by John Young
No doubt you have encountered a dollar bill at some point with the URL www.wheresgeorge.com stamped on it. People stamp the bills, enter the serial number into an online database, and can track the currency around the country or even around the world. It’s a pretty cool idea.
When I first saw it, though, I wondered: “Isn’t this illegal? Isn’t this ‘defacement?'” The answer is: no.
Criminal defacement is defined in Title 18, Section 333 of the U.S. Code as follows:
“Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”
The URL stamped on the currency is not done with malicious intent, and does not render it unfit for reissue.
Well guess what? Neither would the URL “www.wvwnews.net.”Staples and other sources carry rubber stamp kits and ink pads that will allow you to create a rubber stamp that says anything you’d like. You simply pick out the letters you’d like to use, insert them in a holder and — shazam — you have a stamp suitable for your purpose.
So obtain a rubber stamp kit, set it up to imprint either www.wvwnews.net or www.europeanamericansunited.org, and start stamping your currency. Use the currency when you buy coffee or practically anything else.
As these circulate around the country, people will hear of us and a few will even go to our websites and get our messages.
This activism is legal, it is inexpensive, it is practically untraceable, it is effective because nobody is going to throw away currency and some will look up the URLs, and it is practically zero risk.
So what is your excuse for not doing this?