Few or many, but cash

This is a text automatically translated from Italian. If you appreciate our work and if you like reading it in your language, consider a donation to allow us to continue doing it and improving it.

The articles of Cassandra Crossing I'm under license CC BY-SA 4.0 | Cassandra Crossing is a column created by Marco Calamari with the "nom de plume" of Cassandra, born in 2005.

A new reflection from Cassandra on the use of cash which, as always, we feel we can totally agree with.

This article was written on October 29, 2022 from Cassandra

Cassandra Crossing 521/ Few or many, but cash

Is the "cash" topic today just a diversion for politics? So let's talk about it seriously again.

Cassandra would never have thought of writing something related to the petty and most inferior politics, which is often in search of "weapons of mass distraction", particularly when it wants to hide things and keep already half-asleep citizens calm.

No, Don't touch Cassandra's cash, which for completely different reasons from those once again being flaunted in all the media today, are a very serious topic, as well as one of the last tools available to ordinary citizens for the defense against invasiveness from an increasingly shrewd state, which aspires to become ever more more.

Given that the debate in the media concerns exclusively whether to lower or raise the limit on the use of cash, as if the matter had relevance only for things that have never been proven such as the fight against tax evasion, all of us, as citizens, have evidently failed to highlight That the use of cash, particularly for amounts related to daily life, is essential so that digital civil rights and privacy are defended, and not distorted.

For this reason Cassandra, who has already given you six doses of her vaccine in this very long series of statements about it (here are the first three, fourth, fifth, sixth), invites you to raise your sleeve and accept this seventh, which is just a "reminder".

Read them, they are short, always current and interesting.

What is the alternative to cash? Easy. Either we go back to barter, or we use electronic transactions. Obviously let's leave aside the first case.

In a society where information technology has become ubiquitous, and data are the focus of speculative finance and social technocontrol, electronic transactions, when not strictly necessary, they are not just dangerous, they are Absolute Evil in action.

Let's be clear, electronic transactions are useful and necessary when strictly necessary (electronic accounting and invoicing) and in the few other cases where they are a legal obligation. We expect that in these cases the Guarantor will always keep an eye on those who process our data, so that the principles of minimization and necessity of the GDPR are always applied, and we continue.

In all other cases electronic transactions are just a means to tighten the grip of Cambridge Analytica-style invasive commercial profiling, or that of the techno-control of citizens.

“But the cash — repeats itself obsessively — increase tax evasion and are used by criminals.”

So, for the umpteenth time, we repeat that:

1. a limit on cash does not further help tax evaders who, as criminals, already do not respect it, and have no difficulty in exchanging a briefcase full of banknotes in defiance of any limit;
2. a limit on cash does not discourage the "black", for the same reasons as point 1
3. Some completely legal "electronic transactions" (international bank transfers) are the preferred means of large tax evaders, who use international banking circuits to reach tax havens.
4. all electronic means of payment, without exception, are used to collect personal data, data that also finds its way outside the EU, and which is not processed according to the principle of necessity and minimization required by the GDPR.

Now it is clear that, if you use cash, none of this personal data is provided to third parties, for the very simple reason that using cash the personal data that the transaction would have produced is not generated.

A perfect solution. Those who buy for cash are not forced to give up personal data because this data is not even created.

This is, if we want, a necessary "application to oneself" of the data minimization principle of the GDPR.

“I have to use cash because otherwise, if I use electronic payment systems I would have my personal data processed, which does not need to be processed because there is an alternative.”

And it's absolutely true. We have the duty, as well as the interest, to minimize our personal data; if not in strict terms of the law, for our own good, our loved ones and the entire democratic society.

So stay away or cancel all means of electronic payment that you do not need, particularly if they are linked to hardware or software producers, or are not part of banking circuits, which are also evil (this time with a lowercase "M", but which, in certain cases, we cannot do without .

This certainly includes doing without all the authentication with cell phones, watches and other tokens, each of which adds another voracious guest to the banquet of your personal data.

Marco Calamari

Join communities