[Cryptography] 1984! US Senate Launches Forfeiture and Crypto / Cash / Assets / Prepaid War

[grarpamp]

Posted on Jun 15, 2017 by Caleb Chen

These are the 4 Senators that want to create a way to track your
digital currencies at the US border

A new bill, S.1241 – Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing,
and Counterfeiting Act of 2017, would make it a money laundering
offense to cross the American border with more than $10,000 in
undeclared cryptocurrency. The stated goal of this legislation is to
bolster America’s “border protection strategy to interdict and detect
prepaid access devices, digital currencies, or other similar
instruments, at border crossings and other ports of entry for the
United States.” Basically, if passed, the new bill would have the US
border patrol treat digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and
Zcash as a seizable asset, opening it up to the great American problem
of civil asset forfeiture.

S. 1421 would have the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S.
Customs and Border Protections agencies to work together and present
Congress with a plan to detect digital currencies at border crossings
and information on the infrastructure needed. Needless to say,
everyone is curious as to what kind of infrastructure would need to be
developed to “detect” the presence of digital currency at border
crossings. Suffice to say, the presence of such language in the
proposed law reveals the deep lack of understanding that our lawmakers
have when it comes to the internet, privacy, and especially digital
currencies.

Senators seeking to force Bitcoin declaration at borders are out of
touch with technology

With an *****average age of 73*****, the 4 Senators that cosponsored
this bill are:

Sen. Grassley, Chuck [R-IA]
Sen. Feinstein, Dianne [D-CA]
Sen. Cornyn, John [R-TX]
Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI]

It gets worst. S. 1421 also sets it up so that those caught for tax
fraud can also be punished as money laundering, even if there is no
Specified Unlawful Activity (SUA) tied to it. According to Ballard
Spahr LLP:

“If passed in its present form, S. 1241 ironically will take the one
kind of offense which Congress has historically not allowed to form
the predicate for money laundering – i.e., “garden variety” tax fraud
not involving illegal proceeds – and turn things on their head. That
is, transactions promoting a tax crime, so long as they involve a
cross-border transaction, will be the one and only kind of transaction
that can constitute a money laundering offense when the proceeds
represent otherwise entirely legal funds.”

This new law proposed by Senators Grassley, Feinstein, Cornyn, and
Whitehouse should not pass – call your state’s Senators to make sure
that they vote against this heinous bill.