Tag Archives: Virtual money

Public health or private wealth? How digital vaccine passports pave way for unprecedented surveillance capitalism, by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal

We knew from the beginning that the Covid-19 measures had nothing to do with public health. They’ve always been about control and power, Check under the hood and you’ll also see it’s been about a select few augmenting their already massive fortunes. From Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal at thegrayzone.com:

The titans of global capitalism are exploiting the Covid-19 crisis to institute social credit-style digital ID systems across the West.

The death by starvation of Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow from the rural Indian state of Jharkhand, might have passed without notice had it not been part of a more widespread trend.

Like 1.3 billion of her fellow Indians, Devi had been pushed to enroll in a biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar in order to access public services, including her monthly allotment of 25kg of rice. When her fingerprint failed to register with the shoddy system, Devi was denied her food ration. Throughout the course of the following three months in 2017, she was repeatedly refused food until she succumbed to hunger, alone in her home.

Premani Kumar, a 64-year-old woman also from Jharkhand, met the same demise as Devi, dying of hunger and exhaustion the same year after the Aadhaar system transferred her pension payments to another person without her permission, while cutting off her monthly food rations.

A similarly cruel fate was reserved for Santoshi Kumari, an 11-year-old girl, also from Jharkhand, who reportedly died begging for rice after her family’s ration card was canceled because it had not been linked to their Aadhaar digital ID.

These three heart-rending casualties were among a spate of deaths in rural India in 2017 which came as a direct result of the Aadhaar digital ID system.

With over one billion Indians in its database, Aadhaar is the largest biometric digital ID program ever constructed. Besides serving as a portal to government services, it tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status, and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India.

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Largest US Bitcoin Exchange Ordered To Disclose Three Years Of User Data To IRS, by Tyler Durden

This judicial decision will take some of the luster off of virtual currencies. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Last week we reported, that in an unprecedented attempt to breach the personal privacy of users of the largest bitcoin exchange in the US, Coinbase, the IRS filed papers seeking a judicial order to serve a so-called “John Doe” summons on the San Francisco-based Bitcoin platform.

The government’s request was part of a bitcoin tax-evasion probe, and seeks to identify all Coinbase users in the U.S. who “conducted transactions in a convertible virtual currency” from 2013 to 2015. What makes a “John Doe” unique, is that it represents a special “shotgun” form of summons to look for tax evaders that allows the IRS to obtain information about all taxpayers in a group or class of people, even if the agency doesn’t know their identities. The IRS has deployed the tactic in its recent crackdown on undeclared offshore accounts, with the implication that any such broad sweep may lead to prosecution.

Coinbase executives were “extremely concerned” and vowed to oppose the government’s petition in court.

Our customers may be aware that the U.S. government filed a civil petition yesterday in federal court seeking disclosure of all Coinbase U.S. customers’ records over a three year period. The government has not alleged any wrongdoing on the part of Coinbase and its petition is predicated on sweeping statements that taxpayers may use virtual currency to evade taxes.

Although Coinbase’s general practice is to cooperate with properly targeted law enforcement inquiries, we are extremely concerned with the indiscriminate breadth of the government’s request. Our customers’ privacy rights are important to us and our legal team is in the process of examining the government’s petition. In its current form, we will oppose the government’s petition in court.

To continue reading: Largest US Bitcoin Exchange Ordered To Disclose Three Years Of User Data To IRS