And lots more. . .
We begin with a familiar routine, this time with Canada sacrificing civil liberties, via Reuters:
Canada must do more to rein in threat from radicals: police head
The head of Canada’s national police told a parliamentary committee on Monday the government must do more to stop homegrown radicals, such as those who killed two soldiers on home soil last week, from going overseas for militant training.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson said last week’s killings in Ottawa and outside Montreal, which he said appeared to be carried out with minimal planning or preparation, show the nation faces a “serious” threat.
“While we are facing this threat at home, we must focus our efforts on preventing individuals traveling abroad to commit to commit acts of terrorism,” Paulson said. “Preventing the individuals from traveling is critical. If these individuals return with training and/or battle experience, they pose an even greater threat to Canada and our allies.”
More from Xinhua:
Canadian government introduces protection of Canada from terrorists act
Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Steven Blaney Monday announced that the Canadian government has introduced the Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act to better protect Canadians.
The announcement came five days after an armed terrorist stormed into the Canadian parliament after killing a soldier at the War Memorial nearby last Wednesday. The attacker, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a homegrown radical, was killed later by security officers in the parliament.
Blaney said terrorism remains a serious threat to Canada and Canadian interests. The nature of this threat continues to be apparent both abroad and at home.
And from The National, a surprisingly realistic assessment:
Panel: What do we sacrifice to be safe?
Program notes:
Given the killings of two Canadian soldiers this week, should police and intelligence officials have more power to stop terror attacks and other security threats? Brian Stewart, Veronica Kitchen and Barry Cooper talk through the implications.
From Reuters, China follows the same course:
China to streamline counter-terrorism intelligence gathering
China will set up a national anti-terrorism intelligence system, state media said on Monday, as part of changes to a security law expected to be passed this week after an upsurge in violence in the far western region of Xinjiang.
Hundreds of people have been killed over the past two years in Xinjiang in unrest the government has blamed on Islamists who want to establish a separate state called East Turkestan.
Rights groups and exiles blame the government’s repressive policies for stoking resentment among the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home.
More from SINA English:
China to set up anti-terror intelligence gathering center
China will set up an anti-terrorism intelligence gathering center to coordinate and streamline intelligence gathering in the field, according to a draft law submitted for reading on Monday.
The counter-terrorism law aimed to improve intelligence gathering and the sharing of information across government bodies and among military, armed police and militia, and enhance international cooperation, said Lang Sheng, deputy head of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, the top legislature.
Explaining the draft to lawmakers, Lang said China is facing a serious and complex situation against terrorism, with more influence from “international factors.”
And in Old Blighty, a trial date is set, via the Guardian:
June trial for four accused of Isis plot to kill police and soldiers in London
Group allegedly swore allegiance to Islamic State and carried out “hostile reconnaissance” on military targets
Four men accused of a terror plot to kill police or soldiers in London will face a jury next June, a court has heard.
The four are alleged to have sworn allegiance to Islamic State (Isis) and carried out “hostile reconnaissance” on police and military targets, as part of a plot in which a gun, silencer and ammunition were obtained, as well as a moped.
The four men, all from London, appeared at the Old Bailey on Monday. Tarik Hassane, 21, Suhaib Majeed, 20, and Momen Motasim, 21, appeared by video link, speaking only to confirm their names. A fourth man, Nyall Hamlett, 24, appeared in the dock.
From the Intercept, a symptom of endless war:
Iraq War Now Being Fought By People Who Were Just Kids When It Started
Last week, the Pentagon announced the death of the first American serviceman in the war against ISIS. Marine Lance Cpl. Sean Neal was killed in what was described as a “non-combat incident” in Iraq, making him the first American to die in “Operation Inherent Resolve” – America’s latest military excursion into that country.
Cpl. Neal was only 19 years old. He would have only been eight at the outset of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and merely six on 9/11 – a child at the time of both these events. The fact that he ended up losing his life in Iraq is on one hand tragic, and on the other completely absurd.
The tragedy here is that a young man with a long future ahead of him ended up dying in a distant country before even reaching the age of twenty. The absurdity is that men such as him are still losing their lives as a result of still-inexplicable decisions made over a decade ago. The Iraq War never ended, but now it’s being fought by men who were just children when it started. Walter Lippman once said, “I don’t think old men ought to promote wars for young men to fight.” In our time, old men have been promoting wars that kids would ultimately end up fighting.
The New York Times ups the ante:
Missiles of ISIS May Pose Peril for Aircrews in Iraq
From the battlefield near Baiji, an Islamic State jihadist fired a heat-seeking missile and blew an Iraqi Army Mi-35M attack helicopter out of the sky this month, killing its two crew members.
