Homeland Security Wants Your Safe Deposit Box

by AL MARTIN

Homeland Security has begun exercising its new power to ’identify’ the contents of your safe deposit box.

This news should be seen in the context of the many rumors floating around on the internet.

The so-called temporary re-authorization of the PATRIOT I and II legislation included the power, which gives the Department of Homeland Security an unprecedented power to ’identify’ assets held in citizens’ private safe deposit boxes.

This, by the way, was in the so-called fine print, which people didn’t notice at first.

This is an unprecedented power for any government to have. In fact, no so-called democratic government has had this power since Germany from 1934 to 1945.

In 1934, under the German Bank Security Enhancement Act, the German government gained the authority to seize the contents of citizens’ safe deposit boxes, as was done in most countries, including this one.

No longer was that power consolidated within the German finance ministry, but now it was a new and more sinister power wherein the German government had the ability to seize contents of safe deposit boxes for ’political reasons.

This is precisely what has now happened in the United States.

Many people don’t know that the U.S. Treasury Department always had regulatory authority over safe deposit boxes. Since 1933, the Secret Service has had the power to invade and seize certain financial assets from people’s safe deposit boxes.

This power came from the Gold Confiscation Act, and that is where the original power comes from for the U.S. Treasury to do this via the Secret Service.

...What is dangerous about this is that this is yet another power grab by Homeland Security on behalf of the executive branch of government. What is different about it is that it vastly expands the power of government to ’identify’ assets. This does not specifically expand search and seizure, but it is the power to identify. This is something that has never occurred before.

related: Snopes Urban Legends: Bank Shot

Claim: The Department of Homeland Security is secretly putting restrictions on what customers can remove from safe deposit boxes in case of "national disaster."

Status: Undetermined.

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