always possible is not what matters there.

Fredkin 3y ago

> Smart people at the top... Who exactly? Where are these people in power defending physical cash or recommending an alternative monetary medium resilient to grid failure?

nonrandomstring 3y ago
You know that's the best question anyone has asked me on HN. I simply said "smart people at the top". I didn't say there were any.

dazc 3y ago

What the police and other authorities 'can do' is a world away from what they 'actually do', in 99% of cases. You could be unlucky if your crime passes a certain threshold or affects someone with power but, most of the time, it will not be investigated with the resources of the state.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
Exactly the feature desirable to everyone in society. Including the police. I had a funny conversation with some LE types the other day (in the context of something we call "fly-tipping") about how, in theory, everyone who litters could be brought to book because they leave their fingerprints all over stuff. Nobody in forensics is ever going to do that unless it's a very serious case. Nobody wants to be compelled to investigate some bs crime just because its possible. Make things too convenient and you've got China.

yyyk 3y ago

>how much the police can do to trace cash It doable but not at all trivial. >It's well past the point of being worth forging The news seem to indicate plenty of forgers still, e.g.: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/possibly-largest-ever-bust-of-banknote-counterfeiters-in-history-of-euro https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/poss... >it is likely that future banknotes will use einks einks are too expensive right now?

nonrandomstring 3y ago
> einks are too expensive right now? Maybe yes. But track their falling cost and you'll see where the price point intersects with near disposable cost. European transport tickets made of cheap plasticised card only took a couple of years to incorporate RFID - that's already a long way toward low cost "intelligent cash". For a brief few weeks in the 1980s we had "phone cards" with stored, decrementable value that you could use a few times. Purely passive and using an optical technique to see where pressure had been applied to plastic (which turns milky). In Hungary in the communist era I saw tram tickets using ingenious mathematics (an ephemeral mechanical key set by the driver) and punched paper holes to provide multi-use. It's amazing what can be done to make cheap or even disposable portable artifacts to transfer value.
- yyyk 3y ago
  >track their falling cost I do recall that patents/trademarks/tech are owned by E-Ink inc., and one of the biggest reason for the cost is them gouging the market? That mechanism can keep high prices for a long time.
  - braunboffel 3y ago
    > I do recall that patents/trademarks/tech are owned by E-Ink inc., and one of the biggest reason for the cost is them gouging the market? That mechanism can keep high prices for a long time. recall? gouging? You mean you have data showing is not just simple volume issues?

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Go to bank, take out 100's, to small mom and pop get change... problem solved. Further it is highly unlikely that if some bill I got out of ATM finds it way to a crime scene or something that they will be proof of anything a defense lawyer would shoot that down in about 2 secs >> It's well past the point of being worth forging Not really. >>future banknotes will use einks, embedded printable passive electronics to do all of the things people hope or fear of purely digital cash and those should be opposed as well

poisonborz 3y ago

You mix things up. Most of the tech you describe is about making sure that bank note is not fake. The tracking part is ad-hoc and shoddy, works only in dense urban settings, closed systems like banking or a big supermarket. Cash usage itself is anonymous.

solatic 3y ago

You're making an argument which is a variant of "if I'm not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to hide." Privacy is a worthwhile value in and of itself, not least of which because different people have different notions of what "wrong" is and their conception of "wrong" changes over the course of their life. An example list of completely legal transactions which you might not want someone in your life knowing about: a) You don't want your spouse to know that you bought some beers / fast food / pornographic magazines / cigarettes / other vice b) You don't want your employer to know that you saw a therapist / oncologist / family planning services c) You don't want your parents to know that you bought contraception d) You don't want your car insurance provider to know that you purchased a repair from a mechanic (i.e. you don't want your rates increased). Making payments in cash is making a decision for them not to be entered in some database which may be hacked and sold for profit to someone who values their interests more than your privacy.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
With respect, you're reading too much intent into my words. I am vehemently pro-privacy. In fact I seriously consider over-intrusive authoritarianism to be a mental health disorder and have read somewhat into the works of Adorno etc [0,1] (cue a dozen responses bemoaning how everything done at Berkeley in the 1960s is now-debunked leftist rubbish) Part of that is helping people to have a realistic but not paranoid view of technological society. My work also means I help people who have serious crimes or security issues to solve, and have legitimate investigatory needs. I think privacy violations are not rooted in economic greed, but in unboundaried, controlling impulses that get encoded into technology. Hope I am responding respectfully and appropriately, sorry if I got you wrong. BTW, in a safe way (ie not online) take one of those "authoritarian personality tests". It will shock you how much we have hidden in ourselves just ready to be provoked by demagogues or disinformation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-health/201711/what-you-can-expect-authoritarian https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-he...

huytersd 3y ago

Cash is very easily tumbled or made anonymous. It’s as simple as going to a casino, buying a large number of chips and then cashing those chips out again.

23B1 3y ago

The only fallacy here is that you expect anonymity to be 100% provided by cash.

dahart 3y ago

What are you responding to? Cash is anonymous, by and large. That’s a fact, not a fallacy. I’ve never in my life seen any shops track serial numbers of cash transactions, nor associate them with me. I’m skeptical that anyone does it, but I welcome any evidence of this dubious claim that you’d like to provide. Having your face capture by a camera does not track the bills you used, nor the items you purchased. You’re spinning a mostly false tale. E-money on the other hand tracks everything you buy, what you buy, when you buy, what you paid, where you bought it, and that information is used to construct a valuable profile of your purchasing habits. That profile is used for advertising. But it could also be used to deny insurance claims. Should be illegal, but I knew someone who worked for a credit card company that informed me they were thinking about how to do this legally. E-money is tracked on everyone for everything by default, and cash does non of this. It’s insanely expensive for the police to try to trace cash, and they can only do it for one criminal at a time. They do not, and cannot, track everyone’s cash. Spending profiles captured via e-money tracking are captured by private corporations and they are offered for sale. Any criminal cash tracking by police is used solely for capturing criminal and is otherwise not available to anyone else. > Modern cash is high technology Again, who’s even arguing? This is a straw man, the context is digital money. There was no debate about how much technology is used for printing bills. > Cash, in evolving forms is here to stay So you say? I’m not going to argue or pretend to make predictions, but one thing we know for absolute sure is that there is a downward trend of cash transactions globally.

gn4d 3y ago

> Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked lmfao what. Unless someone is committing large scale crimes involving bands, no one is tracking some small bills between private citizens, some stores, more citizens, et al. For the vast majority of people, cash is anonymous. No advertising company or government is obtaining tracking data on your purchase of an apple and a cup of coffee with cash.