Here's a fun little video from the manufacturer extolling the virtues and showing a demo of their device: https://youtu.be/XYbgnCi7NYI
These are some truly evil people. Apparently they can only target prepaid cards with this thing, which unsurprisingly will disproportionately affect people with lower incomes (the "unbanked"). According to the manufacturer's FAQ [1]:
Intel™ and ERAD-Recovery™ will only retrieve balances from open loop prepaid debit cards. Debit cards attached to a valid checking account or valid credit cards cannot be processed using the ERAD-Intel™ or ERAD-Recovery™ system.
Law enforcement already depends heavily upon lower income neighborhoods to justify their existence, and upon criminal convictions of poor people that can't defend themselves to keep up demand for prison and jail guards. Now they want to take the money of those they can't arrest, knowing that their targets cannot afford to hire lawyers to get it back.
Yes, evil. As is Sergeant Rob Hain (of Chicago) who uploaded this...
"Sheriff's Deputy Ron Hain improperly detained Marsh after issuing him a warning and continued questioning him when he should have been free to leave, Barsanti ruled. The questioning led to Marsh's admission he was carrying a gun, which prompted further searches of his truck, phones, GPS and eventually the storage lockers."
"The discovery was made by exploiting the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights," Barsanti said. "He was illegally detained in a second seizure without cause." [1]
"Seized over 4,000 lbs of cannabis, over 50 kilograms of cocaine, over 50 kilograms of heroin, and over $1,000,000 of drug-related currency." [2]
From [1]....“All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose founders also created Black Asphalt.
Desert Snow created civil forfeiture training seminars for law enforcement. Black Asphalt is a system "that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop."
Now, he's stealing debit cards. This guy is quite the civil forfeiture innovator.
That's probably only a conflict on interest if they are involved in making purchasing decisions. Your mileage may vary. Always ask your ethics councillor.
I know legal protections apply to criminals, but it is hard to win a political battle against the cops who busted a big time dealer of life-destroying drugs (heroin)
Two people I know. Their brothers both died from Oxycontin(tm). Specifically pulmonary talcosis. You get pulmonary talcosis from the talc government made the manufacturer add specifically to kill junkies.
I personally knew 5 people who have died from a drug overdose, and that drug was heroin in all 5 cases.
They all actually started off by abusing prescription opiates, but moved to heroin after they ran out of money.
However, my area is known for being a heroin hot spot. I live in a decent middle class town about 15 minutes away from Camden, NJ. My high school was known as "heroin high".
The problem with heroin is that there's very poor quality control. Overdoses seem to occur under one of the two following circumstances:
1. The person just gets released from rehab and relapses. Their tolerance isn't what it used to be, so their body gets shocked.
2. There's a sudden spike in the strength of the heroin that is "going around". The person may be used to a certain strength, so the more powerful batch can be enough to send them over the edge.
Just figured I'd add my own personal data points since it seemed like you were trying to deemphasize the danger of heroin by pointing out that you don't know anyone who died from it. Maybe, that wasn't your intention, so forgive me if so.
I was in downtown Camden, NJ once a couple years ago, being given a tour by a black pastor who's focus was on helping the poor of Camden turn away from drug addictions. (Point being, he knew the city very well, and knew its drug problem very well.)
It was an absolutely astonishing time. Camden literally felt like it had just been through a war: desolate buildings, so many people homeless on the streets, people desperate for food. It's hard to describe just how bad this city was.
I can't diagnose all the root causes behind why Camden is so messed-up, but this pastor pointed to the heroin epidemic primarily.
I could not verify this particular claim in under an hour of online searching. Relevant facts:
Oxycontin used to contain talc, and this came with prominent health warnings. Shooting up dissolved oxycontin pills containing talc is dangerous. See http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2008/020... ("with parenteral abuse, the [inactive ingredients], especially talc, can be expected to result in [many bad things]").
As of some time in 2014, oxycontin no longer contains talc -- it has been replaced by magnesium stearate. However, that health warning that parenteral abuse causes many bad things has not been altered except to remove the phrase "especially talc". Pulmonary granulomas are still specifically called out as something bad that will happen to you if you inject oxycontin. See the current usage information at http://app.purduepharma.com/xmlpublishing/pi.aspx?id=o .
SPECULATIVELY: this means that while talc is no longer present, oxycontin might still contain legally-mandated adulteration. I found no evidence for a legal mandate, but this was not a comprehensive investigation.
It has long been the explicit policy of the United States that people who abuse otherwise legal chemicals deserve to be poisoned to death, and we have had and do have laws to this effect. See http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... .
It's that last point that makes me hesitate to slam your parent comment for fearmongering.
It was not simply the consolidation of our petroleum interests we were after, no? Hamid Karzai (our man) afforded us unprecedented access to humans favorite narcotic. Poof! An unprecedented alkaloid epidemic.
Acetaminophen is added to many prescription opiates in part to prevent abuse. (There's some question as to whether it aids in pain reduction beyond what the opiate would provide, but it certainly has near term implications for severe abuse.)
There's no question. Unlike, say, ibuprofen and acetaminophen, there is no "synergy bonus".
The added pain reduction effect of acetaminophen stands in no relation to what the opioid is doing. There's no research anywhere showing that the combined effect is any more than the literal addition of taking both (for which there would be no reason if you could just as easily take a tiny bit more of the opioid that you'd be taking any way).
All it does is take away an addict's choice not to wreck their liver. And the system encourages the availability of this unnecessarily dangerous substance by awarding it a less restrictive drug schedule.
The incentives are rather twisted in this particular case.
edit
> but it certainly has near term implications for severe abuse.
the implications being death and permanent liver damage (it's not actually stopping addicts). but looking only at the numbers, it seems to limit abuse, even in the near term. ugh.
edit 2 seeing some of the other comments, apparently it's not just this particular case. I only knew about this one
How about the friends who died of the drug as a fraction of the friends who used the drug? If you don't know anyone who uses heroin, this post is meaningless.
Yeah, people outside of Chicago tend to associate themselves with the big city... What they should really be saying is the "uncultured area of Bumblefuck around Chicago".
That ERAD won't be of any use in Austin or Englewood at 2am...
> will only retrieve balances from open loop prepaid debit cards
so the poor get fucked two ways:
1) these prepaid debit cards have a lot of fees and service charges associated with them, they're basically in the same financial category for the "unbanked" as predatory payday loans, check cashing places and other financial services retail operations you see in a ghetto.
2) the people who have these cards with some balance on them risk getting all their money jacked by the local police.
I wonder if it works on payroll cards that many low income people get in lieu of a traditional payday check. They are very similar to prepaid debit cards.
In almost cases, payroll cards are just prepaid cards that an employer has setup with a given prepaid card company for employees that don't have bank accounts, so yes.
Scary. These prepaid debit cards are being used everywhere in lieu of traditional checks from unemployment benefits, short term disability(maternity benefits) etc.
The thing that I don't understand is that these prepaid debit cards are only loaded from the government or your employer, hence guaranteeing the money is legal. Yet these cards are what is being targeted, because only the poor use them.
These cards are predatory because they have fees to withdraw, fees to not have the card expire and your money go poof, and even fees to even check your balance.
Some states have enacted laws (Illinois is one I believe) that prohibits employers using these cards if the employee does not wish to use one.
Employers use these cards because the debit card providers are willing to take on the cost of payroll for the privilege of gouging the employees in fees.
> Yet these cards are what is being targeted, because only the poor use them.
Same reason as this:
>Employers use these cards because the debit card providers are willing to take on the cost of payroll for the privilege of gouging the employees in fees.
The poor do not have the ability to fight back, and their employers have the resources to make sure the gov't does not shut these things down and require proper paychecks. Never underestimate the rich's ability to exploit the poor.
Yep, grew up and have friends/family in Oklahoma. Disability and unemployment benefits come on prepaid cards, as well as tax refunds.
Most ATMs charge a fee to check balance, and a separate fee to withdraw money as cash. These cards do usually have a free phone number you can call to check balance, but you almost always have to pay a fee for withdrawal. And if you have, say, $19 on the card, it's effectively impossible to get that out as cash, because no ATM lets you withdraw in less than $20 increments.
Also, most blue-collar and minimum wage jobs use prepaid cards. At least companies like McDonald's as well as various factory jobs do. For McDonald's, according to friends at least, there is no option for anything else. Even if you have a bank account, you can't do direct deposit, you still get a prepaid debit card that your paycheck goes to.
Actually, they aren't the same. Payroll debit cards are protected by certain provisions that don't apply to GPR (general purpose reloadable) debit cards. Thankfully they have fewer predatory fees and it's required that 100% of the pay amount is put on the card. They can still be subject to very high ATM fees, and possibly inactivity fees (since the provider doesn't earn any interchange fees if the card isn't swiped. I can't recall all the details but I looked into implementing both versions at a previous job.
State Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, said that
removes due process and the belief that a suspect is
presumed innocent until proven guilty. He said we've
already seen cases in Oklahoma where police are abusing
the system.
"We've seen single mom's stuff be taken, a cancer
survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being
taken. We've seen innocent people's stuff being taken.
We've seen where the money goes and how it's been
misspent," Loveless said.
If State Sen. Loveless's statement is accurate, it appears that these victims were unable to get the charges reversed by their banks' fraud departments.
So what would this device look like? Is it performing ACH or wire transfer transactions? Or is this just sending card information to the company, which then automates the state government's garnishment process?
I'll be interested to get the full story when details are available.
I'm glad there's some pushback from the state legislature!
As someone who is closely following the topic I would say he is pretty accurate.
Most of these laws are passed claiming it is meant to target hardened criminals. Good people like us think it is okay to take away any rights of people who we consider as bad. Given the choice cops will not knock down the door of Drug dealer known to have automatic rifles at his home but some poor old cancer patient who is unlikely to resist or cry.
These problems are not a creation of police. These are created by good people like us who do not empathize with criminals, minorities and other groups which by default consider "less human".
> These problems are not a creation of police. These are created by good people like us who do not empathize with criminals, minorities and other groups which by default consider "less human".
I agree that the problem is considering others as "less human" but I wouldn't exclude the police from that!
I understand your sentiment. But I think as a society we have allowed the legal system to evolve in a way that only Bullies will become and thrive as cops and narcissist jerks will become public prosecutors. They are problem but they are more of a side-effect of we not standing up for other people's liberty.
Some of us think there are good people, who have rights, and bad people, who deserve to have rights taken from them.
Some of us think there are people with power we need to impress and then there are people without power we can take from them whatever we want.
Some of us think we are all human beings and everyone deserves to be a part of society, to be seen as human beings with human wants, needs and human emotions, even when they do things that harm other people. And whether they even do that, is not for us to judge.
The first group needed people who were willing to take things from the bad guys, and picked the second group as police and prosecutors.
That's how we're in this situation today.
Your child ask you if they can go to your donald-trump-loving-women-should-stay-in-kitchen neighbour's house to play with friends. Do you:
1. Change your child's school so they don't mix with the 'wrong sort'. You're afraid what your social circle think if your children mix with children of people like that.
