"Four privacy-minded lawmakers have introduced legislation requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before searching phones belonging to US citizens, and prohibiting them from barring entry to Americans who decline to share their passwords at the border. 'Americans’ Constitutional rights shouldn’t disappear at the border,' Senator Ron Wyden said in statement to BuzzFeed News." Continue reading →
"Common red flags for passengers are 'traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage.' DEA agents then detain and question travelers with large amounts of cash, and, if they determine the money is linked to drug activity, seize it, even if there is no hard evidence that it is connected to illegal activity. As the Inspector General notes, these agents 'rely on their immediate, on-the-spot judgment.' The passenger is then released, bereft of money but otherwise free to go." Continue reading →
"The full scope of the cash seizures—and the overwhelming amount of cases involving innocent people—have not been revealed until now. The inspector general found money seized and forfeited by the IRS was legally obtained in 91 percent of a sample of 278 structuring investigations it reviewed occurring between fiscal years 2012 and 2014. Altogether, those funds totalled $17.1 million and involved 231 cases." Continue reading →
"Congress as a whole has been more intent on protecting the government from insider leaks than protecting the public from government surveillance. The tension between privacy and government surveillance is one that runs central to the ongoing debate over the CIA and NSA’s data collection tactics, as well as the potential Homeland Security policy that aims to refocus efforts to target 'insider threats.'" Continue reading →
"Data provided by the Department of Homeland Security shows that searches of cellphones by border agents has exploded, growing fivefold in just one year, from fewer than 5,000 in 2015 to nearly 25,000 in 2016. According to DHS officials, 2017 will be a blockbuster year. Five-thousand devices were searched in February alone, more than in all of 2015. 'That's shocking,' said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. She wrote the rules and restrictions on how CBP should conduct electronic searches back in 2009. 'That [increase] was clearly a conscious strategy, that's not happenstance.'" Continue reading →
"In an era in which federal officials are now requiring Americans who are returning from foreign travel to turn over their cell phones for searches and forcing them to disclose their passwords, it’s time for Americans to start asking some fundamental questions regarding the nature of liberty, the purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the proper role of government in a free society and to abandon the passivity, submissiveness, and deference to authority that have come to characterize their lives." Continue reading →
"President Barack Obama approved the $400 million transfer, which was the first payment of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving claims at an international tribunal at The Hague over a failed arms deal under the time of the Shah. The Iranians were seeking more than $10 billion at arbitration. Because existing US sanctions ban American dollars from being used in a transaction with Iran, officials said the money was procured from central banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and an unmarked cargo plane loaded with wooden pallets of Swiss francs, euros and other currencies were flown to Iran." Continue reading →
"Rand Paul and Ron Paul, the dynamic duo of anti-Fed forces, invested a lot of time and money trying to get that legislation passed. But even if it reached Barack Obama's desk, it would have been vetoed. Of course, the Fed pushed back against the legislation. Fed Chairman Janet Yellen penned a letter to senators before the vote claiming that the legislation would deprive the Fed of necessary independence. She also noted that passing the legislation might generate an inflation scare and cause interest rates to rise. One wonders if this was a subdued threat." Continue reading →
"U.S. central bankers not only regularly leak secret information about monetary policy, but the leaks are so predictably timed that a savvy investor without access to the leaked information could make money just by buying stocks in certain weeks. The weeks that have excess stock-market returns are generally the same in which there are closed Fed Board meetings, and increased volatility in short-term interest-rate futures contracts suggests that it is information on monetary policy from those meetings that is driving the pattern." Continue reading →
"In June 2014, the government seized Ken Quran's entire bank account—more than $150,000. This was money that Ken worked for years to earn, and that he was counting on for his retirement. Ken had no prior warning before the government seized the account. The government told him they were taking the money because he withdrew cash from the bank in amounts under $10,000." Continue reading →