Until the early 20th century, with a few interruptions for wars and national panics, silver and gold freely circulated in the US. The dollar was "good as gold" and for…

Since 2002, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been using a data-mining program that creates secret, terrorist ratings on tens of millions of travelers—both US and foreign citizens—who cross…

Cash is private. When you spend cash, there's no paper trail. Cash transactions are difficult, if not impossible to trace.  Because it's difficult to track cash transactions, the US government over the…

Back in 2000, the UK government passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, better known as RIPA. One of the most controversial aspects of this law—Part III—gives authorities the right…

Those hard-working and devoted bureaucrats at the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) now have new target in their sights: the nation's mutual funds.  Convinced that Al Qaeda and…

They may not work against NSA eavesdropping, but for just any other purpose for which you need telephone privacy, two new services are worth considering. Jangl (http://www.jangl.com), allows you to…

I'm bewildered over all the fuss surrounding the recent revelations that every international traveler entering or leaving the US for the last four years has been given a "terrorism risk"…

There's no question drunk driving is a reckless act, but there comes a time when efforts to end it cross the line into unacceptable intrusions into our private lives. A…

Graybeards in the offshore industry will remember that in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Netherlands Antilles (NA) was a leading offshore center, primarily due to its tax treaty with…

Courtesy of a decision from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. Customs officials can seize and copy the contents of any laptop carried across a U.S. border. There's no…

If you have substantial U.S. assets that you want to protect from possible judgments, you may be tempted to use a foreign entity, such as an international business company or…

It's election day—and who says that Congress doesn't have a sense of humor? Yes, those fun-loving guys and gals at the "U.S. Joint Economic Committee"—whose responsibility is to " heir…

Credit card fraud is a huge problem worldwide. Online merchants alone suffer losses of more than US$60 billion each year, according to research firm Financial Insights. Unfortunately, credit card companies have…

Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we’ll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave—or re-enter—the United…

The Sovereign Society has for years recommended Panama for its first-world infrastructure, its outstanding bank secrecy laws and most importantly its willingness to stand up to the USA and say…

Fifteen years ago, I came face-to-face with US “civil forfeiture” laws that permit police to seize your property, without accusing you of any crime. In my case, I owned a…

The US State Department is now rolling out passports equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, and expects that by the end of 2006, all newly issued US passports will…

With the deteriorating economy, a collapse in real estate prices and the impending retirement of tens of millions of “baby boomers,” we may be reading more about people like Timothy…

The European Union is nothing if not persistent. But I seriously doubt their grasp of reality, six years after EU bureaucrats, laboring in their ivory towers in Brussels, came up…

As someone who lived outside the US for more than two years, I gladly took advantage of one of the very few perks that the government provides expat Americans.  I’m…

I’ve been living in Vienna the last few weeks, and will be here until the end of October.  Every time I visit Austria, I’m struck by the lack of “paranoia”…

Thanks to the HP scandal, we’ve all heard about "pretexting"—a private investigator, identity thief or government lackey contacts a cell phone operator and pretends to be you, to find out…

Quietly, very quietly, governments throughout the world are constructing a global surveillance infrastructure. Your financial transactions are already available for warrantless inspection by investigators in many countries (especially the U.S. and…