2. Your neighbours are racists and sexists. Petition their kids to be kicked out from your kids' school. They don't deserve an education.
3. Let your child go play with them, then if your child has a positive experience, let him go again next time. If not, protect the child from the consequences of not going next time.
Or a well off white guy had to deal with the police in a negative context for the first time in his life and that changed his opinion of them and the power they do or don't deserve
I read "well off white guy" as implying privilege. I am not sure that is the same as accusing someone of being a racist. The benefits of that privilege can help make your life easier, whether you asked for the privilege or not. And also regardless off whether you actively or consciously try to benefit from said privilege. I guess it does at least affect the way you experience life and the world around you.
Note:
I am from Denmark and maybe I have a different perspective, even though racism is a problem here as well, but maybe in a different way.
I was having an internal debate with myself about whether to jump in on this conversation just because it is a topic that can cause a lot of controversy. But I decided that self censorship, is a bad thing for society as a whole in the long run.
First of all, he didn't call him racist. Secondly, pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate - it is calling attention to racism.
When you start a comment with "well off white guy", you are indicating the person is a racist since they are ignoring problems of their fellow humans because of the person's race. If you substitute any other race in that statement, people would find it to be an accusation of racism. I suppose there is another interpretation of that line, but I am trying very hard to be charitable to posters (I do fail quite a bit).
pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate
from the article: ''It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.''
I would submit his current problem is not long standing since it started last month. Also, we do not know his history of speaking out about civil forfeiture. Why, the incident with his wife could have been a "shutup" warning from the police. I said I provided a piece of data, and I have not really had time to look at the context.
As to the second half, pointing out some issue is racial and the participant only started noticing because of their race is informing your reader that you believe that person to be racist.
it is calling attention to racism
Which implies that a belief that someone is being racist. Thus calling him a racist as he is the only protagonist mentioned.
You know, I grew up in the grey between two different groups, and I sometime wish I could have been raised in a suburb or had a little more blood to qualify as the other group. Being able to say "I am..." in a clear voice is an amazing powerful thing. I've gotten to see what absolute shits groups going too far can be on each other when one believes they can say and do things with minimum risk. Assumptions about people based on their race are just wrong. Judge a person by their word and deed with a kind eye and hopeful heart. I fail at this quite a lot, but I think I'm ok with what I wrote.
// as a side note, I love hnreplies and if I had cash I would suggest adding a blackout time feature
The fact remains he did not call him racist, whatever you believe he implied. For someone who claims to try hard at being charitable, I think you should take that into consideration. At the very worst if dsfyu404ed is calling Kyle Loveless a racist, I would have to argue that this particular instance of it is borne of ignorance as opposed to malice, which is an important distinction especially for your claim that he is spreading hate. Pointing out racism borne truly of ignorance is not promoting hate, even if you're wrong on the claim. Claiming a person is racist out of malice is (rightly or wrongly).
If someone (not a minority) is ill-informed about an issue that disproportionately affects minorities, to the point that they believe the issue is not so serious, and only when personally confronted with the effects do they take on a more fully-informed opinion and speak out about the injustice of it, I don't think you necessarily have to consider that person a racist, even if you think their behavior is a result of bias. And, while dsfyu404ed certainly expressed frustration with this state of affairs (as I believe anyone should), that still does not rise to the level of actually calling a person a racist. This need not apply only to race - it can also be rich people not caring about poor people problems, or men not caring about womens' issues, and so on.
For another example look at the opioid epidemic in the US now, compared to crack hysteria in the 80s. Suddenly drug addicts are victims of circumstance, unfairly targeted by unjust or antiquated laws, it's the drug companies' fault for pushing these treatments to doctors, etc. etc. Whereas in the 80s crack dealers were going to infiltrate your nice suburban community and turn your daughters into whores and your sons into foot soldiers in their gang wars, or whatever the hell. And it just so happens that the opioid epidemic is particularly bad among white communities now. However, that doesn't mean that everyone who is concerned about the opioid epidemic now, yet took a different view of the crack epidemic back in the day, is necessarily a racist in the usual sense. It could be they are ignorant of their bias, and lack introspection.
Isn't the basic problem how much money the US government has spent improving the supply of heroin from Afghanistan after the taliban completely destroyed it during their 2001 rise to power.
I tried to write the long answer and it turned out as a wall of text composed of parenthetical caveats. Then I tried to right the short answer and it turned out as a medium length yet confusing answer.
The truth of the matter is that people are barely evolved ape/chimps and do pretty much whatever suites them as long as they don't get their ass kicked for it.
Right, the legislator is referring to civil asset forfeiture, which is what the devices in the OP's article does too--just now they will steal money from your bank account if you happen to have your debit card with you instead of just being able to steal the cash you have in the car.
>99.999% of everyone who knows what asset forfeiture is knows it because of John Oliver.
Asset forfeiture has been controversial since it started being used much more frequently in the 1980s. I really doubt most of the people commenting on it here first heard of it on John Oliver's show.
Haha, indeed. I think I'd heard of it many years ago, but I didn't really understand how fucking absurd it is until a story about it appeared here on HN. A year (~ish/maybe, my memory of timelines is fucking terrible) later I saw the John Oliver episode.
Radley Balko has been writing about asset forfeiture for about a decade. He has done more to bring this issue to the medias attention than John Oliver has. It is completely unfair to claim that no one knew what was going until someone famous began to popularize it more.
Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.
Slow down there. First of all, the parent didn't claim to be a genius who had some pre-existing knowledge. Secondly, even if (s)he learned it from John Oliver, how does that make it less a part of parent's knowledge?
Furthermore, the use of "plain-old" was a way of indicating that this is a new method but an old process; eg, it's not legally any different from normal asset seizure.
Finally, and most importantly, I don't see any bias or why you even call it that.
Its not a particularly surprising choice of examples for a Republican politician upset about the practice that wants to highlight targeted groups to whom his constituency is likely to be sympathetic.
That's a ridiculous statement. My church (both as an organization and the people in it) gives tons of money to single moms for everything from subsistence to fully paid Disneyland vacations. We run a volunteer group that does things like yard work, handyman work, and moving for single moms. The most visible charity outside a church in my city is for single moms. There are single moms who work in important positions at my church. The bible specifically points out on many occasions that those who follow Christ should show love and compassion to people such as single moms as Christ would.
Symptom of a bigger problem: nobody in the criminal justice system is punished for making the wrong move. There is no law enforcement downside to civil asset forfeiture. Officer-involved shootings are discouraged from prosecution or otherwise involve highly-paid "expert" witnesses saying the officer had no other choice - at taxpayer expense.
Prosecutors are valued by the number of wins, not by how many innocent people are spared the gauntlet of the American justice system.
Prisons (especially private prisons) are rewarded for high recidivism rates, instead of being punished for wasting taxpayer money on an expensive and brutal daycare.
If the state does badly enough it can get sued. So the taxpayers foot the bill while the offenders are free to do as they do.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: prevent this kind of garbage from happing without consequence by mandating docked wages/pension benefits to pay for all or part of lawsuit damages. Change the incentives and people will change themselves.
Bonus question: In countries that are still exempt from highway police robbery such as in Europe, what can we do to avoid gliding towards it? Isn't HPR a natural evolution of the increased number of police agents after massive terrorist attacks, like the two we've just had in France?
Over the last few decades the American people have been conned into this idea that government is fundamentally too big and needs to be shrunk because of reasons. People save a few measly percentage points on taxes that help pay for the axle damage on their car after being driven over roads that are no longer repaired.
Municipalities had to find ways to recoup costs from slashed state and federal budgets, which is why there is such a big problem in poor, mostly black American cities, as people are pulled over and fined up the ass for every possible infraction just so the city can afford itself.
This kind of crap has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with fiscal irresponsibility.
So police departments are largely participating in highway robbery because it's the only way they can get by? They're not spending it on margarita machines [1] or trips to Hawaii?
More like the municipalities in general. That's why in many parts of rural America you'll find a cop at every other speed limit change, waiting for someone to notice the sign too late, catching people who don't necessary live in the area but unwillingly contribute to the local economy.
Other than every month in my home state of Kansas. Of course, that is related to much larger issues, but the same thing could be said for a number of other states in the midwest to a lesser degree. And those that aren't going down, are just treading water by pushing the costs down to the local governments.
The federal government slashed transportation budgets like two months ago which reduced my city's municipal transit budget by $300,000. Routes are being reduced at a time that high housing costs are moving people further out from the city center.
Just as important, make sure that local governments are funded adequately from higher levels. Completely deferring tax collection from central government to local municipalities creates a distribution problem where poor areas cannot collect enough funds to maintain the same standard as wealthy areas, which causes poor areas to deteriorate even further.
Don't fall for the trap of believing civil rights and due process are something only law-abiding citizens deserve. At this point in America enough people think that if you're accused of a crime basically from that point forward any "rights" you may enjoy are solely at the indulgence of society / the criminal justice system and can be (and, often, should be) taken away at any time. Unless it's really obvious you're innocent, it's game over, and even then any abuses will be written off as honest mistakes (or, in the worst case, a few bad apples) instead of symptoms of systemic injustice.
It also doesn't help that the public defender system in the States is a fucking joke. So don't do that, either.
> At this point in America enough people think that if you're accused of a crime basically from that point forward any "rights" you may enjoy are solely at the indulgence of society / the criminal justice system
I don't actually know any individuals in the US that believe this - the problem is that our government is so far out of our reach these days we can't effect significant change by simply voting for one of the two similar parties.
I can think of a few Senators. Right now the federal government claims the right to detain American citizens on American soil indefinitely and without trial. Look up 2012 NDAA Section 1021. The Senate is debating, right now, whether to add an amendment to this year's NDAA to restrict this somewhat, but even the Senator proposing this amendment (Mike Lee of UT) will tell you that there are circumstances where the government needs to detain American citizens indefinitely and without trial i.e. without due process. He just wants to restrict the current practice somewhat.
I'm glad you don't know anyone like this, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Extricate yourselves from the EU, which desperately wants to become a single central government and will relentlessly pull in that direction as long it is allowed to exist, and go back to smaller, more manageable units of government.
Isn't a big federation required if we want to have any weight in negotiation against the USA? I mean all small lonely countries of the world are merly more than banana republics. But I retain your point.
> Symptom of a bigger problem: nobody in the criminal justice system is punished for making the wrong move
Step 1) End all police unions. There desperately needs to be a federal law prohibiting the formation of any police union anywhere in the United States. (we'll add this to the list of things that will never happen)
One problem with that is government work, especially day-to-day law enforcement, already has a challenge in recruiting good, talented workers. The pay is generally lower than private industry and there's not much prestige to be had. Adding personal liability to the mix makes this situation even worse.
Not to say there can't be reasonable steps to move the needle toward accountability. Lowering the bar for perjury charges would be a good first step.
Well you say you get what you pay for. I live in a high-tax, highly liberal college town. Our community has a great relationship with the police - it's the campus safety pricks you have to watch out for - and the department is well-funded.
It should be no coincidence that literal highway robbery is being sanctioned in a state as allergic to good government and logical tax rates as Oklahoma.
