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Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases?
Anonymous Nerd writes "I was looking at Fox News today and came accross this gem of a story . It seems the Pentagon wishes to create a massive database of every transaction made in America. I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?"
I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?
Outlaw cash transactions..... Credit Card/Debit from now on only.. or else the terrrorist have won (tm).
(just a joke...)
then the right thing isn't necessarily to pay cash, or barter or start your own currency. Jam there databases with useless information. Buy paper towels and toilet paper with cash, subscribe to 2600 with your credit card. Leaving no trace isn't realistic for most people, even if you only use cash chances are you withdrew that cash from a bank, or a bank cashed your check. Instead concentrate on leaving a wide swath of purchases that indicate you're a "subversive" for them to discover when they mine their data.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
see also the "Scientia Est Potentia" ("Knowledge Is Power") article at kuro5hin.org. It's been there for two days already. It covers the same story, but without the anonymous coward troll comments.
Most terrorists will use credit cards and checks without a second thought. Most necessary purchases for any terrorist can be placed without giving the slightest indication of terrorism such as gasoline, nails, backpacks, household ammonia, hexamine, car batteries, SUVs, glassware, growth media, gas masks, firecrackers, food, shelter, and prostitutes. Most of what would be tracked could be easily stolen from a low security University laboratory, libraries, by killing the owners of a gun shop (tricky), hospitals, stealing large trucks, or by killing Air Marshalls and taking their guns. Terrorists can easily build a scrapnel bomb or a culture of bacteria with less than a thousand dollars and perhaps a trip to the laboratory. The terrorists already have the policing under control, its you citizens who don't.
Fox News can go to hell.
This is related, I believe: http://www.aclu.org/Cyber-Liberties/Cyber-Libertie s.cfm?ID=11332&c=58
--Ben
The Total Information Awareness program will not, in fact, gather any information. Nor will it change who gets to see the information that the government already collects nor how long that information is maintained. All that this program is, is a way to gather together the information that the government already collects, in a form where data can be mined between elements which are currently not linkable. The press is getting it wrong, as usual, and the rash posters on slashdot are taking the press, oddly, at their words, then putting on the tinfoil hats and heading off into conspiracy theory heaven.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
they won't be tracking most of my purchases - i left america back in 1998 when i realised far too many of my fellow citizens were spending far too much time discussing clinton's penis and not nearly enough time paying attention to laws like the dmca and dozens of others. or the widening gap between rich and poor. or dealing honestly and constructively with the multitude of injustices in american society. or seriously working on environmental, health and waste issues.
instead, people were more interested in clinton's penis, the amazing efficiency of private industry (how efficient were they really?), and buying suv's.
no one was all that interested in protecting freedom - maybe their pet freedoms but no one elses.
as far as i can see, things haven't changed much.
and actually, come to think of it, the us gov't does track a lot of my activity. eschelon is alive and well and has been for years. sounds like domestic american citizens will be getting a taste of what the rest of the world has gotten. if it feels invasive and wrong, keep in mind that unlike the rest of the world you guys have a say.
but as usual, you're not saying much.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
--the dotcom boom of the 2000's is biometrics-well one of them anyway. You ask how they'll track cash purchases? Well in stores they'll use facial recognition, body language recognition, walking styles recognition, monitor your pulse rate, whatever. I've seen all these articles linked from slashdot already. could be an electronic fingerprint required to finalise the purchase. all that stuff is here already in test areas. And I'd say some huge numbers of stores have vid cameras already, might not be very hard to pass another one of those laws. They already are doing it all over in public places. No stopping that action now, the goons DIG on that big brother "command and control and surveil" action. they can't get enough or roll it out fast enough. and they got all the grunts they need wiling to do the work, from camp executioners to scientists, shell out the cash, you can hire all the goons with no conscious ya want to.
In the works for US currency soon:
Next year, the phase out of old greenbacks and new "colored" money. One of (several of the) the scams being promoted is cash that "times out". That's right, spend it by a certain date or it gradually loses a % of value down to zip.
In the works for US people soon, the implantable chip, pretty soon mandated. They'll do prisoners first, dangerous released felons on parole, "sex offenders", etc. then high risk medical patients. then normal prisoners. then "the chidrenz" so they don't get kidnapped. Proly need a few more high interest media feeding frenzy staged "kidnappings" for this to take hold. Then the military in general. The goal there is total robot cyborgs, this can just be seen now, they aren't even hiding it. Then, everyone gets the chips with no saying "no" because "we need good universal ID that can't be faked" (easily),most likely combined with a massive (again, staged on purpose for effect) bioterrorist attack so they can "keep track of who got the shots (and implants) and not.
government works on these three principles, create a problem, get the reaction you expect, off the solution. They'll have people lining up begging them for the chips(with the medical 'cure' and food and etc that will go with it), with few exceptions. Tracking cash is not going to be that hard, IMO. they don't have to track all of it, just most of it, like they track most of what happens now or have the ability to do so.
And they just voted "yes" yesterday to start doing all this stuff, more or less, I mean, they aren't being coy about it.