Slashdot Mirror
Financial Responsibility == Terrorism?
An anonymous reader writes "Capital Hill Blue is reporting that recently a retired Texas schoolteacher and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security. The crime? Paying down some debt. From the article: 'The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable. [...] They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.'"
This isn't surprising. I work for a regional bank. Every employee is required to undergo training to know "what to look for". Doesn't matter if you are a teller, or a computer help desk operator. Anything over a certain dollar limit must be reported. As time goes on, the threshold has lowered. Pay off your house early? Gets reported. Large deposit? gets recorded. And anything overseas gets more scrutiny than J-Lo's panty lines.
The training creeped me out. the uber-patriotic person assigned to train our group was so into it. 3/4 of our group thought it was great... bringing down meth dealers who weren't smart enough to structure their money better. In fact, however, structuring is a crime as well... Go just below the radar one too many times, and you can be charged, eevn if there is no illegal activity behind the generation of money.
And, I would be wise to post AC (I won't, so this message might get more credibility) as advising someone how to avoid setting off the bells and whistles is a crime too.
We don't live in 1984, but we might be at 1983...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I have no idea why a much larger than normal payment would trigger red flags for suspicious behavior. But then, I'm not responsible for Homeland Security.
From the article:
The flags were cleared, they didn't lose money, they don't live under a cloud of suspicion.
Until or unless we know what behaviors might be red flags for suspicious possibly terrorism-related activity, this story is mildly interesting at best.
The headline for this article is misleading at best: "Financial Responsibility == Terrorism". Noone was accused of terrorism. And, writing a check for $6500 on a credit card sounds to me like typical financial matters, but maybe not "responsible", i.e., we have no idea if they were running large balances against no income, etc. (As a matter of fact, they say in the article they were making this payment because their balance "had gotten to an unhealthy level".
As for unusual financial transactions raising flags, this is not new as reflected in one of the posts in the referenced article:
Of course, I'm sacrificing karma to take the unpopular view.
So....it's a sign of impending terrorism to decide to pay down your debt? Smooth move, guys. Wouldn't suicide terrorists get a card, and max it out - knowing that they will never have to pay it off?
Seriously, it's getting pretty bad. Everything you have to notify the government for.
When I was flying back from Europe, I had to fill out a form with who I was, and my home address, and an emergency contact (if I so wished).
They set it up like it's some sort of idea that all flights into the US require all US citizens to be recognized and accounted for, so that if it goes down? or something like that? that they can know for sure who was on board, and can start contacting people ahead of time?
The requirements for entering the US are so ridiculously more complex than any other country I've visited.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Is there another source for this information? Quoting from CHB tells us more about the submitter and the submitter's reading habits than anything factual about the story.
And Bin Laden is still free.
Isin't that funny you can be freer in Afghanistan than in the US.
Everyone on /. send me a dollar. I will apply it to one of my credit cards and then we will see how quickly the FBI shows up. I don't mind taking the hit. So as soon as I collect a dollar from everyone I will make the payment. Not a problem. Glad to do it. It's all for the experiment.
Large financial transactions are monitored. They always have been. However, the threshold of "what's interesting" to the government has been lowered. Do I think this particular instance makes sense? Of course not. The government is simply trying to track "large" movements of cash that are outside of the mainstream to catch money laundering. I had a similar experience recently when I bought a new car and paid cash (recently inherited some $$$). Do I find it annoying? Yes. However, I also find it a necessary nuissance to help keep smugglers and criminals from easily moving money around through our banking system.
If you've got a better solution, I'd love to hear it.
This article is sickening. I understand that there is a need for watching large amounts of money that trade hands, but c'mon, we're now starting to scrutinize people who work to pay off their debts? If they're tracking us enough that they know on average how much we pay on credit cards per month, you'd think that the (insert government/corporate monicker here) would have an idea that people would like to get out of high-interest credit cards.
Personally I think this sounds like a poorly-shrouded excuse for this credit card company (among others?) to scrutinize their customer's finances and try to intimidate them into staying in debt for longer periods of time. Sickening IMHO.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
For a government that is deep in the pocket of credit card companies, the bankruptcy bill was the first step....
Intimidating people who pay off their debt early is the next step.
After that... jail time?
"The requirements for entering the US are so ridiculously more complex than any other country I've visited."
And yet the illegal immigrants keep coming.