You have a good point about personal liability and quality of service, and that's why any proposal of mine should should have very limited conditions, like unlawful civil asset forfeiture.
> I've said it before and I'll say it again: prevent this kind of garbage from happing without consequence by mandating docked wages/pension benefits to pay for all or part of lawsuit damages. Change the incentives and people will change themselves.
I'm less certain. It seems to me that this will only push the incentive further up the chain, such that the system refuses to ever find wrongdoing or even allow lawsuits to go forward.
A simpler and more elegant solution is to simply remove "criminal justice" as being part of the responsibility of the state. In my estimation, this will come at no cost whatsoever to safety, while also increasing quality of life for most people.
Yeah, I don't think that this solution has been viable at any point until now, but the proliferation of cameras and ease of transmission of video might be a game-changer.
This reads like The Onion. I can't believe they're serious.
>"If you can prove can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," Vincent said about any money seized.
... Legit reason? How am I supposed to prove where every cent came from? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
You're never charged with a crime, the object is and it is not given representation. So there's no "innocent until proven guilty" for inanimate objects.
Despicable, and akin to highway robbery in my opinion.
This is flatly incorrect. This is a civil proceeding, neither you nor your property are charged with a crime. Instead, a civil (not criminal) forfeiture proceeding is initiated against your property.
I'm not just being pedantic, this is part of why it's so incredibly fucked. They have, no exaggeration, taken a portion of the criminal legal system with all the constraints and due process requirements there, excised it with a legislative scalpel and grafted it back on to the civil system.
I honestly to this day don't understand why government is allowed any access at all to the civil system as a plaintiff, at least not beyond the local level.
Oh wait, yes I do understand: It's specifically to fuck the people over.
I have to imagine there's a giant pile of (criminal) laws they could use to prosecute someone who's trying to defraud the government. But your point is still well-taken, and it's kind of academic anyway - it's an incredibly valuable (and lucrative) tool for the government, of course they're not going to give it up.
In thread after thread on this topic - civil asset forfeiture in its various forms - I see people do elaborate intellectual dances to describe or title what this is.
Nothing more than: highway robbery, is necessary. You're spot on, that's exactly what it is, and it's nothing more. It's robbery. Using any other names for it, just assists the police in covering up what they're doing through confusion. Everyone should begin calling it robbery by police or the equivalent, and stop referring to it as civil asset forfeiture in public forums (that's only useful in a technical/legal regard).
These are all language tricks used to manipulate the masses. "Double plus good" is not a stretch at this point if we become complacent to this kind of manipulation.
That doesn't make sense. Objects cannot commit crimes since they aren't human beings and thus cannot act, have rights, etc. Is this what Statism has come to? I know we have the whole corporations are people nonsense, but this is straying even further into complete irrationality. I know it's just to circumvent the law, but if they can create fiction like that, there's pretty much no law and order anymore.
Because of War On Drugs people had no problem with this. If you had asked when this law was passed someone random Joe Schmoe on the street -- "Is this a good law, we'll get all those rich drug lords?". They would have probably nodded and agreed.
So the law was pushed through. Then some day cops realized they can apply this law for fun and profit. And so they have been.
I feel like I'm living in the Matrix when I see things like this. There are people out there - lawyers and judges, who must be fairly smart to finish law school - who think "United States v. $124,700" makes perfect sense.
I was told when I first started graduate school that it's not about how smart one is, but rather it's about perseverance, the ability to jump through bureaucratic hoops, bite your tongue and do what you're told.
I have come to believe this since I've met some incredibly brilliant PhD's, but I've also met some incredibly dumb PhD's.
A PhD is more about elbow-grease than intellect. You do need some intellectual chops (in your field - you can be very naive outside it), but you need perseverance more than anything.
I've met some PhDs who would run rings around anyone in their niche, but would be (metaphorically) unable to tie their shoelaces by themselves.
The original intent of civil forfeiture was to handle cases where the property's owner is unknown. In admiralty law or cases of abandoned property, the government sues the property but it's just a shorthand way of saying "whoever actually owns this".
The legal theory (which is a total crock and obvious constitutional violation) is that you aren't the real owner, you stole the property so the state can take it away from you. That's what creates the presumption of guilt where you have to prove you're the owner of the property, same as if you dropped it on the street by accident and the cops found it.
Anytime one of these cases gets close enough to SCOTUS for a decision on the overall constitutionality the police/DA drop the case. Most of them seem to know its a scam and don't want to risk an adverse ruling. There have been a few hints that SCOTUS is ready to rule the current scope and scale makes civil forfeiture unconstitutional but who knows.
Because this being a civil case, the legal standard is "balance of probabilities". In other words, if they can give a convincing explanation of how your money is likely to be tied to some criminal activity, so long as it's "more likely to be true than not true", they win - unless you offer a convincing rebuttal to make it less likely.
Here's the part which I don't understand: if it's a civil case, why do they get to seize the property before proving anything?
If I open a civil proceeding against you, I can try to prove that you owe me $5k and if I prove that to the appropriate standard you can be compelled to provide me with $5k. I can't hack your bank account, withdraw $5k, and then open a civil proceeding to retroactively legitimize my robbery.
The whole system is a massive violation of due process, no matter what legalese you try to use to justify it. If you're allowed to take people's property and then retroactively sue them if they complain, what is even the point of having the Fifth Amendment?
If the police catch a person running away from a recently robbed bank holding a bag of money do you think they should have to convict the person before taking back the money?
If there is reason to believe that someone is in possession of property that doesn't belong to them it seems perfectly reasonable for the police to confiscate said property.
This isn't perfectly reasonable though. Presumably the bank gets their money back when the cops catch a bank robber. But the police keep the money that they confiscate through asset forfeiture. They had no right to it in the first place so what gives them the right to keep the confiscated money? It's robbery.
In that case, wouldn't it be evidence? I genuinely don't know all the details of how this works, but I do find it disturbing that the police turn around and spend the forfeited cash. Should they be allowed to do that with the sack of money from the bank, in your example?
Sure, if it's clear who the property is owned by it goes back to the rightful owner. But in cases where that is unclear or nonsensical (like money obtained by selling illegal drugs) it goes to the state. Where else would it go?
Where else would it go? A disinterested third party - not the police department that had the power to confiscate it. The state or a specific public good - i.e.: housing/food banks etc. could work.
I do agree with this actually. Rather that going straight to law enforcement budgets the money should go to the general coffers to be allocated by the legislature.
I'd rather see it directed, specifically, to needed public goods. Otherwise it becomes just another generic revenue source (i.e.: a tax) and, over-time, it becomes all too tempting to still milk it for more money. Red light cameras are a good example of this. Revenues from them (in Chicago, at least) went to the city's general fund. That didn't stop the city from reducing yellow light times to increase revenues.
I like that goal too, but I'm not sure how to really do that. A lot of states direct all lottery money to education but that just allows the states to spend less on education out of the general fund. Ultimately money is a fungible thing. No way around that.
That's certainly fair/true. FWIW, I appreciate the symbolism and/or keeping revenue streams constrained. At least that forces governments to be honest in taxation rather than allowing these back-door taxation strategies.
I'm no Con Law scholar, but where exactly do you find a basis for United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency in either the writings or expressed intentions of our founders?
I don't think the argument is "police shouldn't confiscate [stolen] property from somebody they're detaining because of suspicion the individual has committed a crime", it's "police should not take property unrelated to the crime and, in the event the individual is cleared of any wrongdoing, return _all_ property", the latter of which isn't happening.
If it turns out the guy running away from the bank just likes jogging with a bag of money the police should return his money and whatever else _immediately_ after the person is released.
If the police catch a person running away from a recently robbed bank holding a bag of money do you think they should have to convict the person before taking back the money?
Yes. The money may be held in escrow pending the trial, but appropration by police is unjust -- and should be illegal if the person is not charged and arrested.
So if it's clear that a person is in possession of illegally obtained property, but it's a mystery exactly how they got it so law enforcement can't indict them for a crime, they should just get to keep it?
If how the individual came into possession of the property is a mystery, how is it clear the property was illegally obtained? I would be hard-pressed to prove that many of my assets truly belong to me.
Edit: all of this is off-topic, as the bank can be proven the owner and the police would not keep the money.
If it's "clear" the money result from illegal activity, they will be charged with a crime.
Surely you are not advocating replacing the courts with truthiness and gut feelings?
No, I'm just saying that the legal standard for proving that property (usually money) was obtained illegally is lower than the legal standard for convicting someone for a crime and throwing them in jail.
Asset forfeiture is, and always has been, subject to judicial oversight.
That is a misreading of the story. This story outlines a method that allows law enforcement to confiscate money stored on pre-paid credit cards in a similar fashion to how they've previously confiscated cash. It says nothing at all about judicial oversite.
There are, in fact, well established and relatively simple procedures for contesting civil forfeiture. There is a fair argument to be made that they sometimes don't work as well as they should but when you say that there is "NO judicial oversight" at all you are just just flat out wrong. You need to update your worldview if you want it to conform to reality.
This is why someone who has assets confiscated can make a claim (with a very low burden of proof) to get them back. People here are making it sound like that doing this is incredibly difficult or expensive but it's really not.
The Christian rock band raising money for a Thai orphanage[1] was a slam dunk, in terms of this so-called "low burden of proof", but it still took them two months to get their money back.
(Edited to add: I just realized they didn't actually get their money back. They got a check. Yep. You can generally cash those for free if you have a bank account.)
Imagine the situation of someone whose circumstances are less clear, or who can't otherwise afford to stay in one place and fight the seizure for however long it actually takes.
What happens to the person who just had all of their money taken away?
Depriving someone of their property – even temporarily – and forcing them to spend otherwise profitable time making a claim to get it back is a form of damage. What you're proposing would allow agents of the government to damage people as frequently as they wanted, with impunity.
You didn't mention a trial in your previous post, but rather a low standard of evidence to "make a claim". In that scenario, the burden of proof is on the victim of the property seizure rather than the accuser, which makes it different IMO.
False, at least in the US. The government's case is considered to be against the property, not against you. The standard of legal proof is a preponderance of evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. "Assets [are only] returned if [the] owner proves [his/her] innocence". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... for details.
In practice in the United States it's been shown to present little to no burden. These cases have been widely covered in the press. Again, see the link.
That's actually not true at all. You can be held in jail for months pending completion of a trial depending on your ability to make bail and the seriousness of the crime in question.
And the scanner maker gets a 7% cut. What could go wrong: "the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes"
And if the courts decided that the asset forfeiture was incorrect and reimburse the person it was stolen from—does the scanner maker still keep their cut? Or are they still due their cut?
Highwaymen don't go away, they just get new uniforms and tools.
Particularly egregious is Lt. Vincent's take:
>"If you can prove can[sic] prove[sic] that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," Vincent said about any money seized.
In other words, "if we think you could sue us and set a precedent, we will give you your money back. But if you're poor, we won't respond to your phone calls."
"What states does ERAD currently have contracts with? With what states does ERAD anticipate contracts to be signed in the next 180 days, and for all of these states, what percentages will ERAD be earning on funds seized?"
