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Computers Outlawed in Florida

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tomos:
It's hard to credit - hopefully if it's such a cockup, it will be (simply) repealed....

The internet cafe thing was mentioned/discussed a while back in a thread that was since moved to the basement (for other reasons) -

Customer stops stick-up at Ocala Internet cafe (Granddad Says Hell No!):
-Stoic Joker (July 17, 2012, 06:48 AM)
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Superb. But then, a bit later, the narrator says that police have been trying to close down these Internet cafés because:
"...there's money there"
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- or something.
What? That's some kind of reverse logic, right there.
-IainB (July 17, 2012, 10:51 AM)
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app103:
Actually that's not even the worst part. The worst part was the flimsy assed excuse that the came up with for banning the cafes in the first place. You see...The cafe's were construed to be a specifically cash business...which then of course auto-magically made them more susceptible to (well basically causal of) crime.

I shit you not, it was on the news...and came directly out of the mouth of one of the state big wigs.

What a complete and utter jackass. It seems none of these retards has ever heard of, check cashing companies, pawn shops, we buy gold/silver stores, or any bar/liquor store ... All of which are either strictly or predominantly cash businesses.

I frequently left the bar at night with anywhere between $500 - $3,000 in cash on me. Banks were closed, and locking it in the building -- With a monitored alarm system -- not more than 2 miles from the fuzz -- just didn't work out because we got robbed (after hours break in).
-Stoic Joker (July 13, 2013, 11:23 PM)
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I thought it was because of the absurd assumption that all internet cafes were nothing more than casinos in disguise, set up for the sole purpose of offering and profiting from illegal gambling. The ban most likely includes all computers on purpose, since any computer capable of playing any sort of game for money is an illegal gambling device, in their minds...no other purpose or use of these devices exists that is more important or more used than the purpose they are trying to end.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/10/3334274/gov-rick-scott-signs-internet.html

Stoic Joker:
I thought it was because of the absurd assumption that all internet cafes were nothing more than casinos in disguise, set up for the sole purpose of offering and profiting from illegal gambling.-app103 (July 14, 2013, 06:25 PM)
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50/50 split really as they jumped back and forth between the two whenever one started to lose traction. But gambling isn't (and never has been) legal in Florida so that little puritanical bit was sort of ho-hum (we're used to it) old already. The crime thing started after some of them got robbed and the opportunity to spin things out of control was seized. They went nutz with it on the local news for months.

IainB:
The points above mostly all make sense, given that:

* The police/SS seem obliged to deem cash business to be implicitly/potentially illegal, because you cannot trace the source of the money being used in the transaction to establish:
(a) proof/certainty as to whether it was used for bona fide legal/legitimate purposes (e.g., it might be operating an unlicensed casino), or
(b) whether the cash came from a "legitimate" or criminal source (e.g., as in money laundering).


* There seems to be a necessary drive by police/SS to exercise State control over all financial transactions so as to be able to "prove" them at the POS (Point Of Sale), as the police/SS are otherwise unable to effectively police various areas of crime engaged in money exchange/laundering.

Fans of the Breaking Bad series will recall the problems with having all that illegally-obtained cash (millions) stashed away in the wall linings of your garage or wherever...

@sword may well be right though:
See, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", by Lewis Carroll
-sword (July 13, 2013, 11:09 PM)
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(Which I thought was a very droll comment.)    ;)

   But there is at least one other important aspect to this that I can think of - banking transaction "tollgate" fees - which are a huge real/potential source of revenue.
We have witnessed that payments intermediaries/agents (e.g., PayPal, Visa, Mastercard) can pick and choose at their whim which of their commercial accounts can use their services - e.g., withdrawing access to their payments service and freezing accounts for "pirating" organisations frowned on by the **AA or by the State (e.g., Wikileaks).
   There will undoubtedly be a financial benefit for this "self policing", probably in terms of some kind of a fee from the **AA or the State, and/or from the use-of money interest by effectively sequestering the funds (assets) in any frozen or "unclaimed" or "unclaimable" accounts.
   The precedent for this form of highly lucrative and legitimised piracy bonanza was set in the case of the thousands of secretive anonymous Swiss Bank accounts of wealthy Jews killed in the Holocaust, and of the hundreds (or more) of Nazi/SS generals who had squirrelled away their humungus stolen assets - the spoils of war. Sitting on that sea of "gifted wealth" after WW2 was what made the corrupt (QED) Swiss banks even more secretive (lest they be discovered and were asked to pay the legitimate account monies to the descendants/heirs of the "untraceable" account-holders) and is apparently the main reason for Switzerland's strong economy today and their pride of place in the respectable (ho, ho) banking community.

   So that represents a  view of the population providing lucrative revenue from the accounts that you have as a banking/financial intermediary. But what about the accounts that you do not have? They could be potentially very lucrative.
   Well, every cash transaction is a missed tollgate fee, and there are likely to be billions of them, and once you have established your bank as the tollgate financial intermediary for those accounts, you can collect a fee on every transaction. It's a tax levied by nominated financial barons, for an ephemeral service, and which is authorised by governments and their Agencies (which collectively are otherwise the authorised thieves tax-gatherers). The government cannot function without a well-subsidised banking system creating the magical "trust" money (debt) that government necessarily feeds upon for its projects. For example, to conduct its philanthropic "peace-making" wars on a global scale, or to conduct philanthropic global mass surveillance...
   Some people (not me, you understand) might say that this issue (fees and commissions to feed the banks) - and not crime - might be the main reason that cash transactions must be discouraged in favour of EFT-POS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point-Of-Sale), or similar - all operated by/through the banking system - but I couldn't possibly comment.
(By the way, this may indicate that Bitcoin or similar must be verboten.)

IainB:
On second thoughts, maybe this Florida fiasco is no accident of incompetence.
Just sit back and watch how complex and time-consuming it may have to become before it gets fixed and the bad bits undone - if they ever are, in entirety.
"I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel." - Blackadder.

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