Sweden, Norway rethink plans for cashless societies over fears that fully digital payment systems would leave them vulnerable to Russian security threats

As much as I hate using cash, I understand that the credit card companies charge ridiculous fees to businesses and also that people with very low income don't always have access to digital forms of payment. Maybe Sweden does better with equipping their entire society with digital tools, but in the US I don't think we are ready for a fully digital payment society.

In America, you can't open a bank account without an address. That means that the homeless population can't open a bank account (not easily, anyway), and therefore can't get a debit card.

Cashless is a nice idea, but it is extremely prohibitive against the most vulnerable people (which, sadly, might be part of the point).

The risk of the payment system getting shut down and people being unable to make payments for a while is real. And it is one good reason to be less reliant on digital payments.

But there is also the risk of bad actors, which could also be e.g. Russia, getting access to decades of payment history through a hack, if everything is digital. Having that data for every citizen of a country could enable efficient profiling of people in the country using big data analysis technologies.

The kind of thing you could find out with the transaction data is who are working in the military or security police, who is sympathetic to Russia and at the same time vulnerable to work with foreign governments, and potential blackmailing material relating to people in these or other groups. I'm sure the analysts working for the bad actor can come up with even more useful things to look for in the data.

There are of course a lot of other data sources that bad actors are interested in and that are easier to hack, but the financial history seems more comprehensive source of information than most other ones.

Not to mention total monetary surveillance

I was once a proponent of cashless societies. Not anymore. Too many vulnerabilities, too many ways for governments to take control of your finances.

Something we can thank the Russians for and hackers everywhere.

We have cash?

o_O

Haven't used it for years.

Noone uses cash in Sweden, except for maybe drug dealers and super old people(and the occasional tourist). Most businesses dont even accept cash anymore.

It isnt just the convenience of not having to carry cash, it is also much safer. Much lower risk of getting robbed, for both individuals and businesses.

If it isn't cash you have to ask permission from someone to use it

Yeah, considering how bad banks and other financial institutions are at IT security and the fact that there's no incentive for a capitalist financial institution to fix that problem, it's not a good idea.

Though having cash is not enough. The stores also need to be able to accept cash without internet usage. I think we had a case in germany a few years ago, where some supermarkets could not sell anything, because the servers, to which the local payment system connected (also uses for cash) didn't work. Not sure, if that was because of a security incident.

Just having a power outage is enough lol, never mind an attack.

Sweden is otherwise cool with having a zero privacy payment system? I'm a little Suprised this made it that far even there. When I see a business that says it does not accept cash, I stay away even if I wasn't planning to use cash anyway.

Cashless can only work if you adopt a digital cash such as monero, other wise you are taking away privacy, control and possibly small transactions (depending on what fees are common in your country)

In a cashless society banks and credit companies become your rulers as you have no real way to bypass them.

I suspect that any country that tries to go cashless without a real cash alternative, will just find itself with a new form of cash (gold, silver, etc) since eventually there will be enough people trying to avoid fees and taxes

Yeees! Great! I like cash.

Meanwhile in Denmark: FULL STEAM AHEAD! Next stop on the digitalisation train, all of your identification papers!

My derped eyes and pronked brain read cashless as moneyless. Comon, Nordic countries, you can do it.

GNU Taler to the rescue!

The netherlands are already looking into it: https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/

The project could be used via paper trail, as far as I understand it.

I hoped for a second they meant moneyless.

Sure, but if a cyber attack knocks out your credit card systems in a targeted attack, chances are they're taking your cash machines down as well.

And who carries enough cash around to be useful any more? I know I don't. I might have a £20 note tucked in my phone case at a push.

This would suck so bad. My debit card's chip went bad and the bank can't reissue me a new one until it expires. I've been using cash as a fallback when I don't want to do the '3 chip failure timeout then swipe' dance just to purchase some soda.

Funny way to say people dont like the idea of having all financial privacy ripped away from them.

I'm more concerned with the threats from the people in charge of the system, but whatever gets them to the conclusion that it's a bad idea is fine with me.

correct.

and the penny drops

Money changers in shambles.