I'd need to FOIA every police department in order to do this :/ Not scalable. I can create a template that can be used whenever its discovered which police departments are using their services.
I'm in touch with the news station that has the contract, so I should be able to get it without an additional FOIA request. Once I have that, I'll recurse further if necessary.
1) ERAD training materials disseminated to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
2) Correspondence between those LEAs and DHS, or occurring in DHS forums, regarding ERAD technology.
3) DHS reports, studies or memoranda mentioning ERAD usage in the field by DHS or any other agency.
I figure DHS Science & Technology Directorate might not be the right target. Should I just aim at DHS directly, or is there a specific group that would handle those connections between DHS and other law enforcement?
Should I structure this as three separate requests?
I found their website, and a page describing the service I believe these police are using. https://www.erad-group.com/fci
Also, I noticed that site:www.erad-group.com doesn't return anything on google, but it does on other search engines. Did ERAD request that it be removed from search results? Why would they do that? Why would they also not have a robots.txt if that is the case?
> Here's how it works. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money.
Given the low-threshold for seizure and how we've seen civil-asset forfeiture exercised by law enforcement, that's terrifying.
"We've seen single mom's stuff be taken, a cancer survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being taken. We've seen innocent people's stuff being taken. We've seen where the money goes and how it's been misspent," Loveless said.
It boggles the mind that this doesn't violate due process.
The despicable logic they use is that they're not charging the person with a crime (because people have due process rights), they're charging an inanimate object, the money, the car, etc. Property doesn't have due process rights, apparently.
Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
Well, the real funny asset-forfeiture case names are United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.
But the likes of United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency is obviously more dangerous than either of those:
like United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness, or United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, United States v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, or Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, or R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel, R.M.S. Titanic ...
Strictly speaking, they are accusing the asset of being a nuisance (sometimes, though not always, as a result of being an instrumentality in a crime -- but civil asset forfeiture doesn't require a crime to have been involved at all; they are also providing both public notice and private notice to the person (if any) from whom the property was seized of the action, and anyone who has an interest in the asset (whether the person, if any, from whom it was seized, or any other person) has the right to assert that interest, at which case they have all the rights normally attendant to civil process [not criminal process, because its not a criminal action, and criminal penalties can not be imposed.])
> Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law. How we got to a point where things can be taken from someone who is not convicted of a crime is beyond belief.
> That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law.
It doesn't take place within criminal law.
(There is also "criminal asset forfeiture", which is a different beast, and takes place within normal criminal process against a particular criminal defendant: that is a part of criminal law, and its a lot less controversial than civil asset forfeiture.)
try not paying your property tax and see what happens. Deeds mean nothing. Receipts mean nothing. Registration means nothing. The State owns everything.
"You have a bunch of money on your ATM card. You can potentially go to an ATM take out cash, then get drugs. Now, I need to seize all your money to ensure you can't buy those illegal drugs that may or may not exist."
I guess married mothers, non-sick people and secular bands would all be fair game.
Shouldn't this just be "Citizens robbed by police".
In India at least they have the decency to say "Do you have a gift for me?" so you know what's happening.
My dad would pretend to be hard of hearing and deliberately misunderstand ad nauseum until waved on his way, this would happen about once a month while going about his lawful business.
He even gatecrashed a police function and got himself a picture shaking hands with the Chief of Police. He kept the photo in the vehicle so he could produce it and attempt to start up a conversation as though they were great friends.
This is a country where the guards of the police armoury were bribed with $5 to allow weapons to be removed.
I'm pretty sure the speaker was trying to point out a few examples which he thought the audience would sympathize were unlikely to be threats or otherwise engaged in criminal activity.
Of course all of these forfeitures stink of illegality, regardless of the victim. Forth Amendment? Never heard of it, apparently.
Yes, undoubtedly that was the idea. But "Vulnerable person exploited" is really less of a story than "police rob citizens". You could add "at gunpoint" to bait it.
I'm sure they're going to use that bullshit legal reasoning that because the money committed the crime, the money itself can be held responsible and seized, and money doesn't have 4th amendment protections because it's not a person.
> In addition to presenting the value associated with a card, the terminal will read other card types such as credit and debit cards. While no value can be provided, the terminal will display a “card not supported” message to alert the trooper that this is not a prepaid card. The trooper can then compare the four digits displayed on the terminal with the last four digits shown on the face of the card to determine if the card has been cloned. If the last four digits on the face of the card do not match the four digits displayed on the terminal, the trooper should note the discrepancy and pursue further action in the investigation.
I'm not really sure why they compare the last 4 digits to detect a clone, that seems wrong to me. But in any case, that strongly implies that they can't seize from debit cards linked to bank accounts. They can only seize from prepaid cards.
"I'm not really sure why they compare the last 4 digits to detect a clone, that seems wrong to me."
It catches lazy counterfeiting. Stamp a whole bunch of cards with the same number and info, while the magstripe is what gets read and is the real account you're stealing from, the theory being that no-one really cares about the number printed on the card.
Some retailers do this too, ask or enter the last four of the card to make sure the imprint matches the magstripe, as if they don't it's most likely a cloned card.
I particularly enjoy when a cashier asks me to read the last 4 digits of the card, rather than following the instructions on the terminal (which say something like "Give card to cashier...").
Oh. I had no idea why they did this. That makes sense. I guess I just figured it was so easy to PROPERLY clone and stamp a card, that it didn't cross my mind..
More than that, in the case of cards that use the credit card numbering system, instead of just ordinary bank cards, the number itself is algorithmically generated and the last 4 digits (specifically the very last one) act as a kind of hash check (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm). Not that police or cashiers are likely to know that.
Thank you. This is the piece of information I was looking for. Essentially they will drain any prepaid cards while validating credit and debits. This makes the 'fraud reversal' technique mentioned elsewhere in this thread infeasible, as to my knowledge you can't do a reversal on prepaid cards.
First you have civil-asset forfeiture that let's police seize money from you when you are carrying large amounts of cash (with a generous false positive rate potentially disastrous to victims).
Now to get around that, you could try handling everything by card or bank transaction (unless you're one of the unfortunate few without access to a bank account due to low credit rating or other legitimate reasons). And now they can seize that too?
That's not ripe for abuse, that's designed for abuse.
As a non-American, what's wrong with your country?
A whole lot is wrong. I was born here and love the country, but increasingly fear for my safety and well-being: our employer pays nearly $20,000 per year for NHS-equivalent health insurance (two adults, no children), basic prescriptions cause multi-month fights due to claim denials on drugs my doctor instructed me to take, patent trolling is endemic and a real threat to small bootstrapped companies, a pathological liar is one step away from the White House and lending legitimacy to anti-first-amendment and white supremacist groups, literal highway robbery is real, and as best as I can tell money has come to be held above life itself.
I'm profoundly disillusioned, and not sure where to go from here.
You forgot: the TSA, the "warning shots in the chest" (it's a meme), the 6% of black people currently in prison, the 1% of all population currently in prison, the freedom you export (another meme - yes I'm talking about the drone-based assinations outsourced to private companies), and the NSA patently ignoring any interpretation-by-a-reasonable-man of the constitution. But it really cheers my heart that there are so many people gathered on HN who see through the problems.
Trump is only the natural leader to this army of thugs, exactly like in 1934 in Germany. Let's hope that if your country falls into that trap, there will be an even bigger country to come and save you, like you did for us in 1944.
Historically, Canada has always been a release valve of sorts for abuses of the US. Just look at the Vietnam war or (in a much larger sense) the underground railroad.
That depends how you define "revolution" (if you set the right scale cut-off, it was the last armed revolt meeting the cutoff, but not all "revolutions" are "armed revolts" and vice versa; particularly, for the latter, "revolution" often implies success, not merely an attempt, at replacing the aspects of the status quo ante against which the putative revolution is aligned, which those revolting in the Civil War spectacularly failed to do.)
One could argue that some or all of the suffrage movement, temperance movement, and civil rights movement (and maybe others) were "revolutions" that are more recent -- and more successful (if only in the short-term, in the second case) -- than the Civil War, though none of them were primarily armed revolts.
I hope it doesn't come to this. IMO the people cheering on Trump as a way of "getting the nightmare out of the way and moving on" need to study and understand the human cost incurred the last time that happened.
One pillar of the traditional Republican support for Israel is the Christian effort to usher in the apocalyptic war that will bring forth the second coming of Jesus Christ.
...? Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but nowhere in Christian Bible does it teach that somehow the human race can either "usher in" or prevent the end times.
That'll be bad for everyone involved. Even the victors will have a rough time of it; and from your perspective, there's a non-trivial chance they don't align with your beliefs. People advocating for this have no concept of warfare in general, nevermind in a modern setting. The people hurt the most are always the innocent non-combatant civilians.
> The people hurt the most are always the innocent non-combatant civilians.
That isn't true now anyway?
I don't advocate for anything, all I know is if the current trend continues, like every other free society that has gone down this same road, It will end very badly and then will improve for a generation or so.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
I'm sorry but no. The vast majority of examples of violent revolution end badly for everyone involved, even the victors. The phrase "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" has a lot of truth to it.
That's, of course, humoring the notion that this is in the cards in the developed world. If you step out of the echochambers on the Internet and interact with people in reality, you begin to see that things aren't nearly as bad as the curated outrage porn would lead you to believe.
>The largest part that we have found ... the biggest benefit has been the identity theft,
Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
Any lawyers here want to weigh in on whether this would be identity theft/credit card fraud/etc on the part of the police and hence illegal? Isn't scanning/charging a card without authorization illegal?
This is the most interesting quote. How do these devices help in the case of identity theft?!
How can charging a card help either the bank or the account owner in the case of police apprehending a carder?
The only possiblity that comes to mind is that the police empty the cardholder's account and then later return that money minus the device manufacturer's 7.7% cut?!
>Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
From what I understand the technology is for seizing money from prepaid cards. For other cards it just looks up information about the account. Thats how it helps with identity theft.
ERAD card scanners were first developed around 2012 for the science and technology arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat the use of prepaid debit cards by drug cartels to transport drug money, according to a Homeland Security media release.
Since then, some law enforcement agencies around the country have adopted the technology.
According to ERAD Group’s patent for the device, law enforcement can determine the balance of money in an account associated with a prepaid card that is part of branded “open loop” networks such as Visa or MasterCard or “closed loop” cards that only allow purchases at a single company, such as gift cards.
When the card is scanned by the officer to check the account balance, the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card, the patent states.
Once the card’s account balance is determined, the officer can use the device to freeze the funds, preventing withdrawal or use of the money in the account, or seize the funds by having them transferred to a law enforcement financial account, the patent states.
Although the device does not allow funds from non-prepaid cards to be frozen or seized, it can provide the officer information about those cards such as the card number, the name on the card, expiration date and the card issuer.
> the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card
Wouldn't that go against the credit card (or pre-paid card) merchant agreement? And wouldn't ERAD have to have signed such an agreement in order to access the credit card network?
