“Stalin Would Love This…”

By Erika Nolan, Executive Publisher of The Sovereign Society

 Sun. Sand. Snorkeling. Scuba diving. All of those come to mind when one mentions the Cayman Islands – one of world’s most popular tourist destinations.

But I didn’t enjoy any of those things during my recent trip to that idyllic locale in the heart of the Caribbean Ocean.

Instead, mine was a research trip focused on meeting with the locals … where the talk eventually turned to kidnapping, ransom and spies… 

“Stalin would love this,” Michael Algebra, one of the top lawyers in the Caymans, said as I nodded in agreement.

The topic at hand was the recently revealed, domestic spying and data gathering operations of the U.S. government … which now includes domestic drone use, as confirmed Wednesday by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

“The West has taken civil liberties and freedoms away from its citizens…all without a single gun, revolt or a war,” Michael added.

Freedom Alliance Chairman Bob Bauman and I visited Michael in the Cayman Islands last week, during our offshore investing research mission. We talked at length about the latest moves by the U.S. and the EU to destroy personal privacy and to implement financial tracking on nearly every transaction. And we came to an obvious and unsettling conclusion:

If you have any type of wealth, data gathering is especially dangerous for you and your family.

The Threat is Real

Look at the heart of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and all the international financial compliance rules as of late. Where will all that data end up? It will be in a database, delivered to the IRS. It will gather all the financial data on anyone born in America – regardless of whether you have actively lived in the country or you just happen to be born on U.S. shores. And many of those in that database will be wealthy – very wealthy.

Think this through with me for a moment. We know that every database in the world can be easily compromised – either legally or via hackers and the corrupt employees who sell the info for serious cash. What would a criminal pay to get a list of world’s wealthiest families? What would they pay to know the names of the people who set up the accounts, the names of all their beneficiaries –most likely the children or grandchildren – and the address information for these people? And once they pay for the information…what will they do with it? They will target these people for kidnappings and demand huge ransoms.

I know… it sounds dramatic. But today, it’s a very real possibility.

And as Michael pointed out during our meeting in George Town, many wealthy people are now including kidnapping clauses in their trust documents. While kidnappings are rare in the U.S., they are all too normal in Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and parts of the Middle East. Those who fear being targeted can set a limit on the ransom amount the trustee can pay to secure your return.

Setting the price of your own life – it’s something I wouldn’t wish on an enemy. But, it’s becoming more common every day as more and more data gathering occurs.

Ominous Implications

There are dark, unspoken consequences of lists and information gathering. We’ve seen this before. In Germany prior to and during World War II, behind the Iron Curtain, in parts of Africa, in the Middle East, and now the U.S.

While President Obama dismissed concerns about his administration’s domestic spying operations as “minor intrusions” on our liberties, the truth is quite different if one actually takes the time to think about the potential implications of such massive data gathering.

And can we really be accused of overreacting with the IRS abuse of targeted groups and the government leaks of late? No one but the self-deluded thinks that our data is unfailingly safe and in the hands of the most competent and trustworthy among us.

As we left Michael’s office, he asked us: “When will the American people stand up, tell the government to get out of their lives?”

Soon. I hope it is very soon.
In Wealth & Prosperity,

Erika Nolan
Executive Publisher, The Sovereign Society