Days later, the Islamic State released a chilling series of images from a video purporting to capture the attack in northern Iraq: a jihadist hiding behind a wall with a Chinese-made missile launcher balanced on his shoulder; the missile blasting from the tube, its contrail swooping upward as it tracked its target; the fiery impact and the wreckage on a rural road.
The helicopter was one of several Iraqi military helicopters that the militants claim to have shot down this year, and the strongest evidence yet that Islamic State fighters in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missile systems that pose a serious threat to aircraft flown by Iraq and the American-led coalition.
From the Associated Press, nothing succeeds like failure:
INSIDE WASHINGTON: Profiting from failure
The Army’s $5 billion intelligence network has largely failed in its promise to make crucial data easily accessible to soldiers and analysts in the field. But for a select group of companies and individuals, the system has been a bonanza.
Designed to provide a common intelligence picture from the Pentagon to the farthest reaches of Afghanistan, the Distributed Common Ground System has proven crash-prone, unwieldy and “not survivable,” in the words of one memorable 2012 testing report.
Meanwhile, the defense companies that designed and built it continue to win multi-million-dollar intelligence contracts. And a revolving door has spun between those and the military commands that continue to fund the system, records show.
Several people who worked in key roles in Army intelligence left for top jobs at those companies. In the world of government contracting, that’s not illegal or entirely uncommon, but critics say it perpetuates a culture of failure.
Legal challenges, via the Associated Press:
NSA surveillance challenges moving through courts
While Congress mulls how to curtail the NSA’s collection of Americans’ telephone records, impatient civil liberties groups are looking to legal challenges already underway in the courts to limit government surveillance powers.
Three appeals courts are hearing lawsuits against the bulk phone records program, creating the potential for an eventual Supreme Court review. Judges in lower courts, meanwhile, are grappling with the admissibility of evidence gained through the NSA’s warrantless surveillance.
Advocates say the flurry of activity, which follows revelations last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of once-secret intelligence programs, show how a post-9/11 surveillance debate once primarily hashed out among lawmakers in secret is being increasingly aired in open court — not only in New York and Washington but in places like Idaho and Colorado.
“The thing that is different about the debate right now is that the courts are much more of a factor in it,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. Before the Snowden disclosures, he said, courts were generally relegated to the sidelines of the discussion. Now, judges are poised to make major decisions on at least some of the matters in coming months.
From Yahoo News, the second Snowden?:
Feds identify suspected ‘second leaker’ for Snowden reporters
The FBI recently searched a government contractor’s home, but some officials worry the Justice Department has lost its ‘appetite’ for leak cases
The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called “second leaker” who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.
The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect’s home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.
But the case has also generated concerns among some within the U.S. intelligence community that top Justice Department officials — stung by criticism that they have been overzealous in pursuing leak cases — may now be more reluctant to bring criminal charges involving unauthorized disclosures to the news media, the sources said. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there was concern “there is no longer an appetite at Justice for these cases.”
From Gallup, a source of high anxiety:
Hacking Tops List of Crimes Americans Worry About Most
As the list of major U.S. retailers hit by credit card hackers continues to grow this year, Americans are more likely to worry about having credit card information they used in stores stolen by computer hackers than any other crime they are asked about. Sixty-nine percent of Americans report they frequently or occasionally worry about this happening to them. Having a computer or smartphone hacked (62%) is the only other crime that worries the majority of Americans.
Here’s the full list of America’s top criminal worries:
A security breach, via SecurityWeek:
Tor Exit Node Found Maliciously Modifying Files
A researcher has identified an exit node on the Tor anonymity network which is set up to maliciously modify the files that go through it.
Josh Pitts, a researcher with the Leviathan Security Group, has been analyzing ways to alter binary files during download with the aid of man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. In a presentation he made at the DerbyCon security conference this year, the expert noted that cybercriminals had probably been using techniques similar to the one he disclosed, but he only had circumstantial evidence.
To put his theory to the test, Pitts developed a module for Exitmap, a Python-based tool that allows users to check Tor exit nodes for traffic modifications. Roughly an hour after he started running the tool, the researcher identified a “very active” Russian exit node that was wrapping binary files that passed through it with malware.
Network World covers another costly hack attack:
Disaster as CryptoWall encrypts US firm’s entire server installation
“Here is a tale of ransomware that will make your blood run cold,” announced Stu Sjouwerman of security training firm KnowBe4 in a company newsletter this week and he wasn’t exaggerating.
