The Bush administration argues whether it\u2019s tracking calls or bank accounts, innocent people needn\u2019t worry. They\u2019re only going after terrorists.<\/p>\n
Apparently, not so<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three Kurdish men who transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Middle East in violation of the nation’s anti-terrorism law were spared prison yesterday by a judge in Harrisonburg who concluded that they did not have “evil intent.”<\/p>\n The men, all of whom were granted asylum in the United States, could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison for violating the Patriot Act.<\/p>\n \u2026 Although the government did not accuse the men of having terrorist ties, the charges against them were brought under changes adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks.<\/p>\n Under the Patriot Act, those who transfer money can be charged even if they do not know their actions are illegal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So even if you don\u2019t know you did something illegal and you weren\u2019t involved in terrorism but an innocent transfer of money to relatives abroad, you could be given probation and fined as much $6,600.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bush administration argues whether it\u2019s tracking calls or bank accounts, innocent people needn\u2019t worry. They\u2019re only going after terrorists. Apparently, not so. Three Kurdish men who transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Middle East in violation of the nation’s anti-terrorism law were spared prison yesterday by a judge in Harrisonburg who concluded… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}