Tom Emmer believes that the digital dollar "can be easily weaponized into a surveillance tool."
The Minnesota congressman, Tom Emmer, stated on March 9th that the introduction of the US central bank digital currency (CBDC) could expose citizens to privacy risks.
The legislator, who has expressed his strong views against the move to issue a digital dollar, made his anti-CBDCs comments while addressing Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank, on March 9th.
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He raised multiple concerns against state-issued digital currencies. Emmer claimed that digital assets can be used as surveillance tools to violate citizens’ financial privacy. The congressman also raised concerns about the programmability of the CBDCs, which could be exploited “to choke out the politically unpopular activity.”
It not only tracks transaction level data down to the individual user but also the ability to program the CBDC to choke out the politically unpopular activity.
The lawmakers described the move to introduce a digital dollar as a way of propagating financial control by the federal government.
As the federal government seeks to maintain and expand financial control to which it has grown accustomed, the idea of the central bank digital currency has gained traction within the institutions of power in the United States as a government-controlled programmable money that can be easily weaponized into a surveillance tool.
Tom Emmer believes that experimenting with CBDCs is a “dangerous” move since these assets are centralized and can be abused by the government.
The House Majority Whip also pointed out that the decentralized nature of the blockchain economy was posing a threat to many bureaucrats in Washington by taking the economic power from centralized institutions and handing it over to the people.
On February 22nd, the Congressman introduced a bill seeking to bar the government from issuing the Digital Dollar. The CBDC Anti-Surveillance Act challenges the issuing of CBDC on the grounds of user privacy.
Recently, the United States has been making considerable progress with the Digital Dollar project. In mid-January, the second version of the proposed government-issued digital currency was released.
If launched, the Digital Dollar will co-exist with the Federal Reserve liabilities and facilitate cheaper and faster settlements.