One of his firm’s customers contacted him on 14 October for advice on how to buy Bitcoins after all seven of its servers containing 75GB of data had been encrypted by a recent variant of the hated CryptoWall ransom Trojan.
An admin had clicked on a phishing link which was bad enough. Unfortunately, the infected workstation had mapped drives and permissions to all seven servers and so CryptoWall had quickly jumped on to them to hand the anonymous professional a work day to forget.
From SecurityWeek, not altogether surprising:
Hackers Target Ukraine’s Election Website
Hackers attacked Ukraine’s election commission website Saturday on the eve of parliamentary polls, officials said, but they denied Russian reports that the vote counting system itself had been put out of action.
The http://www.cvk.gov.ua site, run by the commission in charge of organising Sunday’s election, briefly shut down. Ukrainian security officials blamed a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a method that can slow down or disable a network by flooding it with communications requests.
“There is a DDoS attack on the commission’s site,” the government information security service said on its Facebook page.
The security service said the attack was “predictable” and that measures had been prepared in advance to ensure that the election site could not be completely taken down.
Network World covers metastasis:
The ‘Backoff’ malware linked to data breaches is spreading
The number of computers in North America infected by the Backoff malware, which is blamed for a string of payment card breaches, has risen sharply, according to research from network security company Damballa.
The company detected a 57 percent increase between August and September in devices infected with Backoff, which scrapes a computer’s RAM for leftover credit card data after a payment card has been swiped, said Brian Foster, Damballa’s CTO.
Damballa based its finding on data it collects from its ISP and enterprise customers, who use its traffic analysis products to detect malicious activity.
Damballa sees about 55 percent of internet traffic from North America, including DNS requests, though for privacy reasons it doesn’t know the IP addresses of most of those computers, Foster said.
From BuzzFeed, America’s finest allies, at it again:
Saudi Lawyers Sentenced To Eight Years Behind Bars For Tweeting
The criminal court, which usually tries terrorism cases, said that the lawyers’ actions on Twitter “undermines general order.”
A Saudi Arabian court on Monday sentenced three lawyers to up to eight years in jail for sending tweets critical of the government.
The tweets were directed against the justice ministry, which has since 2010 promised to reform the courts system and codify just how the country’s legal adherence to Sharia law works.
Prosecutors charged the three lawyers with “contempt of the judiciary, interfering with its independence, criticizing the justice system and the judiciary.”
For unexplained reasons, the case took place under the auspices of the Specialized Criminal Court — which was created in 2008, ostensibly to conduct trials against suspected terrorists.
After the jump, ghosts from World War II including Italian compensation demands to Germany and the Greek demand for repayment of war debt incurred at gunpoint plus Uncle Sam’s Nazi minions, latter-day wannabes, rising pressure over a murdered Mexican journalist, arrests in the case of the missing Mexican students as a town waits for answers and a new governor is named, repression in Egypt, India builds up its military, China and Vietnam seeks maritime accommodation, on to Hong Kong and Beijing allegations and a media campaign, China accuses Taiwan of spy games, and America’s Kafka Kops. . .
Succor sought for old wounds, via Süddeutsche Zeitung:
Italy Supreme Court: Germany Must Pay Compensation For Nazi Crimes
A historically loaded conflict with potentially serious consequences about compensation for Nazi crimes looms between Germany and Italy. The Italian Supreme Court in Rome has ruled that Nazi victims can sue Germany for compensation in Italian civil courts.
The court ruled last week that international law’s principle of “state immunity,” which would normally preclude such suits, does not apply where the “wrongful acts of a state, acts that can be classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity, are concerned.” The reasoning behind the decision was that in such extreme cases the inviolable human rights guaranteed by the Italian constitution take precedence.
The highest Italian court thus stands in direct opposition to a decision by the highest court of the community of states. In 2012, the International Court of Justice in The Hague decided in favor of Germany against Italy. The Hague judges took the view that even in the event of the worst crimes against humanity, state immunity must still apply.
More of the same, via EnetEnglish.gr:
Officials brief MPs on German forced wartime loan
Estimate expected by year’s end
A special finance ministry working group has amassed 50,000 documents as part of its effort to calculate the present-dauy value of a loan Greece was forced to pay to its German occupiers during the second world war
An official estimate of the present-day value of a loan that Greece was forced to pay to its German occupiers during the second world war should be ready by the end of the year, a special finance ministry working group told MPs on Thursday.
The forced occupation loan was imposed by the occupying German and Italian forces on Greece under the terms of a unilateral decision which they took in Rome on 14 March 1942, and which was subsequently presented to the collaborationist government in Athens.