I've payed my tuition on my credit card a few times (almost $5,000) and paid it off the next day. No interest, no fees... just 1% cash back!
Though, I suppose JCPenny is more... terrorist friendly??
The original article came from the Providence Journal via Scripps Howard.
My question is...how exactly would this identify terrorists - who are, presumably, the people that a filter like this would be intended to identify? I can certainly understand that unprecedented financial behavior can, in a very small percentages of cases, indicate illegal behavior (drug dealing, primarily), but how is this within the scope of the jurisdiction of Homeland Security? Don't we have the DEA and IRS for things like that?
It frightens me that the Department of Homeland Security has become the bohemoth it has, and it seems to me that it will, in short order, become the beaurocracy that it was intended to improve upon. Frankly, I hope that will be the case, as the alternatives are frightening; beurocracy was built into the constitution, specifically to limit the powers of the federal government.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
This isn't even about terrorism, this is part of the War On Some Drugs. This is "Know Your Customer" from years ago, been going on over a decade in one form or another.
Any unexpected transaction these days gets the once over, any cash purchase over X gets reported to the FBI. (Last I heard, X was $10K) Buy a car with cash, get investigated. Walk into an airport with a sack of cash and it will simply be taken, no appeals, no trial, no recourse. Simply being in an airport with cash is a crime subject to asset forfeiture. Bitch too loud and they will simply arrest you along with the money. Been that way since the '80s.
Democrat delenda est
I have no idea why a much larger than normal payment would trigger red flags for suspicious behavior.
The question is what did you do to get all this extra money? Did you commit a crime? Or did someone of disrepute give you the money to launder?
The purpose of these laws is to make a big stack of cash relatively useless. That helps make stealing or otherwise illegitimately "earning" a big stack of cash less inviting. Sure, you can steal a million dollars, but then you can't do anything with it.
Yes, but the point is the government organization receiving these reports is HOMELAND SECURITY. In other words, that which everyone predicted has happened. Homeland Security is now handling day-to-day law enforcement -- but, unlike, say, your local PD or the FBI, Homeland Security doesn't answer to anyone. Homeland Security can literally do ANYTHING and you have no recourse.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Enron dumped hundreds of millions of dollars off-shore and the government never suspected a thing.
These people pay off $6K of debt and they're investigated and you support that.Yeah, it's called "Freedom".
Sometimes it means that the criminals get away, but that's part of the price of Freedom.
if you were a terrorist, why pay off the debt?
This may sound more twisted but... for a terrorist who's killing in the name of God it may be your duty to kill the infidels but to not pay for the debt may be considered akin to theft.
You're looking at it from a legal aspect, the laws of man are useless to these people.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
>
>And Bin Laden is still free.
He hates us for our freedom. All this means is that he's got less and less reason to hate us every day!
Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up.
Enough said.
Oh gee, I wonder what they'll come up with next?
CHB is a rag. It's complete trash and they've been known to ouright fabricate stories and sources. If it's got CHB behind it I don't even trust the people mentioned in the story actually exist.
Don't stop at this story if you doubt it. Click over a few and be amazed... these folks well and truly do make FOX look "fair and balanced" - emphasis on the "balance" part.
The real story here is that the Department of Homeland Security is also responsible for credit fraud. One of the scams people pull is to steal a number, write a bogus check to the credit card company for that card (which guarantees the credit will be there), and then spend the amount that was written on the check before the check is cashed (and detected as bogus).
The auto-trip flag for this is that when a large payment comes in that's many multiples of the payee's normal history, the credit card company will hold the payment until the check clears, which is within 10 days at the outside.
In other words, this has nothing to do with terrorism, the fascist Bush regime, the gestapo at DHS, or any other Orwellian fantasy you can cook up. It's an arguably poor fraud prevention measure, nothing more.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It sneaks up on you. Many, many years ago, I opened a bank account; nobody asked what I did for a living, nobody asked where the money came from. Several years ago, my wife and I got a small safety deposit box for wedding/engagement ring storage, and the questions went on and on, esp. regarding my wife's self-employed status. Now I read a story about folks paying off a credit card debt that they could afford to pay off, and having their assets frozen. In a few years, will I go into the bank attempting to transfer funds between accounts, only to find everything frozen while they do a background check?
I predict that wall safes and such are going to come back in style one of these days, and (esp. considering interest rates on accounts being negligible) bank accounts are going to be the place exclusively for money that's moving, not money that's being saved.
