Thailand is looking to issue SIM cards to all tourists to protect national security. They say they will be able to respond to tourists in trouble, but they are really looking to track everyone because of the rising threat of Islamic extremism. Domestically, you are already being tracked. Google wants to “verify” who you are by using your phone. The police can and do track people they intend to arrest by using their cell phone. So while many people are shocked by this proposal, the difference would be to only force tourists to use their sim or they could simply take your phone number and track you by using your current sim card. Welcome to the new age of global tracking.
People are still unaware that the tracking system that reads license plates is nationwide. Many places just take your license plate and bill you for tolls. But pull in a parking garage at an airport and you will see cameras taking a picture of your license plate. Lose your ticket and they can tell you the time you arrived and where your car is parked. They are doing this in Europe as well as the USA. We are already being tracked in every way possible.
This is why I say we MUST eliminate income taxes and return to indirect taxation. Income tax requires the tracking of everything we do, where you work, etc. Elizabeth Warren proposed that lower income people should not have to file income taxes because the government already knows everything and can easily just send you your refund check at the end of the year.
It is illegal to send large sums of money by mail for they will deem it money laundering. So far, small sums of cash are still legal, such as a gift in a birthday card. However, the maximum insurance for cash is $15. That does not mean the government employee at the post office even understands the laws and regulations.
When we tried to send Roman coins through the mail to our customers, they refused to allow us to mail them by marking them as money. Trying to explain that this was ancient money was like trying to explain physics to a two-year-old. We gave up and relabeled it as antiquities. The clash in regulations assumed our coins were “money” worth over $15, which was illegal in their minds. So yes, you cannot send even a few hundred dollars in “money” through the mail for they will call it money laundering. It is getting impossible to get off the grid as they say.
