Your hotel bills now limited to $10K?
Forbes reports that in its continuing efforts to discourage international travel and prevent Americans from spending money overseas, the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security will now
scan your credit cards to make sure you're not taking with you or bringing in any prepaid credit card worth more than $10,000 (Hat Tip:
MFS - The Other News).
[U]nder a proposed amendment
to the Bank Secrecy Act, FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
will also require travelers to declare the value of prepaid cards that
they are carrying, known now as “tangible prepaid access devices.”
Expected to be finalized by the end of this year, the cross-border reporting modifications stem from a broader October 2011
definition of payment methods and form factors that replaced the term
“stored value” with the term “prepaid access” in an effort to more
accurately describe the process of accessing funds held by a payment
provider.
Enforceability falls to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
U.S. Customs and Border Protection both within the Department of
Homeland Security, which is already developing
advanced handheld card readers that can ascertain whether a traveler is
carrying a credit card, debit card, or prepaid card. This
differentiation is important because only prepaid card balances will
need to be added to declaration report forms.
That ought to speed up those airport security lines.
Rumors that Michelle Obama and her entourage will be exempt could not be confirmed.
More
here.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, right to privacy
The full body scanner goes to court
A group that protects privacy rights has gone to court to prevent the deployment of
full body scanners in airports across the United States. The US government plans to deploy 450 scanners in airports across the United States at a cost of more than $1 billion(!) (Hat Tip:
Instapundit).
“The suspicionless search of all airport travelers in this most invasive way violates the reasonableness standard contained in the Fourth Amendment,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Tuesday. He said the devices, costing $1 billion, were designed “to store and record and transmit the unfiltered image of the naked human body. ”
The government is expected to respond next month to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
A test image shown to reporters at Logan International this spring “showed the blurry outline of a female volunteer,” The Associated Press reported at the time. “None of her clothing was visible, nor were her genitals, but the broad contours of her chest and buttocks were. Her face also was blurred.”
The constitutional challenge aside, EPIC also charges that the Department of Homeland Security, in rolling out the devices, violated a host of bureaucratic policies requiring public review, including the Administrative Procedures Act.
What’s more, the group claims the machines, among other things, violate the federal Video Voyeurism Prevent Act, which protects against capturing improper images that violate one’s privacy.
And the scanners are useless anyway.
The so-called “backscatter machines,” however, cannot detect so-called “booty bombs” in which an explosive is inserted into the body.
Travelers can opt out of going through the imaging machines and instead undergo a pat-down, including the crotch area.
I find it amazing that there is no movement in America pushing for profiling passengers is as done in Israel. It's far more successful and far less invasive.
Labels: full body scanner, political correctness, profiling, right to privacy