I periodically pay off previously accumlated debt when I get company bonuses, etc. I've done what they did at least 5 times in the past 5 years and never once heard from DHS. I suspect there is more to their story than they are providing. Don't forget that the card issuer, as well as DHS, is prevented from telling their side of the story due to privacy concerns.
Funny you mention Waco. Just last weekend I was talking to one of the neighbors of the Dividian compound. Not members. Neighbors. Their telling of the story is that other than some target practice, which is a common activity in the area, the Dividians were a quite group that didn't bother anyone. Per their telling, some neighbors go annoid with the noise from target practice, and called the cops. The Sherrifs went out, and had the whole thing sorted out well before the Feds showed up. The guns they had were legally purchased and delivered via FedEx.
Based on this, and what I saw on the news, sometimes when you are not doing anything wrong, you DO have something to worry about.
Actually, this seems to be the arguement. But in reality the organized crime that not so surprisingly infests a good portion of the commerce in this country has ways to deal (think: someone on the payroll + proper response strategy to launder the ill-gotten goods) with these kinds of problems... it's just the small-timers that are caught.
In the end it's our freedoms that are trampled on, and those are going to be hard, if impossible to ever win back... especially since now, anything related to "terrorism" has effectively no oversight or appeal.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
What a load of crap. The US claims to have frozen most of Bin Laden's assets and cut him off from any money he had. It's very unlikely that his money is helping him much. That is, at least, if you believe the US government.
I had to fill out all these forms to tell them how much money I made last year. I had to tell them all sorts of other information. If that's not an invasion of privacy, I don't know what is.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The construction company where I work has never been asked to report five figure checks, and we get them all the time.
Bob Kerr's column is full of stories like this. Some are more believable than others. This one lacks substantiating evidence, and is pretty tough to believe without it. Since 9/11, I've made transactions like that, and I'm not even old and retired; I'm young and can barely make the payments on my raised ranch...I've never had this sort of problem.
Why would the company not post the transaction while they investigate? Wouldn't it make more sense to NOT alert "terrorists" that they're suspects?
I'd like to see some proof, so I'll know to be properly scared when I pay off credit cards.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
I twice have purchased a new car at the dealer by writing a five-figure check for the full amount before driving away. I had no problems either time.
You wired the money... Two cars ago I paid for a nice car with cash. I had the money at hand, depositing checks from multiple accounts, only to have some clown try to charge me for a cashiers check and hassle me about when funds were ready (moving from accounts within the same bank) because they had to certify things. I was certified or at least fit to be tied - so I said fine - I'm not paying for a check, give it to me in cash. (for the record, my bride said it was a bad idea) I expected hassles from the bank, who delayed, had me fill out forms, and do a thumbprint.
The car dealership were the once that surprised me. Seems spending a healthy amount of cash for a car set off flags there as well. They asked if I could deposit the money and write a check! Several forms later, and a 'I told you so...' I had the car. Pre-war on Eurasia, so I suspect things are worse today.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
because eventually you'll pay off the original amount, and by god you'll keep paying...
Douglas P. Price
Along similar but perhaps sillier lines, I contacted freescale semiconductor with a question about how to handle a particular floating point error in a PowerPC processor. I received an interesting email stating: "Unfortunately at this time due to the Transactions Regulations (31CFR560) administered by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control we not able to respond to your inquiry" I was stunned!, I live in Australia, a supposed ally of the USA in the war in Iraq (though much of the populace does not support it) However when I got to the bottom of it, I had accidentally entered my country of residence in the log-in profile as 'Afganistan' instead of 'Australia' Obviously, we can't have terrorists knowing about how to handle a floating point error can we!! Anyway, once I changed my profile to 'Australia' all was good. Glad most terrorists wouldnt think of doing that... John
Just to put things into perspective, you have a greater chance of being killed or injured by your own car than you do suffering death or injury from a terrorist attack.
/.
Which is why you need a driver's license, are required to wear seat belts, can't drive before a certain age, and have to drive a vehicle that meets government safety standards. It's also why you're required to have regular inspections, and why you can be pulled over and ticketed for driving with faulty equipment, or arrested and jailed for driving under the influence or even just recklessly.
In other words, not a good example to support your argument. (Which I basically agree with otherwise.)
