The PATRIOT ACT vs. Financial Freedom

The PATRIOT ACT vs. Financial Freedom

By James Bovard
View all 22 articles by James Bovard
Published 02/09/11

The Bogus Anti-Terrorist Crackdown on Financial Freedom

In the post--9/11 era, federal officials are treating cash as they would a suspected weapon of mass destruction. They have created legions of new restrictions and reporting requirements for citizens’ money. But the new controls have done nothing to make Washington any more competent at protecting Americans from real threats.

Federal experts estimated that Mohamed Atta and the other 18 hijackers required only about half a million dollars in total financing to carry out their attacks on September 11, 2001. That is a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars’ worth of currency transactions that occur daily around the world. Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins observed, "Terrorism tends to be a low-budget item. The real resources are fervent young men who are willing to blow themselves to bits."

But the feds seized upon the attacks to greatly expand intrusions into Americans’ financial affairs. The terrorist attacks instantly endowed George W. Bush with the right to micro-manage world financial institutions -- or so the Bush administration apparently believed. And while Treasury Department officials portrayed their decrees as first strikes against "money that kills," in reality it is almost impossible to determine which dollar bills have homicidal intent.

The USA PATRIOT Act gave the feds the right to financially strip-search every American. It created new financial "crimes without criminal intent" -- empowering the Customs Service to confiscate the cash of American travelers who fail to fill out a government form.



Congress redefined the possession of cash to make it sound far more insidious. The PATRIOT Act created a new crime -- "bulk cash smuggling" -- to punish anyone who doesn’t notify the government of how much money he is taking out of or bringing into the United States (if he is carrying more than $10,000). The PATRIOT Act stated that "if the smuggling of bulk cash were itself an offense, the cash could be confiscated as the corpus delicti of the smuggling offense."

Congress rewrote the law to pretend that money travels by itself and that money commits the crime. And since a stack of cash has no constitutional rights, the government can do no wrong when it seizes the money. (This is based on a medieval legal doctrine known as an in rem proceeding -- taking legal action "against the thing.")

Anti-terrorism rhetoric bedecked the new confiscatory powers. In the PATRIOT Act’s "Findings," Congress proclaimed that "the movement of large sums of cash is one of the most reliable warning signs of drug trafficking, terrorism, money laundering, racketeering, tax evasion and similar crimes." Congress also ordained, "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 did not explain how a person became a smuggler merely by transporting his own money.

The "bulk cash smuggling" provision states that the money cannot be confiscated unless it has been concealed. But "concealment" includes "concealment in any article of clothing worn by the individual or in any luggage, backpack, or other container worn or carried by such individual." In other words, any traveler with a heap of bills not plopped openly on the airline seat when a G-man walks up to interrogate him is guilty of concealing the money. Violators of the reporting requirement are subject to five years in prison, as well as loss of all their money.



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