Big Brother is spying on you, even in our rural town in Luzon

here everyone has cellphones.

they still use cash, of course, but even here we have e commerce so we can buy stuff on line and have it delivered. And in the malls, you can use credit card or e cash apps on your cell phone.

Joy and Kuya have cellphones of various types to use for business. They are connected and use the cellphones for photos, memos, on line discussions etc. 

Well anyway, last year the government decided to demand registration of your SIM card for your cellphone. 

I keep asking how to do this, but no one seems to know how to do this.

Why worry? 

because excuse me but I suspect that hackers will be able to steal our identity. I mean, if my US Federal OPM file was hacked a couple years ago by Chinese hackers, why should I trust having my personal information on a database here in the Philippines?

And the video notes that some folk worry this will let the government punish those who oppose it.

Yes, the left is worrying about this too. They pointed out how this could be used to target those who might demonstrate or protest government policies 

Sort of like how the Canadian government punished the truckers protesting a ridiculous law about covid by closing their bank accounts. 

and of course it makes one wonder if this will be part of the way to implement e money in the near future, which means the next step will be to implement ways to gauarantee you are who you say you are... mark of the beast anyone?

So what happens when you eliminate cash money?

India, in 2016, eliminated much of their cash money with the excuse they were trying to stop tax evasion... 

and as this BBC report noted:

Curbing tax evasion is part of the agenda for the "aadhaar" scheme, a giant digital database designed to give hundreds of millions of Indians a unique ID, and of the new Goods and Services tax. And reducing tax evasion can only be good for India. The more money it raises in tax, the more it has to spend on useful stuff like roads, hospitals and schools.

But some are not so happy with it noting that the rich just hid their money in gold, real estate, or overseas banks. (I should note that gold confiscation was done a year or two earlier but hey, that law was mostly ignored).

India’s black money problem has not gone away. The economy has taken a beating, huge financial losses have been incurred, and the marginalized poor, least able to withstand adversity, have been negatively affected.

 italics mine.

 

unlike most official news sources, MarketSlant summarizes what really was going on, in detail Summary: it won't work completely because"crime will find a way".

and an article in today's IndiaExpress notes: it will not stop there, since big economies like China are pushing digital currancy.

Last month the Chinese Central Bank rolled out pilot testing for its home grown digital currency. The tests, slated to take place in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an, will involve transferring salaries to government workers in the form of the new Digital Currency (internally referred to as DC/EP) and tying up with a set of designated merchants to facilitate transactions using the currency.

UKGuardian in a 2021 article discusses e currancy by a governemt central bank vs e currancies by ordinary banks and notes the threats of bit coin to this.

except of course a lot of us suspect the bit coin shannanigans led to the recent bank failures (and bail outs) and are probably going to result in more government control of the money system. 

so what could go wrong?

Professor Carrington call your office. the sun is acting up again.

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update: The secretary registered my SIM card when she did the registration of all the SIM cards of our business.

So everything is okay with this.