A cashless society is on the horizon. Everything will be digital, everything will be easy, and everything you do will be recorded.

For Spring Break this year 4 college friends and myself took a road trip from Houston down to Corpus Christi Texas for a little beach action. In the discussion of necessary funds for this adventure one of my friends mentioned that he intended to carry and spend only cash so that his movements around the state couldn't be traced if we got into any trouble. He may not have been completely serious or really that paranoid about it, but it really isn't a bad idea. Every credit card transaction you make is recorded and kept on some computer somewhere--and the government does have access to that should the need arise.

Now imagine where our economy and our Internet is taking us. Already I accept payments from clients with credit cards, I buy things online with credit cards, I use my check card for everything--and everyone accepts it as payment ("its everywhere I want to be"). American Express has released the first "smart card," which it has named "Blue." Services like PayPal.com are popping up everywhere letting you accept credit card payments from anyone--even through your PDA. Every website you buy from keeps a record of what you have purchased. Over 300 shareware applications have ad banners, which appear in the program--these track your surfing habits and direct appropriate ads to you based on that information. You have just become a number.

So what's wrong with all this? Maybe a little unnerving, but convenient and secure, right? Well, maybe. As with everything else, the government will want to monitor all this--they already monitor everything else anyway. There may come a day when terrorist threats are used to justify monitoring everything in the name of national security. But one day farmer Bob buys a bunch of fertilizer and rents a Ryder truck within a weeks time and oops, a little red flag appears on a computer screen somewhere next to farmer Bob's name labeling him as a possible threat. Farmer Bob will now be hassled by the Feds, and in times of national security scares, possibly arrested.

This may sound a little paranoid, but if the Internet was around when Stalin was, you can bet he would have used its potential to the fullest. Everything you do is already tracked; all it takes is a reason to monitor it to come up. My computer has over 200 cookies stored on it from all over the web (including one from *spark-online's discussion board). What if I had one from The Anarchist's Cookbook? Sure, I'm allowed to read bomb blue prints because of the first amendment, but the Feds would certainly consider that suspicious behavior if anything happened at my school, or office, or anywhere else I go regularly.

Mazzio's Pizza could tell you that I like thin crust pepperoni pizzas, with an occasional "Calzone Ring" and that I've never ordered without a coupon. Bank United could tell you how much I spent at Mazzio's last month, and also at Wal-Mart and every other store. Wal-Mart could tell you that I really like Snapple, Handi-Snacks and I probably have dandruff based on the shampoo I bought there. And a day may come when the government could tell you all of this. Maybe all this is a little far fetched, over dramatized and ignorant paranoia; but maybe all this e-money is a little too convenient if you are no longer anonymous.

Copyright © 2000 Brian Scates All Rights Reserved

Brian Scates, self-proclaimed "Secretary of Keeping it Real," is the man behind LogoWonders.com, a small graphic and web design firm. A computer information systems major at Stephen F. Austin University, he is an advocate of digital privacy and knows where you live. http://www.logowonders.com/brian/

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