But this all misses the point. Where is the rest of this story? All we know from this article, factually (or at least according to these people, who may or may not be telling the truth), is that one is a retired schoolteacher and they were contacted by homeland security because of a large payment they made. We also know that this guy has a lot of anger towards the government that may or may not have been caused by this action by DHS, or it may have existed previously and manifested itself in other ways. We don't know for how long or why these people were under surveillance by DHS - and some people have pretty good reasons for being under surveillance. (Yes, even Americans - remember Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols?)
Now, if large payments alone were a trigger for a DHS audit, you can bet it would be front page news. Millions of people every year make large payments into their IRA's or on their home mortgages at various times for tax purposes, or other reasons. I myself have made payments larger than $6,000 on both my credit cards and student loans, and I can assure you that's not my normal payment amount - but I have yet to be contacted by DHS. Why is that? The only difference between me and this guy, according to this article, is that he is a retired Texas schoolteacher and I work in the entertainment industry. The DHS must love their cable TV.
No, it just sounds fishy. Either the story is made up, or there's a long backstory here that we're not getting. Otherwise this surveillance would appear to be basically random (targetting some people who make payments like this but not others), in which case they may as well just close their eyes, open a phone book and point to get their latest victim. Why even bother?
Sometimes I do get a little tired of seeing these conspiracy theory stories on
And perhaps you are willing to wink at criminal behaviour so that you can secretly wire a few thousand quid to your mistress without having a few questions raised. I am not.
And here we have it, folks. That fantastic attitude called "If you don't like it, you must be doing something wrong". Every scare and people like you grant the government more power to brighten your fucking night light. It's okay to trample our civil liberties as long as those nasty drug traffickers are brought to justice.
Fuck you, Ritz.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
To divert suspicion. "Mr Anyone" is a suspected terrorist, because terrorists will always attempt to act just like "Mr Anyone" would.
For this reason, fighting terrorism by trying to detect terrorists is a flawed approach unless you want to live in a police state, and even then, terrorists will probably still manage to carry out their attacks.
The correct way to fix the terrorism problem is to stop people from wanting to blow you up. This involves:
- Finding out why people want to blow you up. (may have something to do with you occupying their country)
- Fixing that problem.
Ever notice how Sweden, Canada and most countries in Europe are not afraid of terrorist attacks, don't have much security, and yet still don't get attacked? Interesting.
i can't speak for anyone else, but i know that a hold placed on my bank account would ruin me. i would not be able to pay rent, buy food. i would probably be evicted from my house.
all because some monkey raised a flag on a "suspicious" transaction.
true - nobody went to jail in this case... but you seem to not be accounting for how easily innocent lives can get screwed up when flags are raised and accounts locked.
maybe you should revisit your argument?
Yeah that's right. And people can't be held without being charged and the government can't tape our phone conversations with out a warrent...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Things you do that are okey today and aren't okay tomorrow won't be held against you tomorrow.
Yeah, until you do them again tomorrow. Either you were trolling or you missed the point of the parent post. Freedoms that we enjoy today may be gone tomorrow in the name of "the children" or "terrorism" or political points of view (abortion, etc.).
The GP post's original argument, "don't do anything wrong and you'll be fine.." has a huge flaw: Who decides what's right and what's wrong? You think the governmentt will always line up with your point of view about what's right? Who'll win if that disagreement comes to blows?
ScuttleMonkey posted:
An anonymous reader writes "Capital Hill Blue is reporting that recently a retired Texas schoolteacher and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security.
The article says that someone at JC Penny's credit card customer service claimed that Homeland Security had to be notified. There was no mention of Homeland Security actually being involved.
-l
The reasoning behind this is because, generally, if you have that much debt, you do *not* have the means to pay it off. The reasoning continues that people deep in debt can get desperate--and indeed, they do. Many financial crimes have been born out of pure desperation.
Therefore, they generally reason that any time you suddenly have a large pile of cash, they want to know where you got it from (the implication being that you might have stolen, embezzeled, or acquired it from some other illegal activity).
But yeah, it's not exactly a good thing for your privacy. Even so, there are enough laws on the books that merely having too much *cash* is a bad thing. I think that you can be accused of drug trafficing or something silly for having more than $10k in cash, too, but IANAL and that may just be some random Internet rumour.
Most people don't do sudden stuff like suddenly pay off ~$6,500 of their credit card debt in one payment.
Happens all the time. There's quite an industry in re-fi's and second mortgages so that you can pay off high credit-card debt. Lowers the interest rate and that interest might be tax-deductable, to boot. Done it myself more than once. (These days though I pay the card off every month.)
