Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him • Hacker News Board

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#131

Post by dalke » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #98

davismwfl wrote: post #96

It bugs me reading some of the the comments here blaming the person that did nothing illegal by carrying cash. It doesn't matter if you (or I) feel it is inadvisable to carry cash, it isn't illegal. Smoking pot (illegal in most places) before flying is obviously not the brightest idea given the enhanced level of security at an airport. So I am ok with the "smell" prompting some extra questions (even an agreed to sear…

I'm really curious, how do you not qualify for a savings account? I've never seen a bank that wouldn't take money, especially when they can charge account maintenance fees.

wadetandy in these comments posted a link to an FDIC survey which goes into the details of why 8% of US households don't have an account, and why others are 'underbanked'; at https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2012_unbankedreport.pdf :

> Similar proportions of previously banked (33.2 percent) and never-banked (32.8 percent) households report that they don’t have a bank account because they don’t have enough money for one; this was the most common reason given by both groups. The second most common reason was not needing or wanting an account, although a larger percentage of never-banked households (26.0 percent) cited this reason than did previously banked households (15.6 percent). This finding implies that households that have had a bank account in the past may place more value on a banking relationship than those that have not.

> For nearly 10 percent (9.5 percent) of previously banked households, the main reason they do not currently have an account is that the bank closed their account. Another 5.5 percent of previously banked households cannot open an account because of identification (ID), credit, or banking history problems. This suggests that about 15 percent of previously banked households may not choose to be unbanked but face institutional barriers related to opening or maintaining an account.

> High bank account fees or minimum balance requirements were the main obstacles to account ownership for slightly more than 5 percent of unbanked households. However, recently unbanked households were more likely than others to cite fees as an obstacle: more than one in ten (11.1 percent) households that had a bank account in the last year were currently unbanked because of high fees and balance requirements, compared to 6.0 percent of previously banked households that had an account over a year ago. ...

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#132

Post by dalke » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

glenra wrote: post #122

readme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what man, you're absolutely right. But most people here are going to disagree with you, downvote you, and your brand new account is only going to be visible when I click "showdead" because apparently HN can't handle an opinion without hitting the down button. I would bet you so much, not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport. It's ok though, we should make sure people have the r…

> not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport. I've carried over $11k through an airport dozens of times and occasionally carried $30k or more. (I used to be involved with a professional blackjack team. :-) )

Building on that, here's an article from 1997 about the collision of professional gambling and civil forfeiture - http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/launder.htm :

> I had approximately $30K on me, but luckily I was wearing it.

> The airline x-ray detected approximately 100,000 dollars in cash and casino chips.

and a 2014 article titled "Poker Players Get Robbed Under Guise of Civil Asset Forfeiture" - http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/17922-lawyer-for-poker-... :

> The fancy legal term may be ‘civil asset forfeiture,’ but for a couple of poker players who saw Iowa police take $100,000 of their money it is just straight up robbery.

> In April of last year, poker players William “Bart” Davis and John Newmerzhycky were driving west through Iowa with out-of-state plates after a poker road trip. In their car was a lot of cash,

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#133

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #98

davismwfl wrote: post #96

It bugs me reading some of the the comments here blaming the person that did nothing illegal by carrying cash. It doesn't matter if you (or I) feel it is inadvisable to carry cash, it isn't illegal. Smoking pot (illegal in most places) before flying is obviously not the brightest idea given the enhanced level of security at an airport. So I am ok with the "smell" prompting some extra questions (even an agreed to sear…

I'm really curious, how do you not qualify for a savings account? I've never seen a bank that wouldn't take money, especially when they can charge account maintenance fees.

How is it government doesn't respect property rights? That's my bigger concern.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#134

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #66

imaginenore wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil asset forfeiture is fine if you're convicted, and the law says it's ok for a given crime. The current situation is ridiculous, and I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court (I mean a case when a person was not charged and/or not found guilty).

If something is taken when you're convicted, it's usually criminal asset forfeiture. One argument in favor of civil asset forfeiture is that it is the only way to take assets from the estate of a criminal who died before being convicted. The Supreme Court only takes cases it wants, usually because different circuit courts (the level below the Supreme Court) are at odds with one another. The Supreme Court also sometim…

Can't you just get it from the estate?

Anyway, that's relatively rare and doesn't justify suspending the property rights of individuals without due process.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#135

Post by dalke » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

joshuaheard wrote: post #74

hmottestad wrote: post #8

Now I'm not sure if Norway has similar laws, but I haven't heard of any. However, watching John Oliver talk about how ridiculous the civil forfeiture laws are in the US just makes me want to laugh so much. I know of all the great things happening in the US, and I'm not calling you a bad country. But it's so hard not to categorise you together with North Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates with how trigger happy…

Don't get your news from a comedian. Edit: Sorry, still on my first cup of coffee. Here it goes: the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts. The purpose of these comedy shows is to make you laugh, often by distorting or exaggerating the facts. By getting your news from comedy shows, you are receiving a distorted view of reality, which you seem to admit in your post. However, I see this as a greater pro…

"the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts"

Which news source does that? Fox News? the NYT? Al Jazeera? the WSJ? Democracy Now? the Washington Post? RT? The Guardian? Der Spiegel? No matter which one you pick, others will point out failures.

