RFID and the End of Cash

New technology raises the spectre of the state gaining total control over money, achieving this nominal collectivist heaven by destroying the essence of cashthe cornerstone of individual freedom....The state is a Faustian pact, where the individual submits to its legitimate violence in return for protection and security [12]. The government, from its side of this bargain, demands ownership of its citizens and the monopolistic right to tax them at whatever level whenever it wishes, calling it balancing the budget....The government’s long-term aim may be to turn society into a Panopticon, using it as an analogy for a prison in which an unseen guard observes all prisoners without them knowing they are being observed. By constructing a complete record of the personal debits and credits of all its citizens, thereby spinning a web connecting all buyers and sellers, the Internal Revenue Service and its equivalents outside the U.S. not only calculate every tax bill but are able to seize payment from those operating in both the official economy and the underground shadow economy.In a democratic regime, this assault on individual freedom must appear benign so as to avoid popular discontent. Democracies are obliged to profess superior morality and/or utility in order to convince citizens of the rightness of their legitimate violence [12]. The enforcers of state powerthe police, national security services, and tax collectorsmay be given the right, nay the obligation, to invade the privacy of citizens with impunity....Legislators have learned the lesson of the 1931 conviction of Al Capone by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. If you can’t catch a criminal in the act, follow the money instead. Invert the burden of proof. The accused (in fact everyone) is guilty until proven innocent, where proof of innocence is nothing less than the unconditional surrender of all personal and financial information. No surprise that anti-money-laundering regulations, especially the know your customer rules, demand that every bank official act as a secret policeman for the government....An RF-emitting tag can be small enough to fit into bank notes so as to uniquely identify each one as it passes within range of a sensor. The authorities claim its purpose is to combat counterfeiting and identify money transfers between suspicious parties. RFID readers interrogate multiple tags simultaneously. Every time notes are passed to or from a bank, RFID readers identify and record them, linking this data with the person who presented or received them. The government has the potential to know not only exactly how much cash is being carried out/in the door but who is carrying it and who carried it previously. By comparing the respective identification numbers to entries in their database (for authentication purposes, of course), the authorities can draw a link between the last recorded holder of the note and the current one....No more anonymous cash. But worse, two other properties of cash - fungibility and stored value - are also under attack. Each bank note, whatever its denomination, should be as good as any other, but not if it's rejected, discounted, or terminated. By insisting that only bank notes with operational tags are legal tender, governments may cancel the cash of targeted individuals.What a great method for instantly taxing citizens. Governments calculate the tax owed and take the correct sum straight out of each taxpayers pocket by canceling bank notes, then reprinting and reissuing new ones bearing different RFID tags. The possibilities are limitless. By giving each note an expiration date, governments may force bearers of cash to spend their money. The government can also hold out the threat of instant devaluation, with the value of a bank note being not the numbers printed on the note itself but the amount coded into the tag, drastically transforming the notion of stored value.

Perdition writes:I can see how a sensor would be able to tell how much money a person was holding, but how would it be bale to tell exactly who has the money and that it hasn't been passed to someone else?

In all this alarmist rabble-rousing rhetoric one almost expects to see, "Citizens of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," but despite the tone it still contains a very legitimate message about the threat to personal freedom.

One of two things will happen as a result of this idea. Either the prophecy is true...

...and we're one step away from accepting the mark of the beast...

...or it's just a coincidence but born-again Christians every where will incessantly insist that it is the End Times.

ASV Rev13: writes:15 And it was given [unto him] to give breath to it, [even] to the image to the breast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand, or upon their forehead;
17 and that no man should be able to buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark, [even] the name of the beast or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred and sixty and six.

Where does it say anything about a cashless society?All it says is that "save he that hath the mark." It says nothing about cash at all.