Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards
news9.com
news9.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/06/08/...
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 balances from open loop prepaid debit cards. Debit cards attached to a valid checking account or valid credit cards cannot be processed using the ERAD-Intel™ or ERAD-Recovery™ system.
Law enforcement already depends heavily upon lower income neighborhoods to justify their existence, and upon criminal convictions of poor people that can't defend themselves to keep up demand for prison and jail guards. Now they want to take the money of those they can't arrest, knowing that their targets cannot afford to hire lawyers to get it back.
Some states have enacted laws (Illinois is one I believe) that prohibits employers using these cards if the employee does not wish to use one.
Employers use these cards because the debit card providers are willing to take on the cost of payroll for the privilege of gouging the employees in fees.
> Yet these cards are what is being targeted, because only the poor use them.
Same reason as this:
>Employers use these cards because the debit card providers are willing to take on the cost of payroll for the privilege of gouging the employees in fees.
The poor do not have the ability to fight back, and their employers have the resources to make sure the gov't does not shut these things down and require proper paychecks. Never underestimate the rich's ability to exploit the poor.
Most ATMs charge a fee to check balance, and a separate fee to withdraw money as cash. These cards do usually have a free phone number you can call to check balance, but you almost always have to pay a fee for withdrawal. And if you have, say, $19 on the card, it's effectively impossible to get that out as cash, because no ATM lets you withdraw in less than $20 increments.
Also, most blue-collar and minimum wage jobs use prepaid cards. At least companies like McDonald's as well as various factory jobs do. For McDonald's, according to friends at least, there is no option for anything else. Even if you have a bank account, you can't do direct deposit, you still get a prepaid debit card that your paycheck goes to.
"Sheriff's Deputy Ron Hain improperly detained Marsh after issuing him a warning and continued questioning him when he should have been free to leave, Barsanti ruled. The questioning led to Marsh's admission he was carrying a gun, which prompted further searches of his truck, phones, GPS and eventually the storage lockers."
"The discovery was made by exploiting the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights," Barsanti said. "He was illegally detained in a second seizure without cause." [1]
"Seized over 4,000 lbs of cannabis, over 50 kilograms of cocaine, over 50 kilograms of heroin, and over $1,000,000 of drug-related currency." [2]
1 https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20160406/news/160409204/
Desert Snow created civil forfeiture training seminars for law enforcement. Black Asphalt is a system "that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop."
Now, he's stealing debit cards. This guy is quite the civil forfeiture innovator.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st...
Prescription Drugs: 2 Alcohol: 3 Heroin: 0 Methamphetamine: 0 Cannabis: 0
Two people I know. Their brothers both died from Oxycontin(tm). Specifically pulmonary talcosis. You get pulmonary talcosis from the talc government made the manufacturer add specifically to kill junkies.
Just because you don't know anyone that heroin has killed, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
They all actually started off by abusing prescription opiates, but moved to heroin after they ran out of money.
However, my area is known for being a heroin hot spot. I live in a decent middle class town about 15 minutes away from Camden, NJ. My high school was known as "heroin high".
The problem with heroin is that there's very poor quality control. Overdoses seem to occur under one of the two following circumstances:
1. The person just gets released from rehab and relapses. Their tolerance isn't what it used to be, so their body gets shocked.
2. There's a sudden spike in the strength of the heroin that is "going around". The person may be used to a certain strength, so the more powerful batch can be enough to send them over the edge.
Just figured I'd add my own personal data points since it seemed like you were trying to deemphasize the danger of heroin by pointing out that you don't know anyone who died from it. Maybe, that wasn't your intention, so forgive me if so.
It was an absolutely astonishing time. Camden literally felt like it had just been through a war: desolate buildings, so many people homeless on the streets, people desperate for food. It's hard to describe just how bad this city was.
I can't diagnose all the root causes behind why Camden is so messed-up, but this pastor pointed to the heroin epidemic primarily.
You know, it always stuck in my craw that so much of the heroin in the new epidemic came/comes from Afghanistan... Shades of Vietnam.