No news source can give you all the news. As commenters have long noted, the selection of facts to present is itself subject to bias.

For example, during a contract negotiation between a company and a union, does the news source report the facts as management sees it? Or as the union sees it? If it presents both sides, but one side is likely lying, does the news source report the lie, or let the reader decide, or interview a third party to have that third party point out the lie?

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#136

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #88

jMyles wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..? There's nothing strange about this. On one the features of a drug sniffing dog is that it is supposed to be able to distinguish between a lingering odor, a passing odor, the p…

Could you provide a citation for that?

Radley Balko writes that he learned this from Gene Papet, a professional trainer of K9 unit dogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/supreme-court-con...

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#137

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #79

jMyles wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still a false positive. Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material. So the dog, we're told, indicated because of "residue," falsely giving a positive indication for material.

>Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material. Have you got any citation for this? I am wondering how is it even possible.

Radley Balko writes that he learned this from Gene Papet, a professional trainer of K9 unit dogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/supreme-court-con...

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#138

Post by douche » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:38 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #113

readme wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never said it was common, I'm just saying I don't think it's worth the privacy to expose yourself to that amount of risk. Also the gov is gonna know you bought the truck when you register it, anyway.

It wasn't about privacy, it was just buying a truck. I never said it was about privacy. Hell, the DMV knew about the truck about 40 minutes after he bought it. The seller reported it as income[1]. This had nothing to do with privacy or fraud, and his bank wouldn't let him write checks for over $5,000 and he sure wasn't going to pay some fee for a certified check that the guy selling the truck wasn't going to take any…

I'm kind of surprised that the bank had that much cash on hand. I've known people that saved up enough to pay off their mortgages (less money than you were talking about), when they went to withdraw the cash from their savings to take to the bank that held the mortgage, the first bank was down to giving them 20s.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#139

Post by rogerbinns » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

hectormalot wrote: post #107

douche wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious, how do you not qualify for a savings account? I've never seen a bank that wouldn't take money, especially when they can charge account maintenance fees.

The main reasons are probably regulation and effort/difficulty to serve. Assuming you are a US citizen, I highly invite you to come over to Switzerland and try and open a (savings) account if you wish to experience it in person. I'm currently living here, and talking to my US colleagues, I've found that it is near impossible for them to open an account, even though they would bring money to the banks here. Reasoning?…

This is not a Swiss specific thing. The US is one of the few countries that taxes citizens (and permanent residents) while the they don't live in the US. Consequently citizens have to self report their foreign income and foreign taxes. There are various tax treaties, but the US person will essentially have to pay the difference between the foreign taxes and the US taxes on that money (that at no point went anywhere near the US, nor any services it provides).

But of course that wasn't enough. The FATCA law requires foreign institutions to also report back to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

> The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a United States federal law requiring United States persons (including those living outside the U.S.) to have yearly reported themselves and their non-U.S.financial accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), and requires all non-US (Foreign) Financial Institutions (FFI's) to search their records for suspected US persons for reporting their assets and identities to the US Treasury.

Note the last part. The burden imposed by FATCA on those institutions is so high, that they are refusing to have any US related people as customers. Heck the FATCA law is so wide reaching and onerous that a friend in Sri Lanka was bitching about having to implement it at their company, even though they don't employ a single US related person.

The net result is US citizens living abroad are giving up citizenship rather than deal with all this crap. It is noticeable how under represented Americans expats are, and there will be increasingly fewer. (As a counter-example, you will find Brits everywhere.) This will harm the country and its integration into the rest of the world (economically, politically etc).

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24135021

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/fatca-hurts...

http://fatca.hsbc.com/

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#140

Post by protomyth » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #138

protomyth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't about privacy, it was just buying a truck. I never said it was about privacy. Hell, the DMV knew about the truck about 40 minutes after he bought it. The seller reported it as income[1]. This had nothing to do with privacy or fraud, and his bank wouldn't let him write checks for over $5,000 and he sure wasn't going to pay some fee for a certified check that the guy selling the truck wasn't going to take any…

I'm kind of surprised that the bank had that much cash on hand. I've known people that saved up enough to pay off their mortgages (less money than you were talking about), when they went to withdraw the cash from their savings to take to the bank that held the mortgage, the first bank was down to giving them 20s.

Deal with a lot of farmers and your bank has reason to keep a bit of cash on hand. 15k really isn't that much to them. They did count it twice (unwrapped the paper around the groups of bills).