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"Digital only" is a truly terrible idea for passports, currency and everything else. Even if everything worked perfectly (it never does) and all the databases
by StanislavPetrov 2y ago
"Digital only" is a truly terrible idea for passports, currency and everything else. Even if everything worked perfectly (it never does) and all the databases were completely secure (they aren't), what happens when there is a power outage? What happens when the network goes down? What happens when you drop your phone in the toilet? In a perfect world nobody in a position of power would be remotely stupid enough to suggest going all digital for anything critically important, yet here we are.
- steelframe 2y ago> What happens when the network goes down? When I was traveling in London in 2018 I was barely able to pay for the groceries I needed in order to eat that night because I was checking out just as the global VISA outage started happening. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outage-payment-chaos-after-card-network-crashes-live-updates https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outa... The machine took a long time to process my payment, but after a couple of attempts it managed to go through. As I left the store I noticed a long line forming for the self-checkout registers, and nobody else was able to get their payments to go through. There was apparently no option to fall back to cash at that store. Whenever I travel now one of the bits of research I do now is to make sure I have a plan for getting basic necessities like food and shelter should an electronic payment system outage like that happen again.