From that contract that was linked elsewhere, the equipment being provided includes:
> One (1) VX680 GPRS Terminal w/battery, thermal printer
The VX680 is a mobile credit card terminal (http://www.verifone.com/media/413350/VX680_2_lg.jpg) made by Verifone, much like the type that restaurants use most places besides the USA. If I had to speculate, maybe they try putting varying charges/holds on the card and see when it gets rejected in order to divine the balance?
I'm sure they have a special merchant agreement that allows for this. If the credit card networks refused to play ball they could be accused of hiding criminals.
Civil asset forfeiture needs at least these reforms:
1) Police departments cannot keep anything they seize (or proceeds from its sale/liquidation). Incentives matter. If the funds need to go somewhere, they should be assigned by lottery so they're not a solution to anyone's problems. Or, perhaps have them go to the public defender's office, which is going to need them because...
2) There absolutely has to be due process here. "Civil" is a loophole-technicality if the reason for the seizure is a suspicion that the asset was involved in a crime. PDs should be provided for those who don't have their own counsel, and burden of proof should be on the state.
(I know, sending the funds to the PDs office could create a conflict of interest. A straightforward arrangement wouldn't work; there'd have to be a likely state-level layer of indirection and some stipulations incentivizing the hiring of more staff rather than inflating existing staff salaries much beyond the current exorbitant premiums PDs command. :/ )
Thus begins a new round of escalation and avoidance - cash is seized? No longer carry it. Credit Cards maxed? Keep it in a separate account and load only as required. In an account but you can direct funds from your phone? Hand that over.
At some point you just rely on biometrics for every transaction, it turns into an automated shakedown scheme or you just learn to avoid the state of Oklahoma.
What do you think will happen if you're arrested with a thumbprint lock on your phone? They may not be able to force you to recite your password (at least without lengthy legal proceedings beforehand), but they can certainly grab your finger and use it to unlock the device. They may not be able to do this if you've only been detained, but I wouldn't chance it.
I come from an Asian country, we are used to bribes, crooked politicians, government workers etc etc.
To me the USA was the place where Neil Armstrong lived, it was the country that gave me so much that I was thankful for, it was a country where the words "Freedom of speech" ruled above everything. To me it was the country I wanted to be in if I had a wish.
Little by little, that idea I had of the united states is being changed, may be its my fault since I idealised the USA too much. May be its the news I read about, large scale surveillance, government officials who has no regard for civil liberties, people more powerful than the FBI, people above the law, power crazed security guards at airports etc etc.
I really really dislike this, wish I would once again get to believe that there is a place where people are treated right.
I once worked with a woman who immigrated from Russia who had learned computer science on punch cards. She was always full of energy and happy to be working on interesting project in the USA, because that kind of thing did not happen in the USSR. In that environment, you learned to "not be noticed". Bad things regularly happened to people that were noticed.
Her attitude changed in soon after the Bush administration started their wars in the middle east and the PATRIOT act was passed. When that came up in conversation one day, she suddenly got really serious and quietly said, "It's happening again." The same environment she had fled from the USSR was happening here, and it terrified her.
There was a change. The USA has always had problems, but there defiantly was a change that happened somewhat recently. I've been trying to fight it ever since, but all that has done is convince me that it's going to get a lot uglier before it any true reform is possible.
A lot changed after 9/11. The US Government took the public's irrational fear of Terrorism and used that to usher in sweeping reforms against personal liberty, under the guise "War on Terror."
As an Englishman, I have a couple of questions for you Americans on here.
1) Does anyone know who came up with these "civil asset forfeitures"? (Personally, they seem most un-civil to me.)
2) Can any of you defend America as "the land of the free" when more of the population are in prison than in almost any other country in the word and the police not only have the power to strip you of your property and assets without even needing a solid reason, but can shoot you dead and barely get a slap on the wrist?
Not having a go at America or Americans, but it seems to me that those who truly believe it to be a land of the free are deluding themselves.
1) The history in the U.S., it is probably fair to say, is primarily tied up in various prohibition laws, most recently drug prohibition. Though some of the precedent apparently can be traced back to British Maritime Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...)
2) Not if they're intellectually honest about it. If one reads the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in context and in their spirit, it's hard to countenance that civil forfeiture is at all consistent with our founding principles. In fact, the practice is highly contrary to those principles.
(This is not to say that those principles have ever actually been properly applied consistently since day one of the Republic. Still, a damn good effort to do so ought be made.)
can you recommend a book for someone who wants to understand more about the US - IE what the declaration of independence and constitution are, and how the US got to where it is now? covering history and politics and anything else useful to really grok these types of discussions?
I really can't. That's not to say that they don't exist, but I'm not familiar with any single book that I know I could say, "look here," and feel good about it. My own knowledge has accumulated across many different sources over many years. I am also a bit distrustful of more modern sources that want to project the nation's founding one way or another for contemporary purposes. Any such book must look at British/Colonial relations, the philosophical movements afoot in Europe and elsewhere which we call the Enlightenment, U.S. history in the 18th and 19th centuries (internal expansion and gradually working for greater international presence) and then good world histories for the 20th century. Tall order for one book :-).
For the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, it might just be easier (to start) by just reading them directly. I have a small (12.5cm x 9cm) book that contains both documents and is only 58 pages long at that size. Read them in that order as the Declaration lays out the moral statement for why a break from the British Empire was seen as necessary by the (then) British colonists and the Constitution was the legal reflection of those ideas... reading the Federalist Papers is great for getting in the mind of the Constitution's authors and supporters.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Just a few weeks ago I watch a lecture that talked about Magna Carta and include discussion on its influence on the U.S. revolutionaries that founded the country. Just that one aspect was something that I didn't really see in many of the histories I've seen.
I appreciate your response! knowing that there's definitely no one single unbiased good book/source is actually a very useful thing to keep in mind - I'm currently reading "a peoples history of the united states" and pretty quickly realized that whilst it contains a lot of information, it's (necessarily?) written in a very particular tone.
As a recent transplant to the US I actually like the idea of having my own copy of the declaration and constitution, for both the actual information and kind of symbolic novelty of being here.
In practice, America isn't universally the land of the free and never has been. However, it has founding principles that many people believe in which do advocate widespread freedoms. These principles have not been and still are not applied properly.
I'm not going to try to defend civil asset forfeiture (it's an abhorrent practice), but I still do think America is marginally more free than most places for a few reasons:
- I don't think the number of people in prison is the best measure of whether a country is free or not. By that logic, a backwater regime which simply dealt with undesirables via extrajudicial shootings would be more "free."
- Likewise, the notion that police can "shoot you dead and barely get a slap on the wrist" is quite hyperbolic. Yes, there are plenty of cases of police brutality and we need a better system for prosecuting police murders (ideally an independent prosecutorial office which only prosecuted police). But I'm no more afraid of getting shot by the police than I am of dying in any other unlikely way (terrorist attack, random serial killer, etc.).
- We do still have some rights which are freer than anywhere else. Free speech, for example, enjoys much better protection in the US. Trying to prosecute someone for insulting a foreign leader would get laughed out of court here, but apparently it's a crime in Germany. Our secret police are marginally less brazen than GCHQ. The prospect of a national firewall/blacklist is a lot more distant here.
"But I'm no more afraid of getting shot by the police than I am of dying in any other unlikely way (terrorist attack, random serial killer, etc.)."
You may be unafraid, but there is an order of magnitude difference between your examples. Serial killers murder about 150 people per year, terrorist attacks killed 19 in 2015. Cops killed 1146 people.
1. Most recently, Ronald Reagan's take on the War on Drugs.
2. It's the land of the free if you're not one of the 'bad' minorities. That same moniker was used when it enslaved millions of people. The fact that they are now sitting in prison, instead of being forced to pick cotton is tangential.
1) Civil asset forfeiture was created to seize the assets of drug cartels where the believed owner of the property in possession is in another country and has a modest army preventing extradition to stand trial. However, any government entity seeks to expand it's revenue first and foremost and this is a tremendous way to do that and it's being(predictably) abused.
2) Every country has a narrative about itself that isn't 100% correct, consistent or logical. That isn't how people work. Hopefully this ideal will help the revocation of civil asset forfeiture soon. The trend seems to be going that way.
> Civil asset forfeiture was created to seize the assets of drug cartels where the believed owner of the property in possession is in another country and has a modest army preventing extradition to stand trial.
No, it wasn't. In the early US (which imported the legal concept from British maritime law) it was first used as a means to assure collection of customs duties. It expanded during prohibition, but even then was deployed primarily against domestic bootleggers, not kingpins residing in a foreign country with protection against extradition.
It's never been "a land of the free." The original constitution didn't even include the bill of rights because it can't be easily reconciled with slavery.
EDIT: I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. If you think it is wrong at least state why it is wrong.
Ridiculous. The reason the Bill of Rights was not included in the constitution proper is that the enumerated powers clause states that the federal government is assumed to have no authority other than that explicitly granted to it. The Federalists were concerned that as soon as you started listing rights that were specifically protected, people would get the idea that those were the ONLY rights protected, which was contrary to the principle on which the nation was founded.
I wish I could upvote you more than once. This is an important factor that during the foundation of our country that seems to be playing out in real time in our modern times, and it's a discussion that needs to be had.
The government needs to be reminded the people are what give it any legitimacy in the first place, and such blatant unconstitutionality needs to be prosecuted and denounced loudly and publicly.
> The original constitution didn't even include the bill of rights because it can't be easily reconciled with slavery.
The original Constitution expressly recognized and protected slavery, true, and did not include the bill of rights, but not because it couldn't be reconciled with slavery, but because the bill of rights was crafted to address concerns raised by critics of the original Constitution; the Bill of Rights (well, the 10 amendments popularly called that now -- the package proposed had 12, one of which still isn't ratified, and one of which took a little over 200 years to be ratified) was ratified within a few years of the original Constitution, and had no problem being reconciled with slavery, which was still around until being abolished by the 13th Amendment after the Civil War.
" The original constitution didn't even include the bill of rights..."
I've heard this before and it's complete bullshit. The constitution as originally ratified by all the colonies included the bill of rights. Sure, there were many drafts and prior versions that didn't include it, but it has been there since its release. If you use that logic, the original was a blank sheet of paper and didn't include anything.
> > "" The original constitution didn't even include the bill of rights..."
> I've heard this before and it's complete bullshit.
Well, except for the part where its completely true.
> The constitution as originally ratified by all the colonies included the bill of rights.
No, it didn't. The Constitution, without amendments, was ratified in 1788. The 12-amendment Bill of Rights was passed by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification in 1789. Of those 12 amendments, the last 10 were ratified in 1791 and became Amendments 1-10 to the Constitution (what is popularly now known as the "Bill of Rights"), while the second was ratified in 1992 and became Amendment 27, and the first is, technically, still pending and open for ratification.
I've seen it said before and I'll say it again. Anyone who works for companies who make products like this in any capacity should be blacklisted in the industry. The missing scruples here could fill several large containers.
Yeah, sure, let's turn that into a war between ourselves instead of demanding better legislation and more transparency from governments. Blacklisting individuals isn't going to solve any problem whatsoever and we run the risk of alienating a whole bunch of people who will then might go out and do even worst things than writing software for questionable companies.