Oxycontin used to contain talc, and this came with prominent health warnings. Shooting up dissolved oxycontin pills containing talc is dangerous. See http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2008/020... ("with parenteral abuse, the [inactive ingredients], especially talc, can be expected to result in [many bad things]").
As of some time in 2014, oxycontin no longer contains talc -- it has been replaced by magnesium stearate. However, that health warning that parenteral abuse causes many bad things has not been altered except to remove the phrase "especially talc". Pulmonary granulomas are still specifically called out as something bad that will happen to you if you inject oxycontin. See the current usage information at http://app.purduepharma.com/xmlpublishing/pi.aspx?id=o .
SPECULATIVELY: this means that while talc is no longer present, oxycontin might still contain legally-mandated adulteration. I found no evidence for a legal mandate, but this was not a comprehensive investigation.
It has long been the explicit policy of the United States that people who abuse otherwise legal chemicals deserve to be poisoned to death, and we have had and do have laws to this effect. See http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... .
It's that last point that makes me hesitate to slam your parent comment for fearmongering.
The added pain reduction effect of acetaminophen stands in no relation to what the opioid is doing. There's no research anywhere showing that the combined effect is any more than the literal addition of taking both (for which there would be no reason if you could just as easily take a tiny bit more of the opioid that you'd be taking any way).
All it does is take away an addict's choice not to wreck their liver. And the system encourages the availability of this unnecessarily dangerous substance by awarding it a less restrictive drug schedule.
The incentives are rather twisted in this particular case.
edit
> but it certainly has near term implications for severe abuse.
the implications being death and permanent liver damage (it's not actually stopping addicts). but looking only at the numbers, it seems to limit abuse, even in the near term. ugh.
edit 2 seeing some of the other comments, apparently it's not just this particular case. I only knew about this one
That ERAD won't be of any use in Austin or Englewood at 2am...
so the poor get fucked two ways:
1) these prepaid debit cards have a lot of fees and service charges associated with them, they're basically in the same financial category for the "unbanked" as predatory payday loans, check cashing places and other financial services retail operations you see in a ghetto.
2) the people who have these cards with some balance on them risk getting all their money jacked by the local police.
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 where the money goes and how it's been
misspent," Loveless said.
So what would this device look like? Is it performing ACH or wire transfer transactions? Or is this just sending card information to the company, which then automates the state government's garnishment process?
I'll be interested to get the full story when details are available.
I'm glad there's some pushback from the state legislature!
Not from OK, so I get the feeling this affects things, but not sure how.
When you start a comment with "well off white guy", you are indicating the person is a racist since they are ignoring problems of their fellow humans because of the person's race. If you substitute any other race in that statement, people would find it to be an accusation of racism. I suppose there is another interpretation of that line, but I am trying very hard to be charitable to posters (I do fail quite a bit).
pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate
from the article: ''It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.''
I would submit his current problem is not long standing since it started last month. Also, we do not know his history of speaking out about civil forfeiture. Why, the incident with his wife could have been a "shutup" warning from the police. I said I provided a piece of data, and I have not really had time to look at the context.
As to the second half, pointing out some issue is racial and the participant only started noticing because of their race is informing your reader that you believe that person to be racist.
it is calling attention to racism
Which implies that a belief that someone is being racist. Thus calling him a racist as he is the only protagonist mentioned.
You know, I grew up in the grey between two different groups, and I sometime wish I could have been raised in a suburb or had a little more blood to qualify as the other group. Being able to say "I am..." in a clear voice is an amazing powerful thing. I've gotten to see what absolute shits groups going too far can be on each other when one believes they can say and do things with minimum risk. Assumptions about people based on their race are just wrong. Judge a person by their word and deed with a kind eye and hopeful heart. I fail at this quite a lot, but I think I'm ok with what I wrote.
