How to specify jackson to only use fields - preferably globally

You can configure individual ObjectMappers like this:

ObjectMapper mapper  = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.setVisibility(mapper.getSerializationConfig().getDefaultVisibilityChecker()
                .withFieldVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.ANY)
                .withGetterVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE)
                .withSetterVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE)
                .withCreatorVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE));

If you want it set globally, I usually access a configured mapper through a wrapper class.

In Jackson 2.0 and later you can simply use:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonAutoDetect;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.PropertyAccessor;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;   

...

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();    
mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.ALL, Visibility.NONE);
mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.FIELD, Visibility.ANY);

to turn off autodetection.