For example: in Canada, the bank accounts of those who protested were literally frozen (for simply speaking out or being critical) and talks of potential CBDCs (aka. used to deduct funds from one's account as a fine) whilst considering on abolishing cash altogether.
The alternative (for now at least) may be Crypto (online) until they consider that "illegal" in the future penalizing those who are using it, framing that as money laundering or tax evasion, whilst pushing their propaganda of "tap & go is safe & convenient".
The answers are divided between:
- "Cash is King" (it allows anonymous or "private" transactions between you and the merchant)
- "Contactless" (convenient, but your purchases & transactions are monitored by the state)
Cash is apparently the last bastion of "anonymous" transactions where it doesn't appear on one's statement and one gets to keep their money without the state deducting it from their account since a nation's central bank has monopoly over CBDCs and one's funds.
That's not even the end of it: them trying to make BTC or equivalent illegal by making CBDCs the default replacing gold overnight, it would mean all those bills you have are worthless. At this point, the only payment method is CBDCs that are linked to one's digital ID.
Whether those particular protesters were in the right seems less significant than the general threat of debanking being used by a government as a weapon to disrupt the logistics of protests. This is obviously not limited to disruptive right wing protesters with questionable grievances. Take for example the way the US has used sanction powers to disrupt the daily finances of ICC judges.
Again. This wasn't just a protest.
Ok, I'm not trying to defend it, call it what you want. The point is that debanking is serious and a real threat.
It's an alternative to using more serious threats, like physical violence. The state can freeze your bank accounts to get you to comply with its demands, or it can send a SWAT team in to arrest you.
In some ways it might be less serious, but that isn't its only notable property. There's also the way it bypasses many of the protections and assurances we have about the latter, like due process. The ability to silently, invisibly, and unilaterally shut down political adversaries etc. is dangerous, and there isn't much reason to think it will be used only where there is legitimate justification (again, consider the sanctions against ICC judges for trying to hold war criminals accountable). It is entirely reasonable for people to want to preserve ways to defend themselves against this type of nonphysical state violence.
How does it bypass due process?
If you're arrested, you have various established rights, like being innocent until proven guilty, jury of your peers, need for the circumstances of your arrest to have been legal, need to charge you with a crime and let you see a lawyer to continue holding you, etc. Debanking, afaik, is more of just something government agencies do at their discretion. Sometimes it's even done without any overt process at all, financial institutions are simply given vague warnings implying they should cut certain people or organizations off, and they proactively comply.
To give the example of civil forfeiture, there your money is assumed to be criminal until you prove in court that it is not, a reversal of the standard and infamously easy for corrupt cops to abuse.
Can you provide an example of that happening?
I've already given several examples, all of which seem to qualify.
I haven't seen a single example. You've hand-waved things that you think maybe sometimes do happen, but no examples of it actually happening.
The sanctions on ICC judges are a very specific and well known example. I'm not writing a researched essay in the comments here though so I'm reluctant to dig into the details if that's not something you're going to do yourself. If you want more examples and a more in-depth take on this issue, here is an article on the subject that I broadly agree with.
The sanctions on the ICC judges were just one of a number of illegal things that the Trump admin has done, including their attacks on fishing boats in the Caribbean and the killing of the survivors of those attacks.
A judge ruled that these sanctions were illegal and ordered the Trump admin not to enforce them, but the Trump admin refuses to stop doing illegal things.
Yes, and the failure of possible legal protections really illustrates the vulnerability I'm talking about here. This stuff took effect by default, had to be countered by a lawsuit, which hasn't worked so far. It should be really clear why further moves away from cash and any semblance of financial privacy and autonomy are dangerous invitations to more abuse.
Are you even more worried about the failure of possible legal protections when the government decides to use the navy to sink fishing boats and come back to kill the survivors?
There's a limit to what you can do when the house and senate refuse to impeach a president who is obviously breaking the law constantly, and when the justice department sees itself as the president's lawyer.