// as a side note, I love hnreplies and if I had cash I would suggest adding a blackout time feature
If someone (not a minority) is ill-informed about an issue that disproportionately affects minorities, to the point that they believe the issue is not so serious, and only when personally confronted with the effects do they take on a more fully-informed opinion and speak out about the injustice of it, I don't think you necessarily have to consider that person a racist, even if you think their behavior is a result of bias. And, while dsfyu404ed certainly expressed frustration with this state of affairs (as I believe anyone should), that still does not rise to the level of actually calling a person a racist. This need not apply only to race - it can also be rich people not caring about poor people problems, or men not caring about womens' issues, and so on.
For another example look at the opioid epidemic in the US now, compared to crack hysteria in the 80s. Suddenly drug addicts are victims of circumstance, unfairly targeted by unjust or antiquated laws, it's the drug companies' fault for pushing these treatments to doctors, etc. etc. Whereas in the 80s crack dealers were going to infiltrate your nice suburban community and turn your daughters into whores and your sons into foot soldiers in their gang wars, or whatever the hell. And it just so happens that the opioid epidemic is particularly bad among white communities now. However, that doesn't mean that everyone who is concerned about the opioid epidemic now, yet took a different view of the crack epidemic back in the day, is necessarily a racist in the usual sense. It could be they are ignorant of their bias, and lack introspection.
This is a pointless charade that fools nobody.
At any rate, he did not call him a racist. That's not really up for discussion since the text is right there.
Isn't the basic problem how much money the US government has spent improving the supply of heroin from Afghanistan after the taliban completely destroyed it during their 2001 rise to power.
Note: I am from Denmark and maybe I have a different perspective, even though racism is a problem here as well, but maybe in a different way. I was having an internal debate with myself about whether to jump in on this conversation just because it is a topic that can cause a lot of controversy. But I decided that self censorship, is a bad thing for society as a whole in the long run.
Asset forfeiture has been controversial since it started being used much more frequently in the 1980s. I really doubt most of the people commenting on it here first heard of it on John Oliver's show.
Furthermore, the use of "plain-old" was a way of indicating that this is a new method but an old process; eg, it's not legally any different from normal asset seizure.
Finally, and most importantly, I don't see any bias or why you even call it that.
Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.
If they're so inclined they can take your things by force and you will have no reasonable means of recourse.
It's like being charged solely with resisting arrest.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-fer...
The truth of the matter is that people are barely evolved ape/chimps and do pretty much whatever suites them as long as they don't get their ass kicked for it.
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 some poor old cancer patient who is unlikely to resist or cry.
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!
Some of us think there are people with power we need to impress and then there are people without power we can take from them whatever we want.
Some of us think we are all human beings and everyone deserves to be a part of society, to be seen as human beings with human wants, needs and human emotions, even when they do things that harm other people. And whether they even do that, is not for us to judge.
The first group needed people who were willing to take things from the bad guys, and picked the second group as police and prosecutors.
That's how we're in this situation today.
Your child ask you if they can go to your donald-trump-loving-women-should-stay-in-kitchen neighbour's house to play with friends. Do you:
1. Change your child's school so they don't mix with the 'wrong sort'. You're afraid what your social circle think if your children mix with children of people like that.
2. Your neighbours are racists and sexists. Petition their kids to be kicked out from your kids' school. They don't deserve an education.
3. Let your child go play with them, then if your child has a positive experience, let him go again next time. If not, protect the child from the consequences of not going next time.
(Edited to change "marijuana" to "medical-marijuana".)
That's a ridiculous statement. My church (both as an organization and the people in it) gives tons of money to single moms for everything from subsistence to fully paid Disneyland vacations. We run a volunteer group that does things like yard work, handyman work, and moving for single moms. The most visible charity outside a church in my city is for single moms. There are single moms who work in important positions at my church. The bible specifically points out on many occasions that those who follow Christ should show love and compassion to people such as single moms as Christ would.
Prosecutors are valued by the number of wins, not by how many innocent people are spared the gauntlet of the American justice system.
Prisons (especially private prisons) are rewarded for high recidivism rates, instead of being punished for wasting taxpayer money on an expensive and brutal daycare.
If the state does badly enough it can get sued. So the taxpayers foot the bill while the offenders are free to do as they do.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: prevent this kind of garbage from happing without consequence by mandating docked wages/pension benefits to pay for all or part of lawsuit damages. Change the incentives and people will change themselves.
