A couple of warnings this week about what might seem like entirely sensible activities that could, in fact, lead to sudden and severe loss of capital. One affects travellers to the US, the other anyone with a UK bank account.

Do you own a laptop, and occasionally carry it to the US on air trips? Be aware that the Department of Homeland Security has decided that you are a potential threat to the well-being of the USA.

The New York Times<$> reported it thus: “Anecdotal evidence indicates a growing number of laptops are being randomly and legally scrutinised, and some are even being seized without a reason given by customs agents when travellers return to the United States.”

If a cursory look at your opening screen — usually the desktop, for Windows users — reveals anything potentially terrorist-related, the machine will be confiscated. No matter if your files are entirely innocent, you will be in potentially big trouble until your innocence can be established.

The Times cited the story of a fellow trying to fly out of Washington Dulles, who had a file called “Blueprints” on his desktop, which the security people felt required further analysis. The laptop was seized and he hasn’t had it back yet.

The problem with this approach to security is that even the most innocent among us might face trouble. Those who follow developments in the field of terrorism insurance, for example, have many files on their hard drives with the word “terrorism” in their title. Under present regulations, if one of those babies happens to be on your desktop when your number comes up, look out.

Just in case, I should stress that I’m not a terrorist, and have no leanings in that direction. I am that squarest of human beings, the essentially law-abiding citizen. Dullness, however, is no defence against the tactics being employed by Homeland Security. I doubt they’d send me to Guantanamo Bay, but the Times is saying I might not get my laptop back. I sometimes joke in this space, but this time I am in deadly earnest. You have been warned.

The chances are, of course, that nothing is going to happen to your laptop if you travel to the US. The likelihood of finding yourself up the creek are greater, however, if you sign a standing order on a UK bank account. They’re known as “direct debits” in that country and, as my brother found out, they can be a short cut to ruin.

I’ve written at length about my father’s estate. This isn’t one of those stories, but it arose from the same source. My brother instituted a standing order to make monthly insurance payments on my Dad’s house, before it was sold. He cancelled the order the day after the house was sold.

His insurance company interpreted this action as a default under a loan agreement that my brother did not know he had. His credit rating was dinged. Legal notices flew back and forth. Throughout it all, my brother had never signed nor even been sent the loan agreement that caused all the trouble. He thought himself trapped merely in an administrative problem that would eventually go away, but discovered in time that he stood on the brink of a criminal record.

He signed the direct debit instruction, thinking he was issuing a recurring instruction to his bank to make six monthly payments due under the insurance policy, from his bank account.

Instead, he was granting the insurance company carte blanche to renew the policy on terms that suited them, and enabling them to create a loan agreement, or any kind of agreement, that would legally bind him, but which he was not entitled to see. That sounds just plain ridiculous, but I assure you that’s what a direct debit through a UK bank meant to my bro.

We sorted them out good and proper, although their promise to repay premiums taken under the direct debit mandate has yet to materialise, so in injury time at the end of the second half, we’re still losing.

A direct debit is what the new James Bond has, I understand, instead of a licence to kill. The direct debit is a much more versatile licence: you can do anything you like to the poor sap who signs it.

I doubt that Bermuda banks, which are far more responsible entities, would go along with any such nonsense, and of course the Bermuda insurance companies are also less likely to try to throw people in jail because they sold a house and therefore had to stop an insurance policy.

It’s a dog eat dog out there in the real world, which is why many of us cling to Bermuda, where simpler ways are the norm. I like my Bermuda bank; they’re very helpful, prompt and efficient. I’m less keen on my brother’s UK bank, which has 20 million customers and is therefore less concerned about customers.

What is utterly rum about this behaviour is that law should approximate common sense, or at least some kind of sense. Giving a giant insurance company the right to destroy people’s lives over nothing at all doesn’t sound like common sense to anyone except a corrupt insurance person. But it’s the law, folks. Don’t say you weren’t warned.