Do you have a right to anonymous money?
Mar. 21st, 2014 12:26 pmSmall cash transactions are mostly anonymous. Now that electronic payments (debit card, credit card, oyster card, paypal, etc) are becoming much more common, transactions are less anonymous by default.
This is fine, provided the company keeps the records internally and doesn't use it for anything. But once it exists, it's very easy for it to leak. Eg. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ describes a supermarket data-mining purchase history, determining which purchases might correlate with being pregnant, and sending pregnancy-related special-offers to their home address without checking that (for instance) their parents might not know and not approve.
One of the reasons I was interested in crypto-currencies in the first place is that they provide a way to make "cash" payments electronically. That hasn't necessarily worked out so well. But now it occurs to me, that may be a bit of a red-herring. Anonymous pre-paid credit cards provide anonymity, and already exist.
It's just not a common way of buying things. And normally has to connect back to your real identity somewhere. (Eg. if you have to prove your age to see something, you may have to inadvertently prove your identity as well, and large organisations and governments may prefer to err on the side of people proving their identity often.)
Large transactions should not be anonymous, because the government has to detect tax evasion and money laundering. Right? (Although governments do seem to be getting more greedy with what they have a right to do.)
But what about small transactions? Is non-anonymity ok? Or should they be anonymous technically? Or should it be a hitherto-unrecognised right that companies you buy things from should not be able to record which transactions were made by the same person?
This is fine, provided the company keeps the records internally and doesn't use it for anything. But once it exists, it's very easy for it to leak. Eg. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ describes a supermarket data-mining purchase history, determining which purchases might correlate with being pregnant, and sending pregnancy-related special-offers to their home address without checking that (for instance) their parents might not know and not approve.
One of the reasons I was interested in crypto-currencies in the first place is that they provide a way to make "cash" payments electronically. That hasn't necessarily worked out so well. But now it occurs to me, that may be a bit of a red-herring. Anonymous pre-paid credit cards provide anonymity, and already exist.
It's just not a common way of buying things. And normally has to connect back to your real identity somewhere. (Eg. if you have to prove your age to see something, you may have to inadvertently prove your identity as well, and large organisations and governments may prefer to err on the side of people proving their identity often.)
Large transactions should not be anonymous, because the government has to detect tax evasion and money laundering. Right? (Although governments do seem to be getting more greedy with what they have a right to do.)
But what about small transactions? Is non-anonymity ok? Or should they be anonymous technically? Or should it be a hitherto-unrecognised right that companies you buy things from should not be able to record which transactions were made by the same person?