We need laws that prevent those things. That's the only way this can be resolved. We're a huge community with an equally huge influence and resources. Let's coordinate and use our power for a good cause, instead of resurrecting witch-hunting practices.
The laws you're talking about will never occur if the people making those laws are non-technical. As an industry we need to self-regulate, and have our self-regulation have the weight of law behind it. This system works fairly well, for example, in the medical profession, where you can lose your license to practice medicine based on principles set forth by other doctors.
That's essentially an argument for a professional licensure system for software development.
Setting aside that professional licensure requirements are anathema to the spirit of the hacker movement, they would likely have prevented the creation of a massive pool of technology companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. Even that proposal would stifle innovation.
However, what's being suggested by the OP is not even a professional licensure system.
It's mob justice.
The difference is that professional licensure organizations follow fixed sets of rules, procedures, and principles. These rules are established, agreed upon, and promulgated in advance of enforcement. Most importantly, the procedures generally allow for the basics of due process.
Mob justice has no set of fixed procedure, and no assurance of due process. Its enforcement is governed by caprice, and subject to a set of arbitrary, inconsistent, and constantly shifting "rules."
The OP is proposing an arbitrarily enforced "refusal to hire" policy people from an ill-defined set of "undesirable" companies.
First, there are no rules for establishing which companies are undesirable.
What fields of technology exactly are undesirable? And exactly how closely did an engineer have to be involved with such technology?
Second, many companies develop "dual use" technology, which has both civilian and military uses. This includes manufacturers of everything from CPUs to jet engines. Is the designer of a gyroscope used on spacecraft and on missiles banished from our ranks?
Third, many of these companies are also huge conglomerates. GE makes jet engines, as well as washers and dryers.
Where do we draw the line?
Should a GE employee be blacklisted under this "system"? One from Intel? How about Facebook for taking money from the CIA? Google for Boston Dynamics?
Most importantly, who decides, and how?
If it's determined by whim and popularity, as proposed by the OP, then I want absolutely no part of it.
I agree that these are all significant challenges. However I believe that in the absence of a licensing body, we as professionals can still reach consensus-based conclusions on minimum standards of professional ethics.
And I suspect very strongly that the engineers on this particular project would have clearly violated any standards of professional ethics we could agree on.
How, where, and by what metric is this "consensus" established? What if you and I disagree? What if Microsoft and Apple disagree? Who decides?
Civil war amongst software developers, with utter lack of due process, and ostracism as punishment are not as pleasant to the ear as "consensus," but that's the end result of what you're proposing.
This, of course, misses the central flaw in the proposal: If "good" companies refuse to hire engineers with work history at "bad" companies, you'd be forcing the very engineers who now want to do work you consider "good" back into doing work you consider "bad."
Setting aside the horrific personal implications this ham-fisted approach would have, by its very nature, a refusal to hire policy would have the exact opposite effect that you intend.
I don't think a professional organization would want to wade into politics like that. At least for engineers, the principles they enforce are limited in scope. They demand that missiles designed by engineers don't veer wildly off-course. They don't demand that engineers refrain from designing missiles. The former is a matter of engineering; the latter is a matter of public policy.
> let's turn that into a war between ourselves instead of demanding better legislation and more transparency from governments
The government is made up of it's constituents, we should absolutely blacklist those people to let them know we are not OK with this. You'll never get more transparency from the government, it's not in their best interest to do that, nor is it for them to implement 'better' legislation. Ideally that would be great, but we are WAY past that being a realistic possibility in America.
No I did. In theory the government is made up of its own people, so my first sentence meant I deem it acceptable to blacklist private companies that provide these products and services to the government.
But also in the same breathe, people in government are also extremely self serving, and it does them no good to provide more transparency when their current paychecks benefit from a lack of transparency.
I can see how that appears to be contradictory but I did not mean for it to be taken in that manner, hope this clears up my statement.
While I agree with you that this is first and foremost an issue with our government, it is also a matter of ethics.
Doing/making something because it is legal is does not make it right. As you're building a team you should hopefully be hiring only people who act ethically and can understand the implications of their work, right?
What sort of laws do you forsee addressing this? At what abstraction (i.e. local, state...)? We already have a Bill of Rights that AFAIK was intended to protect us against these sorts of ingresses by the state into our daily lives. They just come up with ever-fanciful word play like in rem and "executive order" to supercede it.
I've always wondered about the people engineering devices like this, the people at Harris Corp. creating Stingrays and other surveillance platforms, how they feel about their work. Listing individual employees might be a bit much, but we could certainly create one of companies involved. Unfortunately I fear it would be a long list.
im sure their most important hiring aspect is a certain mindset. once you get someone truly believing they are working on the side of good, they will do just about anything. zealotry is alive and well.
Most people don't have a moral backbone nearly as string as they think they do. There was an article last week, posted here IIRC, about a an adware company in the northeast that was apparently a pretty good employer other than morally and ethically repugnant nature of the product being created. Several of the employees interviewed talked about the mental hoops they jumped through to justify working there.
Harris has very very high turnover. I believe that people get hired not knowing what they're getting into. It takes a while to figure out that not all is as it should be.
The missing scruples are what make the people responsible for this valuable. You don't want someone who might have a moral crisis working on a product that can and will be easily wielded for abuse.
Do you want to be called pigs? Because this is how you get called pigs.
I'm a very law-and-order guy, but I have zero sympathy for police departments who pull shenanigans like this and then bitch and moan that their communities don't respect them. This gives limitless ammo to critics who want to paint police as noncaring, profit-driven thugs, probably endangering officers' lives in the process.
What an utterly despicable, contemptible move. It's simply not defensible in any way.
I bet the men and women on the street care a whole lot what they're called by the people they're supposed to protect. I bet they don't like it when their kid comes home crying because the other kids add school make fun of him for having a police officer for a parent. They're the ones who need to speak up - get their union involved if necessary - and tell their bureaucracies to knock it off.
This can't possibly be legal or even technically feasible. The victim can call her bank and report a fraudulent transaction, which pits the bank against a warrantless seizure that's impossible to defend in court. Surely banks can catch on and frontload an "identity protection" mechanism that'll simply block transactions from anything matching "ERAD" or however they identify themselves to the ACH.
It's doubtful that local or state PDs have enough political pull or money to battle banks over this through the court system.
> which pits the bank against a warrantless seizure that's impossible to defend in court
Your argument could equally be applied against regular (cash) civil asset forfeiture. The outcome is the same either way.
"Sorry, it was authorised by the authorities, nothing we can do".
You'll be short of the money until you sue, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. When you do sue, you'll have to prove that you're entitled to the money, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. What you get back will be less legal fees, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture.
The 'authorities' you're referring to, do not in fact have any legal authority to conduct that transaction. You're wrong entirely in your premise. What they're doing, is using force to steal property without any authorization.
The line you'll get in fact will not be that it was authorized by the authorities and there's nothing that can be done. Banking is federally regulated, it is not regulated by the state police in Oklahoma. The matter of jurisdiction when you start fraudulently stealing from bank accounts (which in many cases would naturally also be out of state and otherwise national banks, and or even virtual banks) is without question: it's a federal matter.
Cash and card are not the same. The very obvious difference between cash and card is that you can charge back via a card. The cash is physical and must be physically recovered from their possession (protected by their guns). That's a very substantial and fortunate difference for the card holder.
> It was not authorized by the card holder or a court order, so it is fraud.
Sorry, you're wrong. I've had the IRS steal money directly from my bank account to pay for taxes (and fees, and fines) I didn't owe. The bank won't help you, and I had to pay a tax lawyer $1,800 to get back $3,200 in taxes (and fines) from the IRS for a stock sale I never made.
The bank treats withdrawals by government agencies as legitimate transactions. They won't recognize it as fraud, and you won't get the money back from the bank.
Every time I've had a fraudulent charge on my account, I've contested it and had the money returned to me. I can only assume that in some cases the bank simply bites the bullet and writes this off as a cost of doing business. There's probably an upper limit to their general benevolence. Given enough fraud-like losses stemming from asset seizure, the reasonable action would be to simply block the charges before they can post to the customer's account.
My bank does call me every now and again to verify charges on my debit card. Some of these calls make me wonder if the system has a hair trigger, which also means it's probably smart enough to just blanket block anything that looks like an asset seizure. This can't be too difficult, and will save banks money. The incentive to save money is a powerful one and has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting customers.
You've entered into federal territory here. Banks are not regulated or controlled by the Oklahoma State Police, they're regulated by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the Treasury etc.
Once the state police start stealing funds from banks, they're very obviously crossing a line that will quickly get the Feds involved on a 'personal' level. It's actually a plus, the big boys in banking (which rule over an increasingly larger share of all banking nationally) will put an end to the state police theft very quickly as the numbers climb. Wells Fargo or JP Morgan, as far as the federal authorities are concerned, are drastically more powerful than the lowly Oklahoma State Police.
Exactly, if a bank blocked the charge it would be conceivable that they could be charged with conspiring with a criminal or some business of that sort. It would be so much easier and safer to just let the police take the money and say 'sorry, there's nothing we can do.'
Yup, but the fun part of constitutional rights being violated is you can continue to do so until the SCOTUS declares said legislation unconstitutional. Checks and balances are great, but they really don't work as well as they should.
If it's a wire transfer then there's not much your bank can do. The money is gone by the time you have them on the phone just as much as if you had sent it to a Nigerian Prince.
This should firmly cement law enforcement's status as thieves rather than civi servants. As if civil asset forfeiture didn't do that already, already making police the #1 class of thieves in the US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
As a libertarian, I've seen a long line of articles that make me go Holy Cow!
It's gotten so I feel bad about it. I even apologize. Each time, I think "Well that's it, there's nothing that could go beyond this."
Holy cow!
Several years ago I sold a small lot which had an office on it. The guy who bought it paid cash. Cash is kinda unusual for this kind of transaction, so I asked him where he got it. He told me that he was a general contractor and had been saving for over ten years.
Then he told me that the previous month, while he was moving his savings to his mom's house, he got pulled over for a bad taillight.
They almost took all of his money. Holy cow! This was my introduction to Civil Asset Forfeiture.
There are many parts of this story that are amazing. Right away I note that if you're truly wealthy? You have nothing to fear. You have enough assets to pay the one lawyer who golfs with the local DA and get this thing fixed quickly. But if you're not? If you're like my friend saving up for a large purchase? Good freaking luck.
Read an article once from a former LE guy. I remember one of his points. He said that cops are hunters. They hunt bad guys. We are their prey.
As we are finding out, the definition of "bad guy" is wonderfully malleable. Just about anybody can be one. The more political power you have (whether through contacts, as a politician, or by having money), the less likely you are to be one.
There has been a long tradition in the states of assuming the best when dealing with the local constable. They have tough jobs, usually the training isn't terribly difficult, it's a good spot for people who like guns and violence but want to be one of the good guys.
This tradition is coming to a close. While the constable himself might be a nice enough, stand-up guy, the system as a whole is terribly corrupt and overbearing. I might go so far as to say evil.
This cannot continue. Reforms are desperately needed.
