It is perfectly feasable to track all financial transactions in the U.S., down to the "quarter for a phone call" level, without eliminating all capacity to use the data or placing more than, say, another several percent burden on the cost of all transactions.
Perry
Already, at least here in the northeast, virtually all credit card transactions are on-line verified - it would take relatively little additional effort to capture additional transaction details including ID from our spiffy new national ID card and a more specific description of what was bought. And many supermarkets around here now do a substantial part of their business via debit or credit cards and checks - the added burden of converting everything over to watchable on-line electronic transactions is probably not measured in percent per transaction but in fractions of a percent. The major investment in on line retail infrastructure has already been made in most cases, what needs to be added is just some additional software and a more legally binding ID card. One suspects that the cost of physically handling cash, providing security for it and so forth is actually quite comparable to costs of such a cashless electronic regime. Outlawing cash is indeed (unfortunately) quite practical. If I had to guess as to what *the major* domestic target of wideband electronic surveillance and monitoring by the TLAs is licit or illict, I would name the credit card authorization data streams. Probably that and interbank wire and check clearing transfers consitute much the largest cross section of data being watched regularly. And I am unclear as to whether such surveillance, with the tacit consent of the banks and credit card companies of course, is obviously and specifically illegal. Dave Emery