You'd think DHS could find a more relevant use of their time than chasing down all those transactions.
-- Alastair
"I'd rather let a hundred guilty men go free, than chase after them." --Chief Wiggum
This same thing happened to me. I inherited some money when my mom died, so a couple of months ago, I paid off my $7500 credit card balance, I mailed them a check for the full amount. About a week later, the payment still wasn't credited, so I called them and they said it takes 7 to 10 days for such a large check to clear. Yeah right. They told me to call back if it wasn't credited after 10 days. It wasn't, I called back again, they said if it wasn't credited after 14 days, call back again. It wasn't, I called back again. THIS time, I insisted they get a 3 way call with my bank to confirm the check had cleared. They credited my account during the phone call.
But after reading the article about the guy who got turned in to Homeland Security for paying $6500 on his JCPenneys account, now it all makes sense. I saw another version of this news article, it said the "bank security act" requires credit card companies to report large payments. I can't find any such law, there's a Bank Security Act of 1974 but that far predates the existence of Homeland Security. The closest regulation I can find is the requirement to report cash transactions larger than $10k to the IRS.
This is all so much bullshit I can't believe it. It's some sort of secret law, or more likely Homeland Security has duped banks into playing along with an imaginary law, just to get more data on totally innocent people. I am infuriated. I can't wait to see what happens when I try to board an airplane, now that DHS thinks I'm a terrorist, I bet I'm on the No Fly List.
Of course the feds are interested in the movement of money over x. And I see that there are plenty of readers eager to justify the monitoring of citizens all in the name of security.
It is interesting that the justifications that existed when the level of x was thousands of dollars are now quoted when x is hundreds, when in theory, the effects of inflation should cause x to increase.
In a few years, as technology, and data storage, and indexing allows, all transactions will be reported, catalogued, and analyzed, all in the name of security, and there will be plenty of readers that will be happy to step up to the plate and explain the justifications.
The real reasons of course are about control of the masses, and to maintain authority by reminding all citizens that they are being watched and can be brought in to explain their actions and transactions at any time should their activity, be it financial or political opinion, raise an eyebrow in Washington, or the local town hall.
While this particular example of credit card activity may or may not have occurred, the interesting point is that the assumption is that if someone's financial activity appears to change to a third party, the first party must explain their behaviour, as if there is a presumption of wrong doing.
This is in opposition to the principals set forth in the Bill of Rights and the forth amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Since there is no probable cause to believe that a person with $600 or some other arbitrary amount has acquired the funds through illicit mechanisms, requiring the person to provide documentary evidence is clearly an illegal search and seizure.
This also may be a violation of the tenth amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
Since the ability to keep tabs and monitor the general population is not expressly granted to the federal government by the constitution, such activity must be the domain of the states. This is why the feds now claim that this is part of the "war against terrorism" to create a federal interest in monitoring of ordinary citizens, just like the illegal wiretapping of ordinary citizens phoning back to the old country.
The future is bleak, and the trends before us further demonstrate that these United States have continually moved from a democratic republic for the people, by the people, to a fascist state that operates in the interest of the new aristocracy, let's not forget that the most interesting of all financial transactions are the least scrutinized.
Has any else noticed the huge transfer of wealth from public coffers to private hands..? (hint: it was more than 600 bucks).
Oh, oh, and prisoners aren't tortured, they are only agressively "interrogated" for months on end.
... And they don't always stick to the 10K limit.
... they assumed it was stolen or drug money and wouldn't touch it.
I tried to deposit $6500 cash into my credit union once
Needless to say, they don't get to hold my cash anymore, it all gets the high interest, zero fee treatment at ING Direct.
Whenever your credit union / bank causes you problems, start talking about ING Direct very loudly so the other customers can hear. You'd be amazed at how quickly your insurmountable problems vanish.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
This has been going on for many decades. The systems was started in order to catch organized crime and drug dealers. In the 1970's my grandfather paid cash for a car, approx. $7,000. He received a letter from the IRS asking where the cash came from. I believe his letter back to the IRS said something like "From my savings account you nosy SOB."
Read about the Smith Act passed in 1940. Admit you're a member of the Communist party, a party which was equated with meaning "overthrowing and destroying the government of the United States by force and violence", and you could go to jail. Nearly 200 members of the Communist Party stood trial, and many were convicted, just because they were members of the organization, not because of any other action.
