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from the is-that-a-bitcoin-in-your-pocket dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"Davi Barker, co-founder of the BitcoinNotBombs advocacy group, has recently described a run-in he had with the TSA. Barker was about to board his plane on his way back from the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, when he was stopped by two TSA agents. Barker, who was wearing a BitcoinNotBombs shirt and carrying a few hundred metal lapel pins some with the logo of Blockchain.info, a popular Bitcoin wallet and block explorer service was just cleared by airport security. But the TSA agents wanted to search his luggage again. They were looking for his Bitcoins:
I turned back to the orange shirt and asked 'What did the Bitcoin look like?' Bill chimed in and told the agent that what he was saying was impossible because Bitcoin is digital and doesn't have have any physical manifestation. You can't 'see' Bitcoin. The orange shirt said they looked like medallions or tokens. I said I didn't understand what he was talking about, and he simply repeated, in a child like way, that Bitcoins are like metal tokens. I told him that I didn't have any tokens.
The TSA agents suspected he was travelling internationally with over $10,000 worth of Bitcoins. This, presumably, might be seen as a form of money laundering. When another member of his group said that Barker was not going to fly out of the country, the agents simply turned around and disappeared."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by einar on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:10PM
I never understood when it became forbidden to leave a country with a bag full of your own money. The restriction of money import/export is something I remember from former eastern block countries.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:13PM
No small timers or "independents" allowed to cut in on the lucrative state sanctioned monopoly over money laundering.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Jerry Smith on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:36PM
It's restricted throughout the whole European Union, and from and to the EU.e n&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnl.wi kipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWet_ter_voorkoming_van_witwas sen_en_de_financiering_van_terrorisme&act=url [google.com]
Here's article that has some information, I already put it trough the translator for you so you won't have to inform yourself:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 5, Informative) by evilviper on Sunday March 02 2014, @05:55PM
It isn't. You just have to declare it.
Leaving with a bag of money from drug sales, or other criminal activity, though, is not. It should be pretty obvious why.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by davester666 on Sunday March 02 2014, @06:51PM
It isn't forbidden, you generally just have to report that you are doing so.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday March 02 2014, @09:50PM
Money does not equal currency. They're all wound up about currency not money.
Its not your currency. They're just letting you use it... for now.
Some of it is a hangover from the pre-fiat currency days, pre-free(ish) trade olden days. They wouldn't let you export tree logs without licenses and taxes, so they're not going to be amused about exportation of gold or a certificate exchangeable for gold. Now that currency is all fiat it doesn't matter so much.
Note that you can carry / have control over as much money as you want without declaring currency. Walk right on thru with a checkbook connected to a $100K brokerage account, they just don't care. Ditto the linked ATM card in the wallet, or credit cards with limits over $20K. Just don't carry stacks of pieces of paper printed by the treasury department called by most people "cash", that gets them ALL wound up.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dunbal on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:08PM
In the 1970's. The original restriction was $10,000 US per traveling party if coming IN to the US. It's not illegal to do it, you just have to fill out an additional form once you declare it. Of course customs concentrates on the "and we get to confiscate it and keep it if you don't declare it and we catch you" part. IANAL so I can't cite the exact laws, but recently (in the past 15 years or so) the US also wants to know if you are LEAVING the US with more than $10,000 US per traveling party - this time under anti-money laundering, terrorism and drug trafficking laws. Most countries (at least here in Latin America) have adopted similar restrictions and penalties thanks to the US insisting that everyone else adopt certain US laws if they want to be allowed to trade with the US.
So long story short - $10,000 in the 1970's could buy you a luxury car or it was a hell of a slice of a house. Now you won't buy a car with it, much less a house. It barely covers the cost of a modest family vacation in Europe. But it's still $10,000 nonetheless and it won't change. Combine that with increasing restrictions on credit card use overseas (for your "security" of course, I'm sure you understand why we can't process that rental car/hotel payment), and traveling is becoming more of a pain in the ass every day.
And then there's the thugs who probably think that bitcoin looks like this [bloomberg.com] of course.