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DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#52The easy solution to this (from the perspective of the criminal) is to just move the money via a cryptocurrency (traded for cash privately) and it seems completely idiotic to me that this hasn't occurred yet, there is basically zero risk of LE compromise. I'm also rather surprised that I'm the first person to even mention it here, since this is basically a solved problem.
Is it that easy to trade $50,000 of a cryptocurrency for regular currency without leaving an ugly papertrail? I guess theoretically you can have a clean accomplice that does it for you on the regulated exchanges and hands you the cash, but I'm not sure how well that works for evading LE.
Well, you can do that, or you can try to establish a complete shadow economy on the blockchain, where both buyers and sellers use the crypto as a currency, and it only gets exchanged for cold hard (more troublesome) cash at the "leaves" which are ostensibly much smaller and more invisible amounts
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#53So, anybody discussing decriminalizing drugs and proposing they are a medical issue instead can count on the fact that he/she is threatening the livelihood of both the dealers and the "enforcement" agency??? (and be appropriately wary)
Throw in police unions, the private prison industry, the surveillance industry, criminal lawyers, ...
And the criminals. It's much less profitable if you pay taxes and can't kill your competition.
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#54There is no world where this practice could pass constitutional review. What they are doing is called out as unconstitutional in no less than three (!!!) different amendments. At this point in time, the supreme court should be buckling under the weight of requests to review this practice, and have it struck down as un-American. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons , houses, papers, and effects again…
> There is no world where this practice could pass constitutional review. And yet, civil asset forfeiture has been sanctioned by SCotUS. If we're ever going to change this kind of crap, indignation and, "But, but, but ... nuh-uh!" are not the places to start.
The language of the constitution is pretty clear. So what this says to me is that the Supreme Court is not enforcing the constitution.
While these thefts are disturbing, this lack of accountability from the Supreme Court will ultimately lead to much worse crimes.
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#55The tighter their grip, the more value will slip thru their fingers into bitcoin.
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#56Note that the DEA is probably, in some cases, using information obtained by the NSA and shared with the DEA. See also: parallel construction, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/paral... The war on drugs has wreaked havoc on our country by providing huge incentives for the criminally-minded to act as they do. And yes, I'm referring to all of the criminals involved.
The brilliant thing (For them) about this is they don't need the hassle of parallel construction if they're not building a case-- they can just use the NSA information to steal the money, and then never file charges, and thus never have to justify to a court how they acquired the knowledge that the money would be there.
The NSA gets a cut, I'm sure.
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#57Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the money certainly was, perhaps even most. It is, however a grave injustice when money that is totally legitimate gets seized from innocent people, and some of the people mentioned in the article had strong evidence for their money being from legitimate sources. The fundamental problem is that the standard of proof required is much lower than in criminal law. The legislative remedy some states have started t…
I'd argue the fundamental problem is that 'civil forfeiture' is 'guilty until proven innocent', an inversion of the way the rule of law is meant to work. Requiring charges is a very small step in the right direction. I suspect what will happen is that people with money will now be charged for small, ridiculous offences, misdemeanours, as a way for law enforcement to skirt the law. A real improvement is to seize, hold…
I think the greater injustice is that it requires the person whose assets were seized to prove a negative.
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no world where this practice could pass constitutional review. And yet, civil asset forfeiture has been sanctioned by SCotUS. If we're ever going to change this kind of crap, indignation and, "But, but, but ... nuh-uh!" are not the places to start.
The language of the constitution is pretty clear. So what this says to me is that the Supreme Court is not enforcing the constitution. While these thefts are disturbing, this lack of accountability from the Supreme Court will ultimately lead to much worse crimes.
The problem for you is that the supreme court has the final say on what the constitution means.
So for you to say "Supreme Court is not enforcing the constitution" doesn't make a lot of sense. They get to say what it means, so they are "enforcing" the constitution almost by definition. (this is probably not a great word to use since they rely on other branches, like the executive, to enforce things. They can order stuff to happen, but they have no way to actually make it happen themselves).
You may mean "I don't like the interpretation they've given or i think it's wrong". That's okay too, what you do in that case is very simple: Congress passes a law to overrule the supreme court, or the country pass an amendment to do it. This has happened numerous times before.
They are in fact, 100% accountable in this regard. They take responsibility for their decisions, and pretty much everything from their ability to hear certain cases to almost every ruling can be overruled by either new laws or amendments.
They happily let that happen, and that is the form of review and accountability you get in our system of government :)
Re: DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash
#60Note that the DEA is probably, in some cases, using information obtained by the NSA and shared with the DEA. See also: parallel construction, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/paral... The war on drugs has wreaked havoc on our country by providing huge incentives for the criminally-minded to act as they do. And yes, I'm referring to all of the criminals involved.
The brilliant thing (For them) about this is they don't need the hassle of parallel construction if they're not building a case-- they can just use the NSA information to steal the money, and then never file charges, and thus never have to justify to a court how they acquired the knowledge that the money would be there. The NSA gets a cut, I'm sure.
The NSA doesn't need the paper-trail of a cut, and at any rate the cut would be small potatoes to them.