Norway Is Tracking What Everyone Buys, And Biden Wants To Follow Suit In The United States

[Kamaji]

Norway Is Tracking What Everyone Buys, And Biden Wants To Follow Suit In The United States

Citizens using this new digital currency would effectively have no privacy from the government.

BY: JUSTIN HASKINS
JUNE 30, 2022

A report published at the end of May by NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, notes that the official statistics bureau of Norway will soon track most grocery store purchases made in the Scandinavian country, a development that should serve as a warning to Americans about the growing trend in Western nations to expand surveillance and tracking of everyday citizens.

In an article titled “Statistics Norway demands to know exactly what Norwegians buy in the grocery store,” reporter Martin Gundersen wrote that Statistics Norway has “ordered the grocery chains NorgesGruppen, Coop, Bunnpris and Rema 1000 to share all their receipt data with the statistical agency.” Gundersen further reports that Nets, a payment service provider that processes about 80 percent of all in-store payments, “has also been required to share detailed information on all transactions.”

Statistics Norway, “the national statistical institute of Norway and the main producer of official statistics” for the country’s government, has said, as part of its new mandate, the agency will collect all customer transaction dates, card services information, user location number, user location name, account numbers, and other relevant information related to each grocery transaction.

According to Gundersen, “A link between a payment transaction made with a debit card and a grocery receipt enables Statistics Norway to link a payment transaction and receipt for more than 70 percent of grocery purchases, the statistics agency writes in a cost-benefit assessment.”

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The plan for the data isn’t merely to examine behaviors broadly, but to look at the actions of specific groups.

“When the purchases are linked to person / household, it will be possible in the consumption statistics and diet statistics to analyze socio-economic and regional differences in consumption, and link it to variables such as income, education and place of residence,” Statistics Norway wrote in its cost-benefit analysis.

When asked about the new policy’s intrusion on privacy, Ann-Kristin Brændvang, the director of personal and social statistics at Statistics Norway, replied, “There are no other ways to do it and the overall use in Statistics Norway indicates that the benefit to society is greater than the disadvantage.”

Americans might be tempted to write off this truly disturbing overreach in Norway as something that could never happen in the United States, but the truth is, the Biden administration is currently considering the creation of a central bank digital currency that would give the Federal Reserve and federal government the ability to track virtually all transactions made with the new asset, not just purchases at a grocery store.

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/30/norway-is-tracking-what-everyone-buys-and-biden-wants-to-follow-suit-in-the-united-states/

[GtHawk]

Of course the socialist democrats would want to track every purchase, and then come up with a scheme to tax people for what they consider excessive consumption of fatty, unhealthy food and alcohol...to insure equity in the healthcare system, I'm sure. Also to track those who are excessive, in their view, consumers of gasoline and other oil products. They already know which of us are users of Opioids and other pharmaceuticals.

[Kamaji]

Of course the socialist democrats would want to track every purchase, and then come up with a scheme to tax people for what they consider excessive consumption of fatty, unhealthy food and alcohol...to insure equity in the healthcare system, I'm sure. Also to track those who are excessive, in their view, consumers of gasoline and other oil products. They already know which of us are users of Opioids and other pharmaceuticals.

They also want the data - and control over the currency in minute detail - so that they can deny the right to disfavored individuals to participate in the economy.  That is part and parcel of why Bidet and his fellow-travelers want a digital currency for the U.S. (and why China is already moving in that direction, along with their social credit score system).