For most of this century, and probably beginning last century, the powers that be have wanted to get rid of our physical money. They believe that it would make life harder for criminals. Many reports have covered this, and many governmental institutions would love to see it happen. It is believed that “bad actors” can be stopped in this way, both domestic and foreign. These tools, among others, were used to get Iran to the negotiating table.
In response to this people and organizations have been using currencies like Bitcoin. For those that don’t know, Bitcoin is an encrypted digital currency, generally called crypto-currency. It has proven to be useful for the black market, with some entries into the regular market.
Other ways to get around government run digital currency have been with physical goods, like gold and gems. Plus there is cash, even if it is going the way of the dodo. The goods method will always exist, and can never be wiped out, because something will always have sufficient value to be traded.
For those of us who are law abiding citizens who are concerned about privacy there are fewer and fewer options to do business without getting on the wrong side of the law. In order to catch criminals they made it impossible to discretely deposit or withdrawal any amount of money. Generally the law says that anything over $9,999 has to be reported to the government, but also if there are regular deposits that are below that threshold the bank must also report that to the government. As has been reported many times, the latter has happened on multiple occasions, which has allowed the government to seize legally acquired earnings.
While these laws are meant to stop criminal activity, it has also led to regular people losing privacy and property, money being part of that. Some like to say that privacy is not a concern if you aren’t doing anything wrong, but the Supreme Court has said that we have a right to privacy, which was used in the Roe v. Wade decision, and so it is important, even more than property, which is not a right.
Lately in the US, privacy has been tossed aside, but that is not the case in the EU. Recently the highest court in Europe has said that people have a right to forgotten, and also a right to privacy. Generally this does not count when it comes to monetary transactions, but it appears that some think that it should. The Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer has recently said, “We don’t want someone to be able to track digitally what we buy, eat and drink, what books we read and what movies we watch.” To this end he wants a constitutional right to privacy of monetary transactions.
The FBI and other government institutions want access to everything we do, just look at the back door they want placed in our communication systems. To combat these intrusions we must ensure that the law abiding have precedence over the unlawful. If we give precedence to the unlawful, the unlawful will have full access to the law abiding. Let us join Harald Mahrer’s movement for privacy in our transactions.