Not quite [OT]: News about Revolution

[Bernard Devlin]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Neal Campbell <nealk3nc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Its a US requirement and the deadline set by the Bush administration was
> years ago but many (most?) countries cannot afford to do it. I never figured
> out how they thought that if you were smart enough to do these horrible
> things you would have a "real" chip in your passport. This stuff is like
> squeezing a balloon as when you press in one area it pops out in a different
> one. Unfortunately though the world runs on money and all the money goes
> thru SWIFT.

My partner is leaving the UK on holiday and asked me what was the
limit on taking cash out of the country.  I told him that as far as I
knew, there was no limit (amazing as that sounds -- I remember it
being one of the first things that Thatcher did when she came to
power).

He told me that this couldn't be true.  So I did a quick search and
found out that things have drastically altered.  Not the law, mind you
-- AFAICT there is still technically no limit.  But it turns out that
people who have as little as £1000 in cash on them at airports are
quizzed about it and required to show proof of where this money came
from!

It would not cross my mind if going for a 14+ day holiday to take less
than £3000 cash with me.  And it would also never have crossed my mind
to make sure I could provide an audit trail too.

Why would I take so much cash?  Because I've been injured on holiday
before and needed a lot of scans.  And because I've been stranded
abroad where my credit cards with over £30,000 of credit on them and
which have never been compromised, were refused in ATMs, leaving me no
option but to pay massive charges elsewhere to draw money out on my
credit cards.  It transpired that there had been so much ATM fraud in
that city that foreign cards could not be used.  When I took this up
with my bank back home, every guarantee that the matter had been
resolved (and that I could now use my cards) turned out to be
worthless.  When asked why we weren't warned about these things in the
UK, they said if they did that the fraudsters would just move on.  But
that is exactly what they will do within hours  of their fake ATM
cards not working!

So, one can't rely on ATMs, and if one takes anything other than pin
money on a foreign vacation one should be prepared to provide a trail
that can be audited.

Unbelievable.  The end result is that I now do a fraction of the
travel that I used to do.

And yet governments still take steps that ensure there is a drugs
trade, they don't take any real measures against known terrorist
groups, and most CCTV cameras fail to prevent or solve crimes.

Security theatre, as Bruce Schneier calls it.

Bernard