Also, the famous "Hollywood Ten" never said they were or were not part of the Communist party, yet they were convicted for contempt of Congress and were blacklisted.
Go back a little further and look at the Red Scare of the '20s, where things were even worse.
Unless the real reason for doing all this is to keep an eye on you!
Bin Laden belongs to one of the richest families of a country (Kingdom actually) that refused to help with the investigation of the money trail or the people involved in 9/11. Westeners don't realise how most of the world believes in family first and above all. I don't think he is pennyless and hiding in the snow covered mountains at all, I believe if he is anywhere it is in some deluxe private hospital, likely in Jeddah, and possibly in the exact same private hospital room that the former dictatorial leader of Uganda, Adi Amine occupied for years.
The rich Saudi's got pretty good treatment on the days after the attacks and the whole Kingdom has pretty much been given a pass, but common Americans like our retired Texas schoolteacher... (From the article) But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.
And this is the most worrisome part of the story that you have a few more items to add to the growing list of reasons why you are less safe and less free now.
1. Innocent peoples money is being locked away for the most stupid reasons.
2. You are being watched by big brother.
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
It can't be anymore obvious, can it?
What's the appropriate response, and how do you go about making sure its heard? Does that response change as the days and weeks pass? The point is simple: This type of thing is pretty unacceptable, and what is anyone really doing about it?
We can harp on this stuff all day long, but until someone, or more likely a large group of someones, is willing to stand up and actually make a difference, its not going to change or stop.
You had an onion tied to your belt, which was the style at the time... ... ;)
sorry, coulnd't resist.
I'm assuming from the way you worded your post you're a US citizen. If you're not a citizen, well, the following only really applies to citizens and you can read about how the US so warmly treats its citizens that travel there.
The US does NOT welcome you back from a trip to Cuba with welcome arms unless you either have a license to travel there from OFAC, or if you went there quietly and never mentioned it to immigration.
If you go to Cuba without a license (eg to visit your dying grandfather), and are honest enough to tell immigration about it when you come back into the USA, you get a big Illegal CUBA stamp on your passport, and then get a friendly threatening letter from OFAC a few months down the line. Sometimes they'll 'nicely' let the problem disappear for a $10,000 fine. That's a nice pair of welcoming open arms there, pal.
And the open arms aren't necessarily guaranteed even if your travel to cuba is licensed. I've travelled to Cuba twice, both time perfectly legally as licensed with OFAC. One of those times we first flew to Canada, then to Cuba. Believe it or not that was the easier way to go. The more difficult way involved flying to Miami first, and then dealing with the absolute worst set of red tape I've ever dealt with in any travel. If going out wasn't bad enough, coming back through Miami was absolutely horrible, when my girlfriend and I didn't join in the immigration official's anti-communist tirade, he sent us and our luggage to be hand-inspected for evidence of illegal farm visits. Again, nice open arms there.
And to anyone reading this, if you are issued a license to go to Cuba, think seriously about going through Canada (or Mexico) first, instead of flying through Miami, it will really make your life much easier.
make world, not war
These things are really bipartisan with 9/11 just advancing what would have slowly occurred over the next 20 years to occur within just a few. Prior to 9/11 and during the 90s they used things like "It is for the children", to pass laws like these. For example during the Clinton years we had the bipartisan "1996 Welfare Reform Act". What most Americans do not realize that Act created the single most invasion of every Americans privacy in history. (enacted long before 9/11). Due to the Welfare Reform Act every employer is required to report their employees (or face fines) to the new hires database. The new hires database is used to track where Americans citizens are working at all times in case they ever father or mother a child. Therefore the used for the purpose of locating you for lifestyle child support collection.
Just replace Anti-Soviet and Counter-Revolutionary with the word Terrorist and you'll get something that is uncannily similar to this:
* n.b. the abbreviations may not match up with the descriptions because they are acronyms for russian words.
The above list was taken from Solzhenitsyn's study on the Gulag. They were criminal codes (mainly Article 58) used by the soviets as reasons to send people the off to the Gulag. Note that the first two (ASA and KRD) were used very liberally, for example, some engineers were warning that a particular railway system was not going to work. They were slammed with KRD and tossed in the Gulag. Later on the system failed as they had warned. They were brought out to fix it but put back as soon in when it was done.
Zero.
There weren't any cells in the U.S.
