Watch the news report. Taipei and Taiwan government continue to try to move Taiwan towards electronic payments.
Most of Taiwan culture and life outside of Taipei doesn’t need electronic payments or live that life. Taiwan tradition and culture has been based on a cash system and indirectly barter system.
They still live it very comfortably today.
At another time, when the government tried to get too much inside people’s daily life, 228 holiday memorializes a time when the government tried to intervene in that daily life.
I don’t like the methods, but I like the result. It’s difficult coming to Taiwan after being in more modern places where I don’t have to carry a bucket of change around with me.
When I was in Germany they were still pretty much cash only. While almost everyone accepts EC cards this is hardly universal. And some places don’t even like accepting EC cards if you are making small payments.
This isn’t great. I don’t even do 會員cards cuz I don’t want businesses knowing what I’m buying (no, it’s none of their business how many times I week I buy chocolate milk or what brand of TP I purchase.) This isn’t tinfoil hat territory. It’s the reality of big data.
You know, I had someone offer me tin foil for a hat this past summer. Turns out the guy himself only used encrypted emails and would often seek out government keywords and send encrypted emails featuring all the key words that trigger US government agents. Forcing them to spend forever trying to decrypt useless intel? Kept his phone in a Faraday cage too. Some (ex-soldiers) have too much time on their hands.
I will never forget the day my parent’s home answering machine had a series of messages from the grocery store that “you purchased flour that has been recalled, please check that brand A’s serial code is not xxxxxxxx to xxxxxxxy”. On the one hand, thanks for looking out for us, on the other hand, thanks for reminding me that you’re keeping track of the things we buy more than we are.
I don’t mind if everything is cashless, as long as it’s fairly consistent, easy to use, and easily available. At the moment, I don’t have anything but an Easy Card. I haven’t figured out even Line Pay yet, and I’m usually good at that sort of thing.
I personally welcome a mostly cashless society. In hate having to get out cash when a tap of a credit card is so much easier. Korea was like this, even hole in the wall restaurants took visa. It also would help with all these businesses evading taxes. And you can collect card points or cashback too.
Cash should still have its place as an option for people that want to use it though. Canada and Korea are like that, most people use electronic payments but if you want to kick it old school that’s OK too.
On Taiwan’s situation it’s a bit annoying. Easy card, ipass in Kaohsiung, happygo, carrefour, I cash and so on. It’s too fragmented like Japan. And easy card and ipass don’t give me any type of kickback for using their cards either at shops.
And cleaner. Money is dirty. Carrefour delivery asked that we no use it anymore, but we’ve no choice.
Line, Jko, Google, Apple, PX Pay. I think the convenience stores have their own as well. I don’t yet know how it all ties up. I have almost 2000 Line points and I don’t know what to do with it. It works somehow with iPass, but I don’t have an iPass card or know if I need one. I think the others need a local credit card, that’s a pain, and maybe a foreign one which is unreliable and accrues fees.
He would take it out to use it, but he didn’t want the government (and, more importantly, random businesses with a buck to make) tracking his every movement. I don’t blame him. I love how well Taiwan had kept a handle on coronavirus cases, but at the same time, every time I take a walk meandering past random farm fields, I wonder if someone is tracking my movements just cuz they can.
I don’t know about the “deceptive” part. As far as I’ve seen they’ve been pretty straightforward about it. It’s not like other countries aren’t doing it. In Japan it’s ubiquitous. I’ve even seen news reports from the States considering it.
Don’t get me wrong I prefer paper money. I’d also like to keep my financial stuff off my phone. But this may be coming one way or the other.
Did he carry the Faraday cage with him? And how is that different from turning the phone off or taking out the SIM card? Or better yet, using a GPS faking app like people use to fake-walk their Pokemon. Better to obfuscate than hide.
Today, everyone with a phone a special special boy or girl and needs constant reassurance.
What if it brings you back?
That’s the problem I have with it. I know you can lock phones with PIN codes and fingerprints, but I don’t want to have to unlock my phone every time someone sends me a message because a few times a week I want to buy something.
You can make a Faraday cage pretty easily. You just need a continuous mass of something conductive, like tin foil. (Hence tin foil hats?) It doesn’t need to be big, but that chip bag that the woman in the latest Terminator movie used didn’t work so well.
Taking out your SIM card won’t work as most phones have GPS signals even without network. I don’t have data but MapMyRun worked fine when I trained for a marathon a few years back. As long as the signal is connected, it’ll work until the battery dies and upload the info when you reconnect. Also, your phone uses wifi to get an even more accurate location. So it’s risky to “just take out the SIM” and even switch on airplane mode if you’re trying to hide. And GPS faking apps can probably be hacked, just as VPNs + Tor can give away your location if you don’t use them correctly.
If quantum computing brings me back from the dead, we’ve got bigger things to worry about.
Some apps on your phone will record your movements and can upload it once you have a connection, but you can always turn of GPS. And you can turn off wifi. Or turn off your phone.
It worked in Enemy of the State.
Not really, they just transmit a false GPS signal in place of the real GPS signal to whatever software on your phone reads the GPS signal. I think it only works on rooted Androids, and probably you need to use add-on framework like Magisk.
Tor is very unreliable because you don’t know who you’re connecting to. I think anyone who goes so far as to make a Faraday cage can DNS leaks and the like if they use a VPN.
Altered Carbon, the last episode of Star Trek: Picard. Probably a bunch of other stuff. It might be coming.