Under the agreement, the Germans and Italians forced the collaborationist government to pay them 1.5bn drachmas per month in occupation costs. About nine months later, the amount of the forced loan was raised to 8bn drachmas on a monthly basis, which was supposed to be repaid at a later stage to Greece with a zero interest rate.
Addressing parliament’s interparty committee on German reparations, Panagiotis Karakousis and Vassilios Manesiotis from the working group briefed MPs on the method they are using to collect information on how to evaluate the extent of the loan.
And then there’s this, via the New York Times:
In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis
In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich.
The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.”
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official.
Their latter-day wannabes, via the Guardian:
Football fans and neo-Nazis clash with police in Cologne
Police in riot gear tackle protesters marching under the ‘Hooligans against Salafists’ banner
Football hooligans and members of the German far right clashed with riot police in the centre of Cologne on Sunday as a demonstration against Islamic extremism turned violent.
About 4,000 hardline football fans and members of neo-Nazi organisations gathered under the banner “Hooligans against Salafists”. The march had been registered by a regional far-right party, called “Pro NRW”.
A counter demonstration under the motto “Shoulder to shoulder against racism and religious extremism”, organised by anti-fascist activists, had drew about 500 people.
On too Mexico and pressure rising over another murder from the Latin American Herald Tribune:
UN Urges Mexico to Probe Murder of Citizen Journalist
The head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Monday urged Mexico to investigate the murder of citizen journalist Maria del Rosario Fuentes.
“It is important that the authorities do all in their power to bring those responsible for the killing of Ms Fuentes Rubio to justice, as this could help strengthen media independence and the right of information,” Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement.
Fuentes Rubio, a physician, was kidnapped Oct. 15 after leaving work at a clinic in Reynosa, a city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, which has long been a battleground for rival drug cartels. The following day, a photograph of her dead body appeared on her social media account.
Bokova described Fuentes Rubio as “a brave woman who used social networks to circumvent organized crime groups’ efforts to suppress information about their activities in the media.”
Arrests in the case of the missing Mexican students, from Reuters:
Mexico arrests four gang members in students’ disappearance
Mexican authorities on Monday said they had arrested four drug gang members involved in the kidnapping of dozens of student teachers who disappeared last month and are feared massacred.
The announcement came as local media reported that a mass grave has been discovered in a trash dump outside mountain town of Cocula, near Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero, where 43 students disappeared after they clashed with police and masked men on Sept 26.
Mexico’s Attorney General Jesus Murillo said the four members of the Guerreros Unidos gang had been involved in the kidnapping of the students, which has sparked nationwide protests and undermined President Enrique Pena Nieto’s claims that Mexico is becoming safer under his watch.
“Today we now have those who organized the disappearance of these youths,” Murillo said.
From Latin American Herald Tribune, waiting for answers:
Ayotzinapa Waits in Hope a Month After Disappearance of 43 Students
A month after 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School disappeared after a night of violence in the city of Iguala, students blocked off a road to express the families’ hope that they are still alive.
Nearly 500 students from the school blocked a highway on Sunday in the state capital of Chilpancingo that connects it to the Pacific Ocean resort city of Acapulco, which has heavy weekend traffic.
Hundreds of drivers were affected by the blockade that occurred at the same spot where two students from the same school were shot dead by police in 2011.
And a new governor is named, via the Latin American Herald Tribune:
Mexico’s Guerrero State Congress Names New Governor
The legislature in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero on Sunday named Rogelio Ortega Martinez as governor, replacing Angel Aguirre, to aid in the search for 43 missing students.
State lawmakers voted 39-6 to appoint Ortega Martinez to serve until Oct. 27, 2015, in a bid to reduce the tension, discontent and growing protests in Guerrero and across Mexico arising from the lack of results in the investigation into the students’ disappearance.
Minutes after the appointment, a legislative committee met with the new governor in an extraordinary session.
Local media reported that Ortega Martinez served as head of the Autonomous University of Guerrero and has been an activist who has maintained good relations with different student organizations in the state.
Repression in Egypt from the Christian Science Monitor:
In Egypt, avenues of political dissent are closing steadily
A slew of ruling by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, have turned the clock back to the Mubarak era. On Friday, at least 31 Egyptian soldiers died in Sinai attacks blamed on militants.
After a democratic election brought the Islamist Mohamed Morsi to power, a coup upended him and saw his Muslim Brotherhood outlawed, paving the way for popular Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to become president.