They've only charged ten men in the entire gulag system they've built around the world. And those aren't exactly airtight cases.
Over thirty men have died from "stress" during imprisonment and torture. None were charged.
They've not arrested a single man who actually plotted 9/11. They've bodyguards, drivers, one guy who wore a wristwatch "similar to those worn by terrorists". The bulk of those picked up in Afghanistan were fingered by enemies of the fingered who also got a fat cash payoff for giving up "terrorists".
The main reason is that the actual terrorists died in the planes. The second reason is that Bin Laden et al had a month to evacuate Afghanistan before we started bombing the poor bastards who had nothing to do with 9/11.
So, no terrorists. We've suspended the constitution, created a Gestapo, and are building Prison America to keep ourselves safe. And we've nothing to show for it.
bin Laden got what he wanted: the removal of the U.S. military bases from holy Saudi Arabian soil, and the provocation of the U.S. invading the middle east. He's really no more reason to hit us. Why bother? We've turned every muslim in the damned world against us. He got a lot for his money.
But we've got exactly nothing.
Can't have Bin Laden paying down his bills. Next you know he'll start returning his library books from 1973!
Table-ized A.I.
Exactly which of the Powers of Congress enumerated in the Constitution authorizes the government to mandate that credit card companies divulge "suspicious" transactions to the government?
Think I'm extreme? What have your moderate views and voting choices done for us? They've gotten us here, that's what. Time for a change. Turn off the TV, forget about "compromise," and quit worrying about "wasting your vote." If what we have now isn't the result of wasted votes, I don't know what would be. Vote Libertarian. Vote independent. Run for office yourself. Ask your state to call for a constitutional convention. Won't do it? Ask yourself this: What would make you change the way you think, vote, and live if not the things you've seen, read, and heard about our government from reliable sources in the past 5 years? WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE PEOPLE YOU'RE VOTING FOR DO NOT SERVE YOUR INTERESTS?
"If the government becomes capable of making it impossible to organize an armed revolt the Constitution has pretty much failed."
Too late than by a long shot. There is no way an organized armed revolt would even come close to success. The second amendment doesn't allow me to own a fully loaded stealth bomber. Even then it wouldn't be nearly enough. The second amendment out lived it's intended usefulness a long time ago.
Laws can't be created ex post facto in the US.
1972 copyright extention act?
Obviously, you can at least change laws retroactively with enough money.
These would initially go to the fed who would pass them on to DHS, IRS or whoever. The whole thing makes the financial institution err on the side of over-reporting. Not raising an SAR on something that turns out to be an issue (i.e., that Egyptian's down payment for flying lessons) will dump the FI in deep trouble with the regulators.
In most cases the problem can be sorted with a quick call for a reason and a source of funds. In this case it should have been clear that the people had other funds and they were looking to pay of their debt. With a reasonable explanation, all should have been quickly settled.
Oh, I do AML/KYC systems for a largeish bank so this is why I can comment.
See my journal, I write things there
Isn't this just the bank's scaring policy to extend the debt period so the interest payments continue ? I understand the security aspect but I also understand that the bank may use that excuse for their own benefits. You might pay back next time half the sum. The other way around: if you are a terrorist is it easier to get a loan than to pay it off ? Must be cheaper if the terrorist act is a one way ticket to the next skyscraper.
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" perhaps? Having a delay in my payment being posted to my account just doesn't seem to qualify.
Government poking into your private afairs conflicts with liberty, and is actually quite explicitly mentioned in things like the US constitution.
The delay in the payment is not the problem, the cause of that delay is.
... And the attackers of the Sep 11 2001 weren't hiding their identity at all or borrowing from other people (there have been some clouds around the real identity of Muhammad Atta though, the family Atta denies the person being their [missing] son).
The interesting and most Anti-PATRIOT thing about the suicide bombers of Sep 11 2001 was that they were just normal. They were regular students at a regular university in Germany. They had regular student visa for both Germany and U.S., they were using their regular passports, they were openly going to their preferred mosque.
