And that’s just the mandated monitoring – it doesn’t include the monitoring that businesses and banks are doing for free, on their own.

I hear rumors that many places are rolling out systems to record and track the serial number of every bill of cash that goes in or out, because they can sell that information to big data collectors who can use it to piece together a picture of where cash flows – previously the only flow of money they couldn’t completely monitor. And, of course, that big data is available to the government at any time, either by buying it or by getting a friendly judge to sign off on sweeping warrants.