booboo <matrox100@yah.com> wrote in message
news:vogckfi4vpmsda@corp.supernews.com...
INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY October 8, 2003
Americans' Financial Liberty Placed at Risk by Patriot Act
by James Bovard
The Justice Department recently revealed that the Patriot Act is being
routinely used to prosecute a wide array of non-terrorist offenses. While
many Americans assumed that the Patriot Act only concerned terrorists, the
reality is that the act poses a grave threat to Americans' financial
privacy
and property rights.
The Patriot Act makes it far easier for the feds to vacuum up Americans'
financial records without a warrant. Banks are now required to gather far
more information on their clients - their background, their sources of
income, their financial behavior, etc. Money Laundering Alert, a
pro-government newsletter, described one financial provision of the
Patriot
Act as a "dream-come-true information gathering tool for U.S. agencies,"
extending a "welcome mat to the Central Intelligence Agency, National
Security Agency and other U.S. counterparts" to look at the new financial
information on American citizens and others.
SUBJECT TO U.S. LAW
The Patriot act entitles the U.S. government to penalize anyone in the
world
who allegedly violates U.S. money laundering laws. If a foreign bank has a
single dollar deposited or held in a U.S. bank, or wires a single dollar
through the United States, the Bush administration claims jurisdiction
over
that bank's operations anywhere in the world. Treasury Department chief
counsel David Aufhauser warned foreign economics ministers that "there
will
be hell to pay" for any nation that doesn't aid the U.S. war against
terrorism.
The Justice Department is exploiting powers gained via the Patriot Act to
confiscate millions of dollars from foreign banks operating in the United
States in cases with no terrorist connections or allegations. The Justice
Department used the Patriot Act to confiscate the bank accounts of
Canadian
telemarketers accused of fraud.
The Patriot Act creates other new pretexts to seize private property. In
1998, the Supreme Court ruled that the Customs Service's routine
confiscation of money from international travelers who failed to declare
their cash to the government "violates the Excessive Fines Clause [of the
Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights] if it is grossly disproportional
to
the gravity of a defendant's offense."
SERIOUS OFFENSE
The Patriot Act effectively overturned the Supreme Court decision by
creating a new crime of "bulk cash smuggling." Anyone who leaves or enters
the U.S. without declaring that they possess more than $10,000 in cash or
currency instruments can be stripped of their money and sent to federal
prison for five years.
The Patriot Act declared: "The intentional transportation into or out of
the
United States of large amounts of currency... is the equivalent of, and
creates the same harm as, the smuggling of goods." Congress never
explained
how a person became a smuggler merely by transporting his own money.
Customs inspectors have used this provision to confiscate the money of
over
600 outbound travelers - many, if not most, of them American citizens.
While federal officials perennially portray these seizures as strikes
against terrorist money, the government has offered no information linking
the confiscations to terrorist activity. Most of these "forfeitures" have
nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with tightening controls
on peaceful citizens.
It is paradoxical that Customs portrays seizures of outgoing currency as a
major victory against terrorism when the overwhelming majority of money
raised for Al Qaeda comes from wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf
states. The report of the House and Senate intelligence committees into
pre-9/11 federal failures concluded: "The activities of the September 11
hijackers in the United States appear to have been financed, in large
part,
from monies sent to them from abroad."
In the wake of 9/11, the federal government rightfully concentrated far
more
resources in going after terrorist money. But the vast majority of the
arrests and seizures have had little or no link to Al Qaeda.
In a speech last month at the FBI Academy, President Bush bragged, "Terror
networks have lost access to some $200 million, which we have frozen or
seized in more than 1,400 terrorist accounts around the world."
WRONG STANDARD
Because the new standard of proof for asset freezes is so low, the raw
amount of money frozen-rather than a gauge of victories over terrorism-is
simply a measure of government power.
There is no need for the U.S. government to wait passively for the next
wave
of terrorist carnage.
But Congress and the Bush administration, rather than concentrating on Al
Qaeda, enacted a laundry list of proposals to empower government
bureaucrats
to surveil on and punish citizens and businesses that pose no threat to
national security. The government should concentrate on protecting
Americans
from aspiring foreign mass murderers and cease exploiting terrorist
threats
to intrude into Americans' lives and wallets.
Tagline: James Bovard is the author of the new book, "Terrorism & Tyranny:
Trampling Freedom, Justice & Peace to Rid the World of Evil."
.
