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Comment by andres_kytt | Hacker News Reader

I find this approach really curious. All the transactions can be monitored by third parties anyway as all the pos systems are networked and subject to even lesser legal scrutiny than banks. Random adverisers can and do build comprehensive profiles. A company is us claims to have full profiles of all Americans. And yet, if there's a chance a citizen might benefit either via less hassle as in the cash case or via better gov services, everybody goes "but think of the privacy". As a result, societies get downsides of both: there is no privacy whatsoever but no value generated for the citizen.

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I think GP's point re cash was just that cash transactions are typically anonymous. Obviously you can get around that by e.g. matching up till receipts against video surveillance and facial recognition tech, but I'm not aware that that happens routinely, so in practice you probably have a fair degree of privacy.

Cash transactions are anonymous only if most transactions are cash. I take x eur from the bank and give them to you. You put x eur to the bank. That's linkable. And the people sign up to all sorts of savings cards en masse making their transactions at the till completely traceable. It is not about what happens routinely, it is about what can happen. Banks don't give a damn about your transaction history as long as you account balance adds up and neither does the government. With cash, there is an illusion of anonymity. Without cash you actually know what happens.

You're right, it's partially linkable, but only partially. If I take out cash from the bank and buy something in a shop, it'll get mixed in with all the cash from everybody else buying things there (which obscures the exact purchase) and for smaller denominations there's a nonzero chance that they might get given out again in change before being banked (which makes it hard to prove any purchase). Until tills start scanning and reporting banknote numbers there's still far more anonymity than you get with digital.

Savings cards I wouldn't touch with a bargepole; I don't imagine anyone who gives two hoots about privacy would.

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