> There has been a long tradition in the states of assuming the best when dealing with the local constable.
Heh! I came from a country where police torture people routinely. Any suspect who lands in police custody has a good chance of being tortured. They know how to do it, so it causes psychological distress but doesn't leave huge marks on the body. My friend and I once caught a pickpocket and took him to a police station. Cops were bored and proceeded to torture him behind a closed door in order for him to reveal where his buddies were hiding. At first we were so happy we caught the tiny criminal. By the end of the evening I felt pretty sorry for the guy.
Anyway, that is how I see cops. Rationally I know they are not all like that, and we are not in <oldcountry> anymore. But deep down instinctively I still have that fear of them. It is scary and dissappointing that people in this country are slowly starting to adopt the same attitude toward police because of how police is acting.
> While the constable himself might be a nice enough, stand-up guy, the system as a whole is terribly corrupt and overbearing.
If constable ever kept this mouth shut when he saw their co-workers abuse their power, they have stopped being a good stand-up guy at that very instant.
Yes, I understand that. Every system has good folks and bad folks. But at some point, systems reach a state where the people trying to do good in the world are actually part of the problem, not part of the solution. At that point, the system itself is bad.
In the states it matters whether you torture people. Sure, bad folks get away with it, but if you get caught, you can be assured that the system will work against you. Same goes, mostly, for killing people without reason. Several public incidents over the last few years have shown this. I think the trick is to have video footage handy.
False arrest? Not so much. Police harassment? I'm sure there are cases brought to trial, but it's really rare. Taking your money when you didn't do anything? As we can see, that's already part of the system.
So over time, the system slips into being, for lack of a better word, "evil". More and more stuff that was out of bounds becomes normal. Sadly, I honestly think the reason for this is just officers trying to do a good job. Maybe cutting a corner here or there. No evil intent required.
This is going to sound weird, but if you'd like a good example of how the US traditionally felt about Law Enforcement, watch a few episodes of the old TV show "The Andy Griffith Show" with Don Knotts in there. Perhaps follow that up with a couple of episodes of "Dragnet"
These are highly-sanitized 60s shows, but it's clear that for a population who had most men return from armed combat in WWII or Vietnam, over-zealous macho policemen were a cause of great amusement. When real crimes did occur, the cops were considered just part of the population, perhaps with more analytical skills and with a job most people wouldn't like, but not that different from anybody else.
I believe that attitude started turning in the mid 70s with the Dirty Harry movies. Crime was considered a terrible problem, and the courts were considered to be advocating letting criminals rampage. Then we had the organized crime mania. Then drugs. With each public fear-fest, legislators gave the police more and more power -- just to use against the terrible threat of the current day, of course. It didn't work out that way. Now we have cops using organized crime and drug laws against some yokel growing 3 pot plants in his basement.
Like how does the officer know how much you have and how much is 'appropriate' to confiscate?
I wonder if it does a series of authorizations looking for some sort of upper limit to figure out how much money is in the account and then they determine what to take from that?
Either way, this goes way beyond reason for what a trooper should be able to do on the side of a road during a traffic stop.
The officer doesn't have to know. Or care. He just takes every penny the system allows and lets you fight the DA over it at a later date. Even if the money is returned, it doesn't cost the cop anything to try. And if they keep the money, some moeny goes back to the police department.
Yes, but my statement was more of a technical one regarding how such a system might work.
I am speaking about the method used to determine how much is in an account and what can be withdrawn, because they can't check your balance without a pin number, and if their system is issuing multiple repeated authorizations, what protections banks have in place that might block these sorts of transactions to prevent theft.
Fun fact, when running credit or debit cards you can actually get the available balance on them. I've made the mistake of going to the gas station when my checking account only had a couple of dollars in it, ran the card at the pump and it let me put in exactly enough gas to 0 out my account and no more.
I believe the system is operating on pre-paid cards. I don't know the technical differences in transactions on those vs normal credit cards, but I assume there are some.
One more reason to keep a reserve of Bitcoins. With a hardware wallet like a Trezor your bitcoins are secured on a physical device with a PIN and password. The police in the US can do civil asset forfeiture on gold, cash, and now bank accounts so obviously a more secure asset is needed. Bitcoin is that secure asset that can be moved in a few minutes in any amount to anywhere.
This seems looks like it was designed to be abused. If this is used, their must be additional training for cops on how to make a seizure decision, and major repercussions if they seize money from a person who is then proven to be innocent.
> News 9 obtained a copy of the contract with the state. It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc. [...] 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes.
I think that might even be worse then the police being able to sieze all of you money.
It is incredibly mercenary isn't it? Does the device just send the request off to a call center where the ERAD folks do the actual bank account drains? How are they able to justify such a huge commission? Who in the government negotiated this? Did they get a nice cushy job in the ERAD group after they retired from government work?
So we can't carry cash, because they'll seize that directly. This device could probably do some sort of run around the new chip system in cards. Bitcoin is nearly useless in the real world. So where does that leave us? Google & Apple Pay on our phones? At least our phones can be password protected.
Carry a credit card and pay that off monthly so as not to accrue interest. This way the only thing that could potentially be "seized" is your access to a line of credit. Now, I'd normally say that there is no way they could justify seizing assets that aren't even yours, it'd at least be entertaining to see if it did happen.
After I had my debit card skimmed I started to have my debit card always deactivated by default. I usually only pay by credit card anyway. In cases where I need money from the ATM I enable my debit card via my bank's mobile app, get the money, and then disable it again.
And you'll get an obstruction of justice charge if you don't supply the password then and then be found in contempt of court if you don't give it up when you're before a judge.
Not in this case. The police legally can't pull you over and force you to unlock your phone via password. They'd have to go through a court process, and that's precisely where any attempt at theft will fall apart (more specifically, as the law stands today the police won't even attempt this line of approach because they know it'd fall apart in the court system before they're able to steal the money).
This is the worst systemic abuse of police authority in contravention of the constitution - ever. Innocent accused will have to spend money in attorney's fees, lost work, lost interest, opportunity costs ... to retrieve their property. This is essentially an unlawful seizure.
As a canadian reading this, my instinctive reactions were:
1. Is this a parody of some kind?
After it turned out it's legit news:
2. So why they simply aren't maxing out people credit cards too?
I mean, by the same flawed logic, it would stop crime if people are more in debt. You can of course prove you aren't going to use your credit card for further crimes and have the money returned.
My understanding with asset seizure is that you can show why the money was yours, and it is returned. What happens to the 7.7% taken by the servicer? Is it automatically returned as well?
While your understanding is technically correct, it's nowhere near that simple and usually costs more than the money lost in legal fees to win a case like this and get your seized assets back.
The state refunds it to you, the 7.7% percent is the fee the state paid in order to withhold your funds so conveniently. The trick is you have to prove that those withheld funds are wrongfully withheld (the burden of proof is on the accused in this case) without access to the seized assets. In short, the 7.7% is negligible because in the cases of this abuse, you probably weren't getting that money back anyways.
This is outrageous. The police can get away with this because they have a weapon, a gun, which can kill you if you resist. Or at the very least, call other cops, arrest you and throw you in jail and ruin your life while you have to prove your you are not guilty & try to get your money back.
This defies all logic and is a clear example of the corrupt state this country is in (USA).
> The police can get away with this because they have a weapon
I disagree. Police can do it because they have the power of the state behind them; the state can try you, imprison you, ruin your life, seize your other assets, etc. That policeman's gun is a minor detail and is rarely used.
Most importantly, they have the power of the state because voters permit it. Do you know if this is allowed in your state? Who are your state legislators? Are you going to contact them?
Gosh this copy from the linked web site seems like everything that's wrong with products in this space, "Criminals today use an array of payment cards to purchase, transfer or conceal billions of dollars of illicit funds from Law Enforcement"
Which criminals? The ones a local policeman happens to stop in a routine checkpoint?
I'd like to see actual stats on what percentage of everyday criminals who are met by local law enforcement "conceal billions of dollars".
I'd bet this percentage is so small the tool does more harm to the general populace than good on the off chance such a criminal is caught.
I think you're correct. The quotes in the article make more sense in the light of stolen cards being "concealed" in other magnetic strips which aren't credit cards.
Many times, criminals illegally clone valid payment cards
on to non-descript pieces of plastic like hotel room keys
and subway cards, making detection and interrogation
nearly impossible. Since virtually any plastic card with
a magnetic stripe can re-purposed as a credit, debit or
prepaid payment card, being able to determine the
identity of the card is critical to your investigation.
The whole thing is moot once chips are (finally) in major use.
"The ERAD platform will help you document every confiscated credit, debit and prepaid card, and instantaneously provide key card issuer information that’s critical to your investigation. And if some of those cards are prepaid cards, ERAD™ gives you the ability, right at the point of arrest, to determine the value and immediately secure or freeze those funds."
So these devices do let LEOs seize funds but only from prepaid cards, apparently, for now.
Hello sir, we're performing an investigation. We accept cash, check, and credit card. Just hand us your wallet, sign here, and then realize you can't afford to hire a lawyer because we took all your money.
This happens, or something very similar. There have been multiple cases where someone faces charges and the government freezes all their bank accounts, preventing them from being able to hire a good attorney to defend themselves.
Its mostly for use against prepaid gift cards and the like. Also those cheesy pre-paid credit cards.
Supposedly its already in use at borders. The news is that now if you get pulled over in OK the cops will now keep any gift cards they find.
Ever wonder why there's such a push to get RFID everywhere? If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
> If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
Errrrrr not really! 4th Amendment gives you the right to refuse a search of your person or vehicle. Even if the cops do find something illegal during a search you've clearly but politely refused, your refusal will give your defense attorney grounds to ask the court to throw out any evidence found in the trunk.
Which is why they aren't charging people with crimes when stealing property many of the times. No criminal charges, no public defender, no recourse for people with little to no money (and what little they had just got seized) to go to court to reclaim their stolen property.
This is a very naive view. It will ruin life, some people will protest, but the majority, will, as with the proverbial frog in the hot water, stay quiete. And it will just be one additional step toward a totalitarian state. It's just tiny steps. It will take time. But here the regularity matters.
The simple existence of the Patriot Act, which destroys the very basis of the US legal system (the habeas corpus) and ignore blatantly the constitution, proves that the Suprem Court is not the democratic safety net it's supposed to be.
> "If you can prove can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," Vincent said about any money seized.
Literally the opposite of how presumed innocence is supposed to work. Furthermore, good luck mounting a decent case now that they have all your money.
As a Norwegian/Australian, I'm just shaking my head reading this. Sorry, I have nothing but reactionary drivel to add - but I wouldn't be surprised if this was to further (if that's even possible) increase US gun violence. For personal protection against robbery. This now appears as a marginally valid reason for your gun ownership; if they're going to take all your assets on a whim, leaving you with nothing to fend for, what have you got to lose? I mean, how do you survive in the "no handout" US with no money anyway?
This is the rich looking after the rich in the most corrupt and reprehensible way possible, see how this is going to work out for you as resentment grows in the population roots.
