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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

#71
post #60
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend that every judge, politician and law enforcement officer who's ever signed off on this idea is involved in a criminal conspiracy, in every colloquial sense of the term. The whole idea would moot the fourth amendment.

The whole of youth protection services and law enforcement for an entire state got caught running such a racket, imprisoning kids for money from the state, with the judges receiving kickbacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal Needless to say, although the criminal records for these kids got expunged (after 15 years, WAY too late and didn't mean anything anymore, and already had caused maximum damag…

Let me remind you that the judge in that scandal is a free man thanks to the President of the United States.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#72
post #52
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've listened to a series of podcasts (More Perfect) where it became clear to me that in the US to get lawsuits go all the way to the Supreme Court, you need both a case (de jure) and a plaintiff that is marketable. This is not a diss on Linda Martin. Going forward with this case in a attempt to get civil forfeiture more constrained after getting your money back is heroic. Just saying that the US legal system needs h…

Yes. And it's been this way for a long time. Rosa Parks was not the first to refuse to move to the back of the bus. She was, however, more suitable for the lawsuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks#Refusal_to_move Plessy's "violation" of the despicable Separate Car Act was staged, with the conductor and private detective part fully aware of the planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Plessy points out t…

Your historical examples are absolutely fantastic!

A more fictionalized dramatization might be season 4 episode 9 of _The Good Wife_ trying to get a DOMA test case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Wife_season_4) which focuses on the need to lose at the initial trial because SCOTUS is part of the appellate court system. (And, of course, you probably need to lose at state-level appeals as well.)

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#73
post #3

Civil 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?).

[deleted]

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#74

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a sort of bank or a financial system where money couldn’t be moved without the owner’s explicit permission? Like, at all. Perhaps the rules could be enforced with code, and with digital signatures required for any ledger changes. Would be nice if it were globally distributed in a p2p fashion with no government having a say. If only such a system existed.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit. Legally, of course. But there is such a thing as an artificially low speed limit. If the road conditions allow driving in safety at 60 km/h but a town installs a sign that says that you have to drive at 10 km/h, with no pedestrian traffic or bends or anything at all that could…

So I see people saying this all the time, but they forget one crucial factor - noise. Roads next to houses have lower speed limit not just because of people on the road or sharp turns, but because cars driving faster generate more noise(exponentially more noise in fact).

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#77
post #13

The 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?

> How are these agents free from criminal charges?

Because they investigate themselves?

I remember reading an article where they showed up with money counting machines and evidence techs to process the loot.

They 100% knew what they were doing and thought there would be no repercussions because only criminals "hide" assets in private vaults.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#78
post #45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who would enforce federal laws if there were no federal law enforcement agencies?

The states?

  In the early days of the U.S., the first federal criminal code, the Crimes Act of 1790, enumerated 23 federal offenses and established punishments for each.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#79
post #54
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well there was that Tea Party movement. But the reality is that America is addicted to spending more money than comes in.

The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a unilateral push.)

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#80

>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.

We're also supposed to trust the secret FISA courts are honest and self policing.
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