Since the coup, the clock of political change has been relentlessly turned back, with almost every avenue for political dissent shut down and the heroes of what many Egyptians called a revolution in jail, in exile, or simply keeping their heads down. Twitter and Facebook aren’t mobilizing tools for social protest – they are places where activists can be tripped up by sharing political views. Journalists have not been spared – the Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-American Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and the Egyptian Baher Mohamed marked their 300th day in prison last Friday on trumped-up charges of endangering national security while reporting for Al Jazeera English.
Recommended: How much do you know about Egypt? Take this quiz.
Another American citizen, the Egyptian-American Muslim Brotherhood activist Mohamed Soltan, also remains in prison despite US requests for his release, with his health deteriorating because of a hunger strike. And on Sunday, Egypt sentenced 23 activists to three-year prison terms for protesting against a law that outlawed protests of the kind that ousted Mubarak.
India builds up its military, via United Press International:
India to build 6 submarines
India plans to build six submarines as part of a program to enhance its military capability
India’s military plans to spend more than $1 billion to build six submarines indigenously and procure thousands of Israeli-made anti-tank missiles.
The decisions are part of a larger $13 billion program to boost national security, and were announced late last week following a meeting of the Defense Acquisition Council, which is chaired by Defense Minister Arun Jaitley.
The six submarines, which would cost an estimated $800 million, would feature air independent propulsion, allowing them to stay under water longer than submarines using classic diesel/electric propulsion systems. They will also be capable of carrying cruise missiles.
Looking for resolution with Reuters:
China, Vietnam say want lasting solution to sea dispute
China and Vietnam agreed on Monday to use an existing border dispute mechanism to find a solution to a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, saying they did not want it to affect relations.
The two countries have sought to patch up ties since their long-running row erupted in May, triggered by China’s deployment a drilling rig in waters claimed by the communist neighbors, which lead to confrontation at sea between rival vessels and violent anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam.
After a meeting between China’s top diplomat, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, and Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh in Hanoi, China’s foreign ministry said they had agreed to “appropriately handle the maritime problem”.
On to Hong Kong and Beijing allegations from Xinhua:
Occupy Central far from being “impromptu demonstrations,” plots hatched 2 years ago: BBC
FAR from being “impromptu demonstrations,” the ongoing Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong was plotted nearly two years ago with the involvement of overseas forces, the BBC has reported in an article published on its website.
It is an “open secret” at the Oslo Freedom Forum, which is referred to as “one of the biggest meetings of human rights activists in the world,” that plans were hatched for the demonstrations nearly two years ago, wrote Laura Kuenssberg, chief correspondent of BBC Newsnight, in the article.
“Democracy activists” from around the world have helped “organize their struggle, gather together,” said the article.
As early as in January 2013, “organizers” prepared a plan to persuade 10,000 people to occupy roads in central Hong Kong, it said.
The BBC article is here.
From South China Morning Post, a media campaign:
Hong Kong security chief releases video of Occupy protesters’ ‘violent behaviour’
Backlash over video said to show the ‘hate and violence’ of Occupy protesters as lawmakers accuse security chief of ‘political propaganda’
Security chief Lai Tung-kwok yesterday attempted to lift the lid on “hate and violence” by Occupy protesters with a video of clashes with police – but found himself on the receiving end of a backlash amid accusations that he left out inconvenient events.
Lai premiered the video – said to have been gleaned from clips found on the internet – to members of the Legislative Council’s security panel. But panel members criticised him for using the meeting as a “tool of political propaganda”.
The minister insisted the video was meant only to show lawmakers what had happened.
Japan seeks a prisoner deal in Pyongyang from NHK WORLD:
Japan, N.Korea begin talks in Pyongyang
A key North Korean official is sitting down for talks with a Japanese government delegation in Pyongyang.
So Tae Ha chairs a special investigation committee set up by the North in July to look into the fate of missing Japanese nationals, including those abducted by North Korean agents.
So is also the deputy chief of the country’s secret police.
The talks began in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning.
Allegations from CCTV News:
Exchange students to Taiwan susceptible to espionage
In recent years an increasing number of students from the Chinese mainland are choosing to do an exchange in Taiwan. While the trend has boosted ties across the straits, it appears that a number of people have taken the opportunity to carry out espionage.
According to an investigative report by the Global Times, China has identified over 40 cases since 2009 where exchange students from the Chinese mainland have provided state secrets to intelligence agencies in Taiwan.
Three major espionage figures involved in instigating exchange students to collect state secrets have been identified by government departments.
And for our final item, America’s Kafka Kops from the New York Times:
Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.
The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”
The federal government does.
Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.
