Homeland Security "mining" our bank vaults?

Does the DHS have the power, through the "Patriot Act", to "mine" through your safe deposit boxes? Your bank accounts? Evidently, they think they do... and they are taking search and seizure to new levels...

The Investment Watch blog is working to confirm reports that banks are circulating in-house memos telling employees that the DHS has announced that the Patriot Act gives it the right to seize, without a warrant, any and all customer bank accounts, to make “periodic and unannounced visits” to banks, and to open and inspect “select safe deposit boxes.” These same memos also say that the DHS “shall, at the discretion of the agent supervising the search, remove, photograph or seize as evidence” such items as “bar gold, gold coins , firearms of any kind unless manufactured prior to 1878, documents such as passports or foreign bank account records, pornography or any material that, in the opinion of the agent, shall be deemed of to be of a contraband nature.”

I imagine there are more than a few bank employees here at ATS; maybe we can get "in-house" confirmation... or not... maybe a wink or a nod?

The memo also warns bank employees to keep their mouths shut. They can lose their jobs and be prosecuted under the Patriot Act if they release “improper . . . classified DHS Security information” to the public, including customers whose safe deposit boxes the DHS has inspected. Bank employees are also barred from taking to the media or releasing information on the internet.

Can this just be sensationalistic drivel? In light of DHS's recent activity it makes sense. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. There sure is a lot of "quackery" going on in Washington...

As noted, Investment Watch is in the process of confirming this report. It’s not hard, though, to believe that it’s true. To date, the DHS has given itself an open checkbook to buy billions of bullets and thousands of tanks and guns. Moreover, it has held itself out as being above the law, since it has refused to respond to Congressional requests from Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) as well as from fifteen other Republican House members, demanding information about the DHS buying binge, including giving information about the urban warfare tanks that it is shipping all over the United States. Small wonder, then, that so many Americans view it with suspicion. Could what happened in Cyprus happen here?

I think it might be time to store valuables in coffee cans buried in the yard... I am going to put a copy of the Constitution in one of them cans; when it is all over I may have the last one...

Full story at:www.mrconservative.com... -take-what-they-want/

Do you have a link to the story?

If true - this should be completely illegal & unconstitutional.

They should be forced to reference the particular passage in the Patriot Act that they believes give them the right to invade private property to complete an unlawful search & seizure without a warrant. Then at least there would be grounds to bring the Patriot Act back before the courts to review the constitutionality of it.

Funny how the main thing they're interested in is money and guns

But really if you don't want someone to know you have something then certainly don't leave the security of it to a third party you can't trust, and after these sort of scares all i can imagine in most security boxes is a photo of a middle finger along with some rude words and if they offer air tight sealed boxes perhaps fill it up with cow poop just to make the agents day really nice

reply to post by madmac5150


This isn't exactly the same thing, but in a way, the government has been stealing from everyone, for quite some time now. They create money, thus causing the actual value of our money to significantly drop.

Taking it directly out of my pocket, or just causing the value of my pocket to drop, doesn't really matter. Either way we're screwed.

reply to post by coldkidc

I edited the OP with the link... my cat insisted...