Don’t Go Digital!

 

I’m kind of a computer guy since my entry into the role of systems analyst/programer in 1964 more or less launched my working career, which I consider to have been moderately successful. Computer technology has been an obvious boon to our modern society as an aid to meet the massively increasing work volumes involving information processing. Here, I will suggest that certain ongoing trends being promoted by government and affiliated organizations to replace completely traditional methods of information processing and record-keeping with wholly digital approaches approved and/or controlled by government are surefire paths leading to the destruction of our representative republican form of government of, by, and for the people.

I started working in commercial bank operations in 1959. Mainframe computers were just being introduced since the industry was overwhelmed with paper generated by demand deposit (checking) accounts. In a four-year period, I got the benefit of working in and managing units involving teller operations, and proof and bookkeeping operations where the checks and deposit paper were sorted and distributed and ultimately posted to individual accounts. These were machine-based and manually operated but required huge numbers of people to operate.

I became an analyst/programmer at the bank to convert these functions to the computer and later I went to the U.S. Treasury Department to lead a project to convert Social Security Checks issued monthly to Direct Deposit. We implemented this capability nationwide in the late 1970s in a joint effort with the Federal Reserve Bank operations to distribute federal payments to all types of financial institutions using electronic funds transfer (EFT). Direct deposit capability then became available to Treasury and across a broad spectrum of commercial entities for payroll direct deposit and other payment applications.

I personally benefitted in 1983 by being selected to be the Treasury Chief Disbursing Officer responsible for all federal payments with eight field offices and over a thousand employees. After the full implementation of direct deposit, this office (I was long gone) had a single location with fewer than 150 employees. I won’t venture a guess on the ultimate benefit for banks, businesses, and individuals.

Now, back to the premise of this post. The first types of information we should make certain do not go totally digital are financial (banking), elections, guns, and health.  I’m sure there are others but these are vitally important to maintain our rights as individual Americans.

The Biden administration already went through a failed nomination of a candidate for Comptroller of the Currency, regulator of national banks, who proposed totally digital checking accounts for all to be administered through the Federal Reserve Banks. The very first entity with total access and control of all this information is then the federal government (all of it).

Recent elections, efforts to change election laws, especially in Washington, and Dinesh D’Souza speak for this category.

Plenty of news and Ricochet discussions are available on Second Amendment issues.

Our last two years of experience with the federal and state governments dictating health issues during the pandemic should be enough to discourage us from allowing total authority there for our health information.

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There are 34 comments.

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  1. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    @Fritz, did you purchase an app for your Android phone?  That would involve google pay, which is a “wallet”.

    • #31
  2. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    @ Fritz, did you purchase an app for your Android phone? That would involve google pay, which is a “wallet”.

    Yep, that’s one example of what I meant.

    • #32
  3. Fritz Coolidge
    Fritz
    @Fritz

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Okay, so it wasn’t innocent. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if Fritz like bought something through Google Shopping or something, which resulted in his payment card being automatically added to his “wallet” and he just didn’t understand what that meant.

    @kedavis

    It was not I who’d posted about his mysterious digital wallet issue. I asked what the bank had done about it, and the OP replied they cancelled and replaced the card. I abhor and avoid everything Google.

    • #33
  4. Fritz Coolidge
    Fritz
    @Fritz

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    @ Fritz, did you purchase an app for your Android phone? That would involve google pay, which is a “wallet”.

    @PhilTurmel

    It was not I who’d posted about his mysterious digital wallet issue. I asked what the bank had done about it, and the OP replied they cancelled and replaced the card. I abhor and avoid everything Google. Nor do I have an Android phone.

    • #34
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