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
#2 About two years post-seizure, the bureau returned Martin's money—shortly after she filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit. But while the bureau may have hoped that would persuade her to drop it, she has continued with her suit, which was back in court last week and seeks a ruling that will prevent the FBI from proceeding with others as it did with her.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#3Civil 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?).
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#4>The warrant, which agents misled a judge to obtain,
A huge fraction of FBI missteps that make the news involve this fact pattern but it's never actually what causes the misstep to blow up and make the news. You don't need to know statistics to know what this implies about the prevalence of said fact pattern.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#5Civil 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?).
Fines and seizures that skirt the protections afforded to defendants in criminal cases by being penalties for civil infractions are legalized theft.
Civil asset forfeiture is a blatant violation of the 4th so depending on how exactly the seizure went down the laws of the jurisdiction it's larceny, robbery, armed robbery, etc.
But people give the government too much benefit of the doubt hence the discussion being anchored around "legal theft".
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#6Seizures 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 maybe there is some institutional incentive there.
I would argue that breaking the incentive is the best way to stop this,as opposed to fighting the detail of seizure justification (although the concept of 'criminal property' without charging the owner should be limited too)
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#7The whole concept makes no sense at all. Sickening.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#8Seizures 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 mansions, etc but that requires making it socially unacceptable to support the status quo which means shunning those that do (i.e. basically what happened with racism in the 60s and homosexuality in the 00s) which is hard.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#9The 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.
Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why
#10Seizures 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…
If the last few years should have showed anything it's how little the elected officials typically care about balancing, let alone create excess, budget.