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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

#341

Post by tn13 »

honua wrote: post #318
tn13 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If State Sen. Loveless's statement is accurate 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 s…

> 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.

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

#342

Post by knowaveragejoe »

cmdrfred wrote: post #181
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…

Last revolution was the civil war. The people at the top forgot what the people at the bottom are capable of.

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.

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

#343

Post by colinbartlett »

unimpressive wrote: post #296
adventured wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Officer involved shooting"

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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...

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

#344

Post by facetube »

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.

How do you propose to detect when the reason is fabricated? Legal systems need to be able to detect insider attacks on themselves.

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

#345

Post by MertsA »

awqrre wrote: post #200

They figured that if they can steal your cash without any consequences that they should go further, wow. What will it be next, your home?

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-hous...

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

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

#346

Post by mangeletti »

molecule wrote: post #58
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…

He's referring to plain-old civil asset forfeiture.

Edit: After feedback, I deleted my snarky comment, which I wrote based on misunderstanding the use of "plain-old".

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

#347

Post by adrr »

downandout wrote: post #313

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 balanc…

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.

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

#348

Post by xenadu02 »

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"?

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.

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

#349

Post by toomuchtodo »

joe_the_user wrote: post #70
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.

From your link: "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…

I wonder if it would help to only have cards with pin and chip, and wipe your magnetic stripe.

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

#350

Post by downandout »

adrr wrote: post #347
downandout wrote: post #313

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 balanc…

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.
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