Seems like all that would happen is new channels of revenue would be found that didn't have the blowback you're suggesting.
Step 1) End all police unions. There desperately needs to be a federal law prohibiting the formation of any police union anywhere in the United States. (we'll add this to the list of things that will never happen)
Over the last few decades the American people have been conned into this idea that government is fundamentally too big and needs to be shrunk because of reasons. People save a few measly percentage points on taxes that help pay for the axle damage on their car after being driven over roads that are no longer repaired.
Municipalities had to find ways to recoup costs from slashed state and federal budgets, which is why there is such a big problem in poor, mostly black American cities, as people are pulled over and fined up the ass for every possible infraction just so the city can afford itself.
This kind of crap has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with fiscal irresponsibility.
[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/06/05/c...
When was the last time you saw any gov't budget go down? I'd say never.
The gov't has more than enough money. The problem is where and how they spend it.
So no, not "never."
European countries tend to tax more at a county or even national level, which makes the distribution of resources much, much more reasonable.
It also doesn't help that the public defender system in the States is a fucking joke. So don't do that, either.
I don't actually know any individuals in the US that believe this - the problem is that our government is so far out of our reach these days we can't effect significant change by simply voting for one of the two similar parties.
I'm glad you don't know anyone like this, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Not to say there can't be reasonable steps to move the needle toward accountability. Lowering the bar for perjury charges would be a good first step.
It should be no coincidence that literal highway robbery is being sanctioned in a state as allergic to good government and logical tax rates as Oklahoma.
You have a good point about personal liability and quality of service, and that's why any proposal of mine should should have very limited conditions, like unlawful civil asset forfeiture.
I'm less certain. It seems to me that this will only push the incentive further up the chain, such that the system refuses to ever find wrongdoing or even allow lawsuits to go forward.
A simpler and more elegant solution is to simply remove "criminal justice" as being part of the responsibility of the state. In my estimation, this will come at no cost whatsoever to safety, while also increasing quality of life for most people.
>"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"?
Exactly, why is it not incumbent upon them to prove that you have gained that money through illegitimate means?
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.
That's not what's being described here.
Yes. The money may be held in escrow pending the trial, but appropration by police is unjust -- and should be illegal if the person is not charged and arrested.
Edit: all of this is off-topic, as the bank can be proven the owner and the police would not keep the money.
Asset forfeiture is, and always has been, subject to judicial oversight.
There are, in fact, well established and relatively simple procedures for contesting civil forfeiture. There is a fair argument to be made that they sometimes don't work as well as they should but when you say that there is "NO judicial oversight" at all you are just just flat out wrong. You need to update your worldview if you want it to conform to reality.
If it turns out the guy running away from the bank just likes jogging with a bag of money the police should return his money and whatever else _immediately_ after the person is released.
How about "police should not take property where no crime is known to have been committed"
(Edited to add: I just realized they didn't actually get their money back. They got a check. Yep. You can generally cash those for free if you have a bank account.)
Imagine the situation of someone whose circumstances are less clear, or who can't otherwise afford to stay in one place and fight the seizure for however long it actually takes.
What happens to the person who just had all of their money taken away?
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/months-after-53-00...
If I open a civil proceeding against you, I can try to prove that you owe me $5k and if I prove that to the appropriate standard you can be compelled to provide me with $5k. I can't hack your bank account, withdraw $5k, and then open a civil proceeding to retroactively legitimize my robbery.
The whole system is a massive violation of due process, no matter what legalese you try to use to justify it. If you're allowed to take people's property and then retroactively sue them if they complain, what is even the point of having the Fifth Amendment?
Despicable, and akin to highway robbery in my opinion.
No one and nothing is charged with a crime in civil asset forfeiture.
The currency is defined as the defendant in the case.
I have come to believe this since I've met some incredibly brilliant PhD's, but I've also met some incredibly dumb PhD's.
I've met some PhDs who would run rings around anyone in their niche, but would be (metaphorically) unable to tie their shoelaces by themselves.
