Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

aggie wrote: post #286

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #74

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 peopl…

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 cha…

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.

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

#292

Post by 20after4 » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #275

konradb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

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

#293

Post by int_19h » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

konradb wrote: post #36

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?

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.

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

#294

Post by barsonme » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #275

konradb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

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.

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

#295

Post by tremon » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

singlow wrote: post #285

DarkLinkXXXX wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

From their html source: Not sure what they are intending here. But my guess is they don't either. [edit: submitted too soon by mistake]

I think they mean that case-sensitive crawlers are disallowed, and they reserve the right to arbitrarily sue case-insensitive crawlers under the CFAA.

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

#296

Post by unimpressive » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #169

Pwntastic wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is literally highway robbery, as it is the highway patrol pulling you over and stealing your money.

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 b…

In a similar vein, I liked the suggestion that we should start calling "Parallel Reconstruction" evidence laundering.

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

#297

Post by rrggrr » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

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.

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

#298

Post by tajen » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

facetube wrote: post #220

50CNT wrote: post #32

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 l…

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 li…

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.

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

#299

Post by jdavis703 » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

Digit-Al wrote: post #255

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 witho…

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.

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

#300

Post by funkymike » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

vitd wrote: post #193

cglace wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is wrong. 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…

> 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?

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.