From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (Bill_Stewart(HOY002)1305)
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 93 00:53:59 PDT
To: i6t4@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca
Subject: Re:  I'm not paranoid...  They *are* out to get me!
Message-ID: <9307300749.AA09159@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Nick MacDonald's note on bar codes on Canadian money, and speculation
about banks tracking what bills they give you, is something they're probably
not doing now, but could if they wanted; USA Today had an article a while
back about proposals to do that with US money.  You really can't do a 
perfect tracking job, but a large amount of cash comes from banks,
gets spent at stores, and goes back to banks, and could easily enough
be tracked it it were bar-coded and banks were forced (or paid) to 
read it with bar-code scanners.  Maybe you'd only track 50%, or 80%,
but that could have a major impact on privacy, and a major "improvement"
in the government's ability to keep tabs on us.  It's really no tougher
to print bar coded serial numbers than human-readable ones.

Sounds like it's a good time to get digicash out into the market,
or stock up on rrolls of quarters :-)

		Bill
# Bill Stewart    wcs@anchor.ho.att.com  +1-908-949-0705 Fax-4876
# AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4M-312, Crawfords Corner Rd, Holmdel, NJ  07733-3030