They did nothing to hide their tracks. Of course they wanted a good credit report on their credit cards. Of course they didn't want to be chased by debt collectors. Of course they didn't want the cheques they were writing to bounce. Basicly all they did was being good citizens. And that should scare anyone who thinks waging a War on Terror might be a good idea. If you didn't to anything wrong, you are a prime suspect.
except maybe by your own elected officials. Someone else already said this but I would rather die at the hands of terrorist than to be oppressed by and goverment that was supposedly elected by the people. Also most people are missing the point, AND, taking on this Patriot Act mentality. I heard a fellow say that he didnt mind if the goverment listened to his phone calls and emails because he had nothing to hide. There are so many people out there that think this way. People that have been conditioned to think that they dont need rights of privacy because they have nothing to hide. These same people also vote:(
These SON OF BITCHES in D.C. took 9/11 and ran with it. And its only the beginning and it doesnt matter who you vote for. They are all part of the same fraternity, Politicians, any one who wants that job doesnt deserve it. It is getting harder and harder to use cash, I have had problems paying rent and cellphone bills with cash in the past. Doesnt prosecuting, or even scutinizing, someone for paying off there debt in a timely fashion send a very clear and frightening message about the direction that the United Stated of Amerika has already taken. I dont really feel that paying larger sums than normal for a dept should be of interest to someone with the power and fear of terror to "CREATE" new criminals, citezens of this once fine country the USA, not foriegn terrorist. Legal residents of this country are now under attack by the very laws that were supposed to be enacted as a knee jerk reaction to TERRORISM.
Wake up. Its only going to get more interesting before its gets better. If that is even possible now.
This is very interesting to know. I was seriously just about to pay off one of my credit cards (to the tune of 10k) when I read this story. I usually pay about a grand, and was just going to do an online payment for the whole thing. I'm thinking it might be better to split my payment between a couple of different online payments and mailing in a check. I think they let me do three online payments in a billing cycle, so I could do three online and mail in a check for the rest.
Or, do I want to just pay the whole thing off to see if I get screwed like this, too?
This whole thing seems ridiculous to me. Ever since 9/11, the government has just consolidated more and more power, and for what? How many terrorists have actually been charged for 9/11. ONE? One guy, and the case against him isn't even that compelling. How many OTHER terrorists have been charged (let alone convicted) for 9/11? ZERO? Have my billions and billions of tax dollars done a single thing? I think not.
Sure, Bush makes a big deal time and again about how we foiled some plot here and there. When has there been a credible threat since 9/11? Tell me, how many times has there been specific information that an attack was imminent since 9/11? ZERO? That's what I thought.
What is really the damn shame in all of this is that we're going to cut off our noses to spite our faces in 2008. When Hillary the Socio-fascist runs for President, we'll put her in office just because Bush is an idiot, but we'll even worse off. The government would have already taken all of our personal freedom, and her government would be well-poised to take what freedoms are left and put us under the control of foreign governments.
It's a shame, but I feel like our country died on 9/11... the terrorists got exactly what they wanted, and they are out there laughing their collective asses off as we speak.
Terrorists pay bills?
Okay, this is scary. This week, I sold about 100 shares of company stock in order to pay off my American Distress card, and make a double payment on my car loan. Does this mean I should expect a call from DHS sometime soon?
It seems a bit scary that we're now monitoring things this closely. We have abilities that Orwell couldn't have imagined, and probably would have left him shaking in a cold sweat if he had know about them. Now it seems that exercising some common financial sense can bring you to the awareness of these people. Also, it seems that if they're looking at every little thing like this, the signal to noise ratio of the information they have to sort through is so low that they'll never be able to spot any real terrorist activity.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Dick Chaney shot someone
The police investigation determined that it was a hunting accident. The victim declined to press charges. Look - I'm no fan of the veep, but again, this was a hunting accident. This kind of thing happens when you get inexperienced people running around with guns trying to shoot things.
Randy Duke steals millions, hes ok
Actually, Duke Cunningham got 8 years, 4 months in prison, is required to pay a 1.8 million dollar fine, and has to give up all his booty. When he gets out, his career is over. He'll be lucky to be a shift manager at a Dairy Queen.
Bill ORielly the moron, lies to death and its ok
Well, yeah - but it's not a crime to lie, even on television. Or the Internet, for that matter.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
Transactions of at least $5,000 that the institution knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect have no business or apparent lawful purpose or are not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage and for which the institution knows of no reasonable explanation after due investigation.f
http://www.epic.org/privacy/rfpa/
http://www.fincen.gov/sars/sars_by_numb_issue5.pd
If you have been drinking and need transportation, I reccommend calling a cab/taking the bus/train/subway/walking.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
It's a crime to shoot someone while hunting if you're drunk. Good thing the police didn't get to question him until 14 hours later, guess we'll never know.