Civil asset forfeiture needs to go.
The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
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Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#12Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but m…
General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their…
Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement.
On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#13The warrant explicitly limited the search and forbade a search of the deposit boxes. They not only ignored that but seized items in boxes they were specifically told not to search. How are these agents free from criminal charges?
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#14For better or worse, that old case ( yes, it is a 4 year old case ) made circles in finance, banking and aml communities. At the time, I did not hear much of a 'it has gone far enough'. Quite the contrary, if you are listening to what is happening in that realm, you have to look no further than US bank ( only singling them out, because they quite openly say it ) and their push towards greater 'information sharing' and 'partnerships'. It is not getting better.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#15Civil asset forfeiture is legalized theft. Worse, it should be slam-dunk unconstitutional (unreasonable search and seizure, due process) but thus far courts have done what they do most of the time: sided with law enforcement. The legal justification is so laughably bogus too ("the money has no rights"... yeah but who does that money belong to?).
The USA is post-Constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that permits the government to create the FBI and therefore the 10th should apply. As the FBI does exist, along with all of the other alphabet soup agencies, we can see that the Constitution no longer truly holds power.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their…
Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement. On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement. On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change.
Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their…
Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement. On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
I'm not sure that violating a speed limit going abruptly from 100 to 10, with the sign hidden behind a bush, and without any apparent reason for the limit to be changed is anything else than a scheme to collect money.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change. Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.
I've also never personally been to NYC or Antartica, thus neither of these places really exists.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#20The problem here is nobody will be fired and no one will go to jail for this. It’s like the government is suing itself and paying its own fine to itself. For cases like this a corporation or government body should not be allowed to be an abstraction. The right thing to do is not go after corporations but individuals. It’s unfortunate we don’t do this and I think we should.
You've hit the nail on the head. A huge number of the problems in society today stem from how acting for a government or corporation allows people to get away with doing bad things that they'd be punished for it acting as an individual.