TOO FAR: Norway wants to track citizens food purchases

Big Brother society is creeping ever closer.

It's happening. Norway is heading towards a complete control society where the state wants to know everything you do.

We have earlier talked about how Norway is a leading country when it comes to digital ID. It is almost a must in order to live modern life. People have to use it for online banking and many other things.

Now it turns out Norway wants even more control over citizens. The State Statistics Central bureau (SSB) in Norway is now demanding to know the food purchases of citizens and track all card payments.

They were central in establishing a "folk register" in Norway after the second world war, which led to people getting a unique ID number called "birth number". This bureau already knows where people live and how much income they have, but now they also want to track exactly everything that you buy in the grocery store. They want to know every single food item that you buy.

The Norwegian state literally wants to know what you ate for lunch!

This is going too far.

This latest move is actually going pretty far in going towards a control society. We are now going full steam ahead. They have required almost all of the large grocery store chains in Norway to share their receipt data with the state.

They have also required a card terminal company called Nets to share detailed information with the state on all transactions. Some 80% of card payments done in grocery stores in Norway is done via this company.

"A connection with payment transactions done with debit card and grocery store receipts enables SSB [the state statistics bureau] to connect payment transactions and receipts in over 70% of daily grocery shopping" the state run bureau said in a statement on its website.

So imagine that! Norway is going to connect payment details done with card payments and grocery store receipts to figure out exactly what kind of food people are buying, and who is buying it. In other words, Norway will track exactly what kind of food citizens are buying. We are talking about a new level of state control here.

The state will know what you had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, everything. Cola, ham, chicken, steak, you name it. The state will see it all.

The state is going to track all of Norway's payments. We are talking about enormous amounts of data here. The state statistics bureau will be collecting 2.4 million receipts EVERY day and some 1.6 billion card transactions every year. Oh, and get this. This data will not be deleted once it is collected according to NRK.

What kind of payment data are we talking about here? Well, let's have a look.

• Transaction date.

• Transaction type status.

• Card service.

• Organization number of the company where the card was used.

• Name of the company where the card was used.

• Name of card user, bank account number.

• Amount payed for items.

• Total amount payed.

This data will then be combined with receipts from the store and used to figure out exactly what people bought. This is frightening!

So not only is the state collecting data on all card transactions and pairing them with receipts from stores to figure out exactly what you buy, they will also keep this data indefinitely. The state wants to know everything about you!

One grocery chain called NorgesGruppen is very unhappy with this new tracking, saying they will complain about this, because they say it is "very intrusive regarding our customers personal details that we cannot agree to this without having asked for guidance from Datatilsynet [data protection authorities in Norway]"

Even Nets, the card payment company is critical of this, saying that this tracking can be "problematic and intrusive for individual citizens".

The State Statistics bureau say that this information can be used for among other things by health authorities to calculate the development in Norwegian food consumption and see how this varies among geographic areas. They say it is important to find "regional, demographic, and social differences in food consumption".

Further, they say that this payment information can be used to get statistics about which citizens use private healthcare and how much money they spend on it.

WOW.

So not only are they going to track citizens food purchases, they are also tracking other things like who are paying for private healthcare (as opposed to going to public healthcare, which also costs money in Norway by the way).

This is paving the way for a total control society. Now keep in mind that Norway is a leading country when it comes to digital ID, you can read more about how the digital ID system in Norway works in my earlier article here:

The truth about digital ID

And if you are a regular reader of my Substack, you will know that Norway is getting a new system of digital ID by next year. People will be able to verify their identity online by scanning their face or fingerprints.

The scary part is this: What if this information gets in the wrong hands? Or imagine some years from now. Let's say someone posts something on social media that the government disapproves of. In a cashless society with total state control, it would be very easy for the state to punish dissidents, say, cutting them off from buying food.

What we are seeing now is very scary. The state trying to gain total control over people's lives and micromanage every small detail of their lives.

The only way to opt out of this state tracking of your purchases will be to use cash. But the question is for how long that will be allowed, as the cashless society is being pushed more and more. And now you might begin to understand why this cashless society is being pushed...So that the state can control everything you do.

Cashless society. Digital ID. Facial recognition. State tracking of your purchases. This is starting to sound very Orwellian.

Looks like I will be doing a lot more cash purchases in the future...

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