So the law was pushed through. Then some day cops realized they can apply this law for fun and profit. And so they have been.
There's no way I'd carry a bank card in OK.
It wouldn't be the first time a news article was wrong, though it'd be nice to know for sure.
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 begin calling it robbery by police or the equivalent, and stop referring to it as civil asset forfeiture in public forums (that's only useful in a technical/legal regard).
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/...
I'm not just being pedantic, this is part of why it's so incredibly fucked. They have, no exaggeration, taken a portion of the criminal legal system with all the constraints and due process requirements there, excised it with a legislative scalpel and grafted it back on to the civil system.
I honestly to this day don't understand why government is allowed any access at all to the civil system as a plaintiff, at least not beyond the local level.
Oh wait, yes I do understand: It's specifically to fuck the people over.
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.
"What states does ERAD currently have contracts with? With what states does ERAD anticipate contracts to be signed in the next 180 days, and for all of these states, what percentages will ERAD be earning on funds seized?"
I'm in touch with the news station that has the contract, so I should be able to get it without an additional FOIA request. Once I have that, I'll recurse further if necessary.
1) ERAD training materials disseminated to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
2) Correspondence between those LEAs and DHS, or occurring in DHS forums, regarding ERAD technology.
3) DHS reports, studies or memoranda mentioning ERAD usage in the field by DHS or any other agency.
I figure DHS Science & Technology Directorate might not be the right target. Should I just aim at DHS directly, or is there a specific group that would handle those connections between DHS and other law enforcement?
Should I structure this as three separate requests?
Also, I noticed that site:www.erad-group.com doesn't return anything on google, but it does on other search engines. Did ERAD request that it be removed from search results? Why would they do that? Why would they also not have a robots.txt if that is the case?
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="INDEX, NOFOLLOW" />
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" />
[edit: submitted too soon by mistake]
And if the courts decided that the asset forfeiture was incorrect and reimburse the person it was stolen from—does the scanner maker still keep their cut? Or are they still due their cut?
This is probably why it is incredibly difficult to dispute it and the police will put up every roadblock to stop you.
Particularly egregious is Lt. Vincent's take:
>"If you can prove can[sic] prove[sic] 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.
Given the low-threshold for seizure and how we've seen civil-asset forfeiture exercised by law enforcement, that's terrifying.
"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 where the money goes and how it's been misspent," Loveless said.
It boggles the mind that this doesn't violate due process.
Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law. How we got to a point where things can be taken from someone who is not convicted of a crime is beyond belief.
It doesn't take place within criminal law.
(There is also "criminal asset forfeiture", which is a different beast, and takes place within normal criminal process against a particular criminal defendant: that is a part of criminal law, and its a lot less controversial than civil asset forfeiture.)
Also, if they're confiscating assets, why not confiscate the car? Why just the cash/cards?
How do we get this absurd law overturned? What's the minimum required? Supreme court decision?
"You have a bunch of money on your ATM card. You can potentially go to an ATM take out cash, then get drugs. Now, I need to seize all your money to ensure you can't buy those illegal drugs that may or may not exist."
But the likes of United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency is obviously more dangerous than either of those:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...
And the list of cases here is hilarious as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction
like United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness, or United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, United States v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, or Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, or R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel, R.M.S. Titanic ...
Apparently, property doesn't really belong to us.
Corporations are also people, so you can't really have one of those either.
Shouldn't this just be "Citizens robbed by police".
In India at least they have the decency to say "Do you have a gift for me?" so you know what's happening.
My dad would pretend to be hard of hearing and deliberately misunderstand ad nauseum until waved on his way, this would happen about once a month while going about his lawful business.
He even gatecrashed a police function and got himself a picture shaking hands with the Chief of Police. He kept the photo in the vehicle so he could produce it and attempt to start up a conversation as though they were great friends.
This is a country where the guards of the police armoury were bribed with $5 to allow weapons to be removed.
Of course all of these forfeitures stink of illegality, regardless of the victim. Forth Amendment? Never heard of it, apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-ins...
http://oklahomawatch.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2016/06/E...
Highlights:
* ERAD is taking 7.