From the title I was really hoping this was going to be a story about the differences between cash and checks/credit cards/ACH.

In case you were equally disappointed I do have a pointer to an interesting article from PET 2004 about the anonymity of banknotes but sadly I only have my hard copy. The slides are here:

http://petworkshop.org/2004/talks/kuegler.pdf

If you have a springer account or (great google-fu and patience) you can get the full article:

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11423409_8

I really don't understand why banknotes aren't imaged (or just serial numbers recorded) at more points of distribution. Making it an ABA or merchant-security requirement and integrating it into PoS, then requiring that those records be turned over for AML purposes (under existing laws, just as regulations), and then those records (secretly?) turned over to FinCEN and NSA, would seem productive.

Er, do you mean having every single POS scan each and every banknote? I can see it working with fully-automated POS, but it's a no-go for regular tills -- can you imagine mom&pop having to scan each note?

Or was this a modest proposal that just went woosh by me?

It doesn't have to be every POS. Just do scanning first at the federal reserve banks, then at merchant banks and cash in transit companies, then at certain big chain stores (and in loading ARMs). Use insurance discounts to incent adding it.

I would guess that today, a person using exclusively cash would actually draw more attention from the spooks. Just like disabling all the common plugins and permissions on your browser actually makes it stand out from the crowd.

sendspace link for those without springer access and weak google-fu

http://www.sendspace.com/file/77f7sn

You know, medical journals make authors prominently disclose any interests that might matter, and biomedical research has a reputation of being less than squeaky-clean. Expecting the same norm in political journalism doesn't seem inherently ridiculous, even if it's the last thing anyone would expect today. It may be somewhat automatable with natural language processing and databases of contributions.

Damn! I read this as "How to cash in secrecy rules surveillance policy"

Please herewith be guided thereto accordingly:

"Big Money has helped create that disconnect, even though Big Money is somehow written out of the story"

C.R.E.A.M. Get the money, dolla dolla bills y'all.