Cash saves Privacy!

Options for private cashless barely exist. And those options are met with the similar opposition from the governments, since they do not want you to have any privacy. They want to know who buys what where and when.

They might claim that this is for "public protection", to diminish black markets or terrorists or catch various types of people that the public might have negative preconceptions about. But as with everything politicians say in "democratic countries" is most likely not the real intention. Since voicing the real intention will most likely be met with oppositions and protests.

The Basic Law of Israel ( and many other countries ) includes a right to privacy to every citizen. If Israel will be a cashless society, this right will be violated. And here is how:

Recording all you buy

Credit cards are tied to a bank account which you cannot open, or operate anonymously. Every swipe of a credit card leaves a trace. The transaction recorded by the store will contain your name and all the relevant data the credit card will give the store. With bank checks the same is true, it's just an analog, paper version of the same thing.

Store owners and staff that have access to those recordings can see who buys what, how frequently and when. There is a chilling story of an American teenage girl, who was spied on by "Target" ( big American supermarket chain ). And "Target" knew she was pregnant earlier than she knew it. Because their automatic promotion system tracked a certain purchasing pattern in her, that is statistically correlated with pregnancy.

Even if you somehow want to trust the government to handle this kind of sensitive information, why would you feel safe when store employees can know so much about you? Maybe a career at a supermarket will suddenly attract serial killers, since that will be an easy way to learn their targets.

No more anonymous options

With technologies like Rav Kav today you can have a level of semi-privacy by buying their "anonymous" card and paying it with cash. If you frequently change that card, you can think of it, today, as something like using cash for public transportation.

Another example would be paying a SIM card with cash, for connecting to the internet. Regular modem connection usually requires your name, address and ID number. With an anonymous SIM card all they know about you is what sites you visit and roughly speaking where you are, because they can triangulate the position of the card. But it will be hard for them to know if it is you or your neighbors.

If your ability to pay cash for those things will cease to be possible, there will now be a trace from you to those "anonymous" cards. Rendering them no longer anonymous.

Even less digital privacy

Digital devices have serial numbers which are often recorded in a time of purchase. For example, digital cameras ( and mobile phones with cameras ) include those serial numbers in the metadata of the images taken with them. This became a useful tool to track producers of material the government decides to be not okay.

Paying for digital devices with an identifiable method, such as a credit card, ties your identity directly to the serial number of the device. Which is a problem for two reasons:

1. The government might change the rules and whatever you have been doing thus far with the device might become not okay in the future. You have no way to know what it will be.

2. The device ( or the serial number of the device ) could be stolen for illegal activity, incriminating the person identified with buying of this device instead of the real criminal.

Paying with cash ( and without telling the store your name ) reduces this problem.