Privacy & Offshore Banking

"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."
Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution

The amount of government spying on U.S. citizens, much of it in blatant violation of Fourth Amendment guarantees of privacy, has brought a dark cloud to the American way of life and the American system of justice.

This is one reason we suggest that people move some of their assets offshore, and off the radar screen of government personnel who have no compunction about sticking their digital nose into your bank account, e-mail traffic, medical records, and telephone calls, insurance records and brokerage account.

Moving assets offshore is safe, legal and inexpensive.

"Your government considers you a national resource to be exploited. If you don't get your money out of the country before the government gets your money out of you, you're an idiot, and you're going to get what you deserve."
- The Casey Report January, 2009

The following is a very brief summary of some of the U.S. government's domestic programs. As noted, we review them here briefly as one more reason why we feel it makes sense for people to set up a secure and confidential offshore entity. You are entitled to privacy in matters of your personal and financial affairs.

The USA PATRIOT Act

"I think we are on the verge of a very, very tough police state in this country. And it will only end when Americans are fed up."
- Congressman Ron Paul on the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act

The concept that a man's home is his castle and that his personal privacy is protected by law, runs deep in the American consciousness. It is these concepts that are enshrined in the 4th Amendment: an amendment which requires search and arrest warrants be judicially sanctioned, supported by probable cause and be limited in scope according to specific information supplied by a person (usually law enforcement) who has sworn by it and is therefore accountable to the issuing court.

The Patriot Act runs directly contrary to this concept of a commitment to personal privacy - privacy of one's financial affairs, medical records, insurance issues and more.

According to the Patriot Act, law enforcement can:

• SEARCH YOUR HOME AND NOT TELL YOU
• COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT BOOKS YOU READ, WHAT YOU STUDY, YOUR PURCHASES, YOUR MEDICAL HISTORY AND YOUR PERSONAL FINANCES
• MONITOR YOUR E-MAILS AND WATCH WHAT INTERNET SITES YOU VISIT
• SPY ON INNOCENT AMERICANS
• WIRETAP YOU UNDER A WARRANT THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE YOUR NAME ON IT

National Security Letters

The National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act radically expanded the FBI's authority to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies without prior court approval.

NSLs require no judicial oversight. Senior FBI officials can "sign off" on NSLs drafted by their subordinates, entirely bypassing the judicial branch.

Through NSLs the FBI can compile vast dossiers about innocent people and obtain sensitive information such as web sites a person visits or a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded.

The law also allows the FBI to forbid anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand.

Homeland Security Act

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

On November 19, 2002, the President signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, creating the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consolidating 22 existing agencies with 170,000 employees. The biggest government reorganization in more than 50 years was hustled through Congress with all the deliberation of a heroin junkie in bad need of a fix.

Title II of the Homeland Security Act is the 900-pound gorilla of civil liberties abuse. This section of the law establishes a Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The purpose of this all-too-Kremlin-sounding department is to create and maintain a massive database of public and private information on virtually any individual in the United States.

Say what?

Total Information Awareness System

To quote William Safire's column in the New York Times:

"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every trip you book and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database'.

"To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you - passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance - and you have the super-snoop's dream: a 'Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen."

The "Total Information Awareness System" (TIAS), as the project is formally called, was created with the intention that it be turned over to intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement communities as a new weapon in their battle against domestic terrorism.

However, driven by outrage from civil liberties groups and others, Congress shut the program down in 2003 by pulling its funding.

Or did they?

According to a story in the a February 23, 2006 story in the National Journal:

"A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens."

The Journal's article states that the program was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, at the National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, Maryland. The names of the projects were changed, but funding remained intact.

And a Wall Street Journal article of March 10, 2008 revealed that:

"Despite attempts by Congress to kill rapacious data-gathering programs on U.S. citizens like Total Information Awareness or the FBI's Carnivore, components of those efforts have lived on, the Journal found...."

"The NSA operates as something of a clearinghouse, Gorman found. It takes data gathered on people by the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury and others, then analyzes it for clues of what it believes could be terrorist activity."

A similar program appears to be under construction at the FBI. A June, 2007 news article by Think Progress revealed that the FBI was seeking $12 million "...to create a 6 billion record data base similar to Total Information Awareness."

The National Security Agency and Echelon

Fascinating as you may find this information, I would not advise that you discuss it with any friends overseas. You see, virtually every international call, fax and e-mail sent to or from the United States is monitored by the US government's super-secret communications monitoring system called "Echelon", housed at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

With satellite and ground-based listening posts around the world (including locations in Colorado, West Virginia and Washington State), the NSA is the state of Maryland's largest employer - so many calls, so little time.

Pursuant to an Executive Order signed by President Reagan, the CIA is permitted to secretly gather intelligence within the United States only if it is not aimed at the domestic affairs of US citizens and corporations.

But that is not what is occurring. According to an article in Popular Mechanics:

"The secret is out. Two powerful intelligence gathering tools that the United States created to eavesdrop on Soviet leaders and to track KGB spies are now being used to monitor Americans. One system known as Echelon, intercepts and analyzes telephone calls, faxes and e-mail sent to and from the United States. The other system, Tempest, can secretly read the displays on personal computers, cash registers and automatic teller machines, from as far as a half a mile away."

Offshore Financial Solutions provides assistance in setting up confidential offshore entities that protect both your assets and your privacy.