• The silent construction
• The cryptocurrency problem — and the solution found
• The global standardization
• Money as a political instrument
• The next step: central bank digital currencies
• What the facts show

How financial digitization built the infrastructure of surveillance money

In February 2022, the Canadian government took a highly controversial step. It invoked the Emergencies Act — a law intended for national emergencies — to respond to a truckers’ protest. The consequences were immediate: banks received orders to freeze accounts of individuals associated with the movement under emergency powers. The money simply stopped working.

No new law needed to be written. The infrastructure already existed.

§The silent construction

Every electronic bank transfer made today carries data about the sender, the recipient, the amount, and the intermediary institution. This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of standards built by the Financial Action Task Force, the FATF — a body created in 1989 by the G7, without legislative powers of its own, but whose recommendations have been adopted across most of the world’s financial jurisdictions, according to the FATF itself. Almost no country was left out.

Among those recommendations is the Travel Rule: any transfer above one thousand dollars — the reference threshold established by the FATF for international transactions — must be accompanied by identifiable information about who sends and who receives. What began as a rule for traditional banks was extended, in 2019, to virtual asset service providers — cryptocurrency exchanges. The argument sustaining all of this was constant throughout decades: combating money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion. The argument is legitimate. The infrastructure built upon it reaches far beyond criminals.

§The cryptocurrency problem — and the solution found

When Bitcoin emerged in 2009, its public transaction ledger — the blockchain — was seen by authorities as an obstacle to tracking. Any address could be created anonymously. Every transaction was visible, but without an associated name.

Companies like Chainalysis and Elliptic solved that problem. They developed tools capable of correlating blockchain addresses with real identities — using exchange data, transactional behavior patterns, and information obtained through investigations. These tools are today used by exchanges, insurers, and government agencies around the world.

Chainalysis has received investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s nonprofit venture capital arm. In-Q-Tel’s mission is to support the technical needs of the American intelligence community — not to generate commercial profit.

§The global standardization

In 2023, the OECD published the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework — the CARF. The mechanism is modeled on the Common Reporting Standard, a system already operating among more than 100 countries for traditional bank accounts. The difference is the target: this time, digital asset users. A cryptocurrency exchange operating in any signatory country may be required to report data on foreign nationals to the authorities of their home countries — automatically, periodically, without depending on individual investigation.

In June 2025, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Harper v. Faulkender, which challenged government access to user data held by digital asset platforms. The lower courts had applied the third-party doctrine: information voluntarily shared with third parties carries limited constitutional protection. With the denial of review, that interpretation remains valid in the United States.

Coinbase, one of the world’s largest exchanges, publishes periodic transparency reports detailing government requests for user data received from different countries. The existence of those reports confirms that such requests are routine — not the exception.

§Money as a political instrument

The Canadian case of 2022 was not isolated.

In March 2025, Georgian authorities froze bank accounts of organizations providing financial assistance to anti-government protesters — not the protesters directly, but the structures supporting them. Amnesty International and the OCCRP documented the events. The freezes were implemented before any public demonstration of financial crimes had been presented.

Canada and Georgia are different countries, with distinct political systems and incomparable contexts. What unites them is not a coordinated policy. What unites them is a capability: the infrastructure existed, and it was used. The Human Rights Foundation documents similar patterns in other contexts, including regimes where digital financial control operates as a systematic mechanism for suppressing dissent.

§The next step: central bank digital currencies

By 2024, more than 130 countries were studying or developing central bank digital currencies — CBDCs — according to the BIS public tracker. Two are already operational and provide concrete data on what this technology does in practice.

China’s e-CNY is the world’s largest CBDC project in terms of currency in circulation and number of users, with 16.5 billion yuan in circulation and 120 million wallets opened as of June 2023, being used for public transportation, retirement benefits, school tuition, and tax payments. In Nigeria, the result was different: 98.5% of eNaira wallets remained inactive one year after launch.

A CBDC is issued and controlled by the central bank. Each unit is traceable from the moment of issuance. Depending on the model adopted, it is technically possible to program usage restrictions — limiting where, when, and on what the money can be spent. The BIS acknowledges that privacy impacts will depend on each country’s design choices and implemented institutional safeguards. No democratic country has publicly announced such intent. The architecture, however, would make it possible.

§What the facts show

The digital financial monitoring infrastructure was built over decades, incrementally, for stated legitimate purposes. It exists. It is operational. It is global.

It was used to combat drug trafficking, terrorism financing, and tax evasion — documented and publicly recorded cases.

It was also used, in at least two documented cases in democracies, to shut down the financial functioning of political protests.

The question the facts raise is not about intent. It is about capability. When the capability exists, it can be used. And when it can be used, the only real protection is the institutions and legal limits that govern its use.

Sources: FATF, OECD, Bank for International Settlements, Supreme Court of the United States — Harper v. Faulkender (No. 24-922), Coinbase Transparency Report, CBC News, Amnesty International, OCCRP, Human Rights Foundation, IMF (CBDC Virtual Handbook 2024), Northwestern University Law Review, Grey Dynamics.