Roughly $2trillion of the nation's $3.8trillion spending in the 2015 [1] budget was healthcare, social security, food assistance, and unemployment. This doesn't include any of the substantial spending on welfare and 'handouts' as you call them by state and local governments.
The problem isn't that we aren't willing to redistribute money, the problem is that the politicians do a crap job of it, and do it in ways that often seem specifically designed to keep the poor people poor.
"If you can prove can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you."
- Well my grandma saved it for me when I was a child. - Prove it. - Sorry but she's dead and I moved it to a new bank account two years ago. - Yeah sure.
Your comment illustrates a complete misunderstanding of the burden of proof in these cases.
In the situation you describe a simple bank statement from "2 years ago" would be more than enough to meet the "preponderance of evidence" standard for these cases.
>It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes.
If your cash is seized the police will go ahead and keep the full amount less the 7.7% fee. So what happens if the person is proven innocent? Does the police dept have to use its own funding to repay the 7.7% fee?
This seems unlikely to me (but that is based on no facts). Or does the company have to repay the money? It would seem like they could legally say they preformed a service and should not be required to refund the money.
Sadly it looks like if you are seen as "potential guilty" and your assets are seized, even if you are proven innocent you still lost 7.7% of your money. Then tack on legal fees associated with proving your innocent.....
It blows my mind this is even technically possible. Surely the target needs to enter a pin or something in order for the bank to authorise the transaction.
That said seizing cash whether physical notes or electronic must be subject to due process and a court order.
>We've seen where the money goes and how it's been misspent
Serious question, where does the money go and how is it spent? Who is it spent by?
We do have a process for the confiscation of proceeds of crime here in Australia. I believe the money goes into a big pot controlled by a federal government department (https://www.afsa.gov.au/ ie not the police) to be spent on community projects. I am sure that there is plenty of scope for waste etc but if nothing else the system would seem to do a good job of removing any financial incentives for the police to seize stuff.
This is total, corrupt bullshit. How the fuck is a traffic cop supposed to ascertain the origin of the money in your accounts, let alone if it was from the "the commission of a crime?"
> "We're gonna look for different factors in the way that you're acting. We're gonna look for if there's a difference in your story. If there's someway that we can prove that you're falsifying information to us about your business."
If you seem suspicious, or if they claim so, then your money suddenly is not yours any more, until you prove their source. If you can't prove the legitimity of your money, they become fair game to be confiscated. In this whole process you personally are not charged with anything, but the confiscation is triggered by their being suspicious about you.
"No, officer, you may not see my wallet. I do not consent to a search of myself, my vehicle, or my property. I furthermore, refuse to have any further conversation with you. May I go now, or am I under arrest?"
So they can drain your bank account... Then you'll need to hire a lawyer (after you've lost all your money) to prove you're innocent? Does ERAD give back the 7% fee? This has turned policemen into highwaymen.
This is a good question and I like a non-IANAL response. As far as I can tell police officers assume any resistance to request as proof of guilt. This kind of thinking has happened historically in the past and there's no reason to believe it's not happening now.
I believe searching your car and searching your person constitute two entirely different searches. If your wallet is on the seat next to you, the police could theoretically use that as grounds for a search. If your wallet is in your pocket, and they take your wallet off you as part of a search of your vehicle, you'd probably have a better chance of successfully claiming unreasonable search and seizure.
I'm not a lawyer either though, so take that for what it is worth.
In many places you won't have a chance of doing anything. Just do a quick search in youtube and watch all the people being robbed, beaten, raped, and killed by the police. That's the power they have now.
That's been a thing for a very long time now. Heck there was even a case where a family's son was caught selling a small amount of heroin on their front porch so the police threw them out on the street and stole their house.
What's more shocking is the following quote from that article:
>Philadelphia officials seized more than 1,000 houses, about 3,300 vehicles and $44 million in cash, totaling $64 million in civil forfeitures over a 10-year period
Well, they can and do seize cars regularly. If you give an illegal immigrant a ride (even innocently, even if you have no idea who they are and from your perspective you're just giving a hitchhiker a ride) and Border Patrol stops you, they will steal your car. They won't charge you with a crime unless you're an actual human trafficker, but your car gets taken away.
>"We're gonna look for different factors in the way that you're acting,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent said. “We're gonna look for if there's a difference in your story. If there's someway that we can prove that you're falsifying information to us about your business."
I think this is the first time I've thought it would be useful to have a device like the ill-fated Coin. Not that I keep money on prepaid cards, but if I did, it would be nice to back up my cards at home so that if stopped by the police I could pre-emptively delete the memory of the meta-card.
Why should I have to prove anything about myself to the government if I'm not suspected of a crime? Merely having some of what everyone else has - money, drugs, etc - doesn't itself make me suspect. It just makes me a target.
7.7%!? WOW! They really hustled those cops. I always hear how difficult it is to work with schools, law enforcement, basically most gov agencies. Surprising to see how well that company played the cops in this instance.
Consider, however, that the law in theory differs very much from its practice. In a Terry stop, just like most encounters with the police, the officer holds all the cards. Non-compliance can be met with force, and there's always the threat of being charged for obstruction or whatever else the policeman thinks up, based on their word alone(which has more weight than yours in court). Policemen are given a wide latitude to act, and a good faith presumption to all their actions, so they can get away with stretching any applicable law to its breaking point.
The police will keep encroaching until they meet some kind of resistance, which will not easily materialize because people here would be the first ones to utterly condemn respect-instilling reprisals.
If everybody else around you accepts to get arbitrarily molested in the butt, you either accept it too, or else you move out.
I have personally chosen to move out. Unfortunately, you can see the United Nations, USAID, international NGOs and similar organizations coming over here to convince the locals to accept similar abuse from their own government, by advocating "the rule of law". Of course, there are also the Christian organizations advocating to the locals to offer their other cheek to such thefting police.
Since I cannot keep "moving away", at some point I will have no other option than to finally make a stand.
The Art of War says that the secret of success consists in never letting the enemy choose the time and the place. You must always choose the time and the place by yourself. Therefore, it suggests that it is us who must schedule forceful attacks against the police. Seriously, I am all for it.
The chance of a random fight against police accomplishing anything good is 0%. The chance it makes things worse is 100%.
And organizing violence is not particularly easy. For something like civil forfeiture, it would be much easier to just follow the democratic process.
So collect signatures, call representatives, state legislators, and stage protests at city halls. A lot less painful for all parties, and a greater chance of success.
I think he is talking about the case where police confiscated entire charitable collection ($30k I think) of a band who were carrying it in their band-wagon. They did gave it back after the public outcry.
I think these people get only few seconds to make their point. They have to make it quickly while using all the right buzzwords to hit the note. Also it is a good idea to keep it low on details because they the opponents focus on the details he got wrong while conveniently avoiding the larger important point.
No, people want large, busybody departments. It makes them feel safe. They don't want to increase their taxes, though, especially in conservative states such as Oklahoma.
Upvoting you and GP wasn't enough; I screen captured the exchange for my personal archives. If I ever write my great American novel, I'll try to give credit.
From Article:
"If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," Vincent said about any money seized.
Under no circumstance should i have to PROVE where my money came from nor how i got it. this is assumed guilt and utterly unamerican IMO. Where is the burden of proof that must be reached before taking my assets and forcing me to prove that i have the right to have them. OK = backwoods state full of backwoods laws, and apparently backwoods people that keep voting for these types of idiots.
> backwoods state full of backwoods laws, and apparently backwoods people
Attacking an entire population of people like that is a nasty breach of HN's civility rule. Please don't ever post anything like this again.
It's the upvoters of such comments who should most be ashamed of themselves. The fact that people here feel angry about police seizing cash without due process can, and must, be kept distinct from cheap slurs. That takes a certain (rather tiny) degree of self-discipline, which is a minimum requirement for participating here.
i did not attack them, i said "apparently" meaning it would seem that they are based on the things they allow and agree to. if you allow backwoods laws to be passed and enforced... well you know, if the shoe fits.
furthermore being called backwoods is only an attack if you choose it to be, some people don't mind being unsophisticated.
The US is built upon "Innocent until proven guilty" and "Speedy Trial".
That means you can't be jailed for murdering someone without a trial and you can't spend 10 years in jail before the trial. In the same way Assange is basically jailed without a trial or being proven guilty of anything.
"Asset forfeiture" in the US goes against everything that the above stands for. The fact that a government official (Cops, feds, etc) can take your money... link that money to "drugs" in some way... and keep that money (or assets) without a trial? Is un American.
They aren't accusing the person of being a criminal, they are accusing the property of being obtained from alleged criminal activity. Property is not innocent until proven guilty.
Not to say OK isn't a backwater, but at least the senator quoted in the article seems to get it:
"State Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, said that removes due process and the belief that a suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty ... 'If I had to err on the side of one side versus the other, I would err on the side of the Constitution'"
lol, starting. people say that stuff in passive protest, you should look for the causes of the revolution in france, the causes for the declaration of independence, what bothered people so much back then
and then see if "starting" is actually applicable vs a glaring understatement
Life under the Ancien Regime had some clear parallels to modern times in America superficially, but there were clear differences too. Pre-revolutionary France was not at all modernized compared to the rest of their neighbors for one thing, so that lent a pressure all it's own that was unique to that time period. Some of the root causes for unrest may be similar but it's not a direct analogue by any means.
This is the crux here. The "rule of law" is equivalent to "rule of men in black with automatic weapons". If you call the police, you are just outsourcing your violence to the men in black uniforms with automatic weapons. Because at the end of the day, they will use force. The "rule of law" is not "let's have a reasonable conversation about the issues".
I totally agree here. I will never call cops unless I wont mind seeing someone dragged or being pulled forcibly. Don't call cops because you saw a suspicious black man on the road, don't call cops because your neighbour's 5 year is playing alone on the playground, don't call cops because someone else is smoking weed.
Not only this will turn citizen against citizen but will also destroy lives.
"Rule of law" is supposed to mean that, absent adherence to its letter, self-defense with weapons of your own is not only proper but essential in order for liberty to persevere.
Although your anarchic mindset is appealing to me, I'm less ready to give up on the phrase and concept of "rule of law," which I think still has a place in a free information age.
Welcome to the post-Reagan era, kids. This stuff really took off during the 80s war on drugs. (which is about as successful as the war on alcohol was - for gangsters dealing)
If only Thatcherism / Reaganism never happened... (and Laffer, Friedman and all the other related right wing propaganda that's been catapulted down our throats)
I suppose things will eventually get bad enough that people will eventually realize "Everything that demented old man proposed was wrong?!?" (demented as in literal "alzheimer's patient")
Have you got a specific beef with Friedman, or are you just generally complaining about prominent conservatives from the 80s? What position did he take that would support civil asset forfeiture?
So, down-voters, the War On Drugs DIDN'T get a name and kick into high gear in the 80s???
Or perhaps the WOD was a liberal plot, only pushed through past poor old Reagan due to his fear of his veto being overturned if he dared vote against it???
Also, could we please stop blaming Thatcher and Reagan for undesirable political trends that started before them, and continued accelerating throughout successive left and right wing administrations in both countries?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/06/08/...