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Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

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Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#31

Post by viggity »

jobu wrote: post #17
molecule wrote: post #6

> 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.

Agreed: "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".

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#32

Post by 50CNT »

That is physically revolting.

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?

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#34

Post by maxaf »

jrowley wrote: post #22
maxaf wrote: post #14

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 l…

What incentives do the banks have to fight on behalf of their customers?

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.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#36

Post by konradb »

wccrawford wrote: post #16

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"?

> If you can prove can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money

Exactly, why is it not incumbent upon them to prove that you have gained that money through illegitimate means?

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#37

Post by lost_name »

jmuguy wrote: post #20

I think part of this is just shoddy reporting from a local news source, I believe this is tech they're talking about. https://www.erad-group.com/fci While the implications here are certainly pretty creepy, this seems more like something to use in investigations of money laundering, etc.

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.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#38

Post by superuser2 »

PhrosTT wrote: post #9

What the fuck is happening to this country?

People want large, busybody police departments and they don't want to pay the taxes that entails.

Police departments found a way to fund themselves without pissing off anyone who matters politically.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#39

Post by protomyth »

linkregister wrote: post #24

From the article: 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 whe…

Looks, like it might be a bit problematic or something deeper given his wife's arrest http://kfor.com/2015/10/07/oklahoma-senators-wife-arrested-c...

Not from OK, so I get the feeling this affects things, but not sure how.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#40

Post by Dwolb »

jmuguy wrote: post #20

I think part of this is just shoddy reporting from a local news source, I believe this is tech they're talking about. https://www.erad-group.com/fci While the implications here are certainly pretty creepy, this seems more like something to use in investigations of money laundering, etc.

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.

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