Bill tracking: Increasing cash tracking worries data protectionists

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Data protectionists warn of a new form of mass surveillance and immense encroachments on fundamental rights through cash tracking. Marit Hansen, the data protection officer for Schleswig-Holstein, emphasizes: “If serial numbers are stored with the time and place of collection and this data is collected at an increasingly granular level,” the anonymity of cash will be lost. With the use of banknotes, personal references are possible and location data can be derived. It would also be possible to see what someone is interested in and spends money on.

The Netzpolitik.org portal has shed light on the comparatively recent phenomenon of the increasing tracking of banknotes in a series of articles. The team also followed the life of a €20 banknote “from printing to shredding” and recorded where serial numbers are already being automatically recorded.

According to Hansen, such comprehensive cash tracking, which police authorities in Bavaria and Thuringia already use to track down money laundering or terrorist financing in particular, not only poses risks for individuals. According to the inspector, it also looks bad for business secrets and possibly even for internal security, as information about security-relevant people that can be used by the intelligence services could be obtained.

Deep insights into private life

Hansen draws a comparison with printer IDs: such “yellow dots” are also technical data that could be used to identify whistleblowers, for example. She believes it is crucial that people have a truly anonymous payment option. After all, payment traces could reveal personal or intimate details such as diet, addictions, or love affairs.

Luke Hoß, member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, also sees cash tracking as a threat to privacy. According to him, comprehensive tracking of cash serial numbers could provide in-depth insights into private lives, for example, if visits to abortion clinics could be traced. He advises against further restricting the right to privacy about security aspects. The people's representative sees the danger that if authoritarian parties such as the AfD were to take power, recorded events that are legal under the current legal situation could lead to the prosecution of innocent people.

Bundesbank sees the writing on the wall

The Bundesbank itself points out that the protection of privacy is an important advantage of cash for many people. It emphasizes the right of people in Germany to informational self-determination. Although the Bundesbank itself tracks the path of certain banknotes on certain occasions, it decided against comprehensive processing of serial numbers in 2020. However, to accommodate investigators, it tested this option beforehand. In an internal document from 2021 published by Netzpolitik.org, the Bundesbank assumes that serial number reading will become permanent and irreversible.

Modern banknote processing modules can track the serial numbers of banknotes. Even when a human collects banknotes, they are not protected from automated serial number recognition, as cash-in-transit companies chase receipts in cash centers through machines that can read serial numbers. In addition, efforts are being made to store and merge the resulting data.

Databases are being created

Gerrit Stehle, Managing Director of Elephant & Castle IP, wants to take official cash tracking in Germany to a new level. His company receives banknote serial numbers with the time and place of capture from a cash-in-transit company and offers security authorities expert opinions based on this database. He claims that this is “factual data” that is not subject to data protection, as no personal information is collected.

Nevertheless, Stehle shows understanding for the sensitivity of relevant data: “They have a certain potency, such information should not be in private hands.” He therefore offers his services exclusively to government agencies. Stehle aims to give investigators direct access to his system via paid software licenses, without the detour via expert reports. The inventor has also applied for an international patent describing a machine that recognizes stolen banknotes or banknotes used as ransom money and can notify the police. He also has his eye on petrol station deposit machines that trigger the storage of appropriate video images when wanted money is detected.

Police representatives push back

Frank Buckenhofer, chairman of the police union in customs, is also calling for comprehensive cash tracking and the merging of data from banks and cash-in-transit services for police and customs authorities. He wants to uncover contradictions in statements and, for example, track whether cash originates from crimes such as ATM break-ins. The expert would like to see laws on cash tracking and a private sector serial number database that can be accessed online by various authorities.

Data protection is currently an important argument for the use of cash for over 80 percent of Germans. More than half of all payments in Germany are still made with coins and bills, but card payments, which are usually even easier to track, are on the rise. Last year, civil society organizations appealed to the Bundesbank to urgently preserve cash.

(mma)