Comment by Lvl999Noob
10 hours ago
> Pix is already 100% surveilled
And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games).
At least with Pix, the costs get lower for the end users.
Of course they are. Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though. I'm genuinely afraid of what the brazilian government can do with this sort of data.
> Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though.
The thing about US' corporate suveillance system, and why the US government is so tolerant about it, is that US government branches either buy or are given all the data they need.
You don't get government surveillance or corporate surveillance, you get government surveillance or government and corporate surveillance.
Such a naive take. Like the US government espionage is not deeply embedded in even the most basic infrastructure, let alone payment gateways. They probably spend millions on huge data pipelines straight to the fucking pentagon.
Nothing naive about it. Brazil is not the USA. It hasn't exactly demonstrated an ability to "deeply embed" itself into internet backbones the way the USA does. The problem with Pix is: they don't need to.
Lack of capabilities limit the scope of government tyranny. It used to be that the government didn't have the manpower required to audit everyone and everything, so only the bank transactions above some threshold would be monitored. With pix, they are monitoring 100% of transactions now. This is a massive gain in capability that should not be ignored.
A sizable amount of Americans are completely hoodwinked by capitalists that have made their material lives worse in every capacity. Thinking that an accountable entity, a democratic government, as a worse than the unaccountable centrally planned dictatorship (a corporation) is just laughable but America has been a laughable place for quite a while as we prefer helping corporations over literal people.
Third party doctrine means corporate surveillance is state surveillance. And unlike Pix covering just Brazil, CC companies cover the whole world.
> > Pix is already 100% surveilled
> And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled?
Who is doing the surveilling is the difference. In the latter, the surveillance is done by the private sector, in aims of better targeted advertising.
In the former, it's done by either the government or by a government-tied organization, and thus invites a left-hand-passes-to-right-hand scenario, wherein the data & metadata obtained from the system could be passed to law enforcement for prosecution (doubly so if the transactions could be bundled as evidence).
> Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games).
The censorship pressures made onto Visa & Mastercard was done not by the government, but by PACs & non-governmental organizations. It is through the use of "think of the children" that they push them into censoring transactions, under the implicit threat that lawsuits will be filed if such transactions remain allowed.
The censorship is a massive issue though as it effectively means that private companies can overrule the law if they effectively monopolize critical infrastructure. Private companies are even less accountable to individuals than governments are when there is no real market choice.
The government already have card transaction access though. If you are in the banking system - you are being tracked. Doesn't matter if is Pix or a card.
Doesn't mean they will automatically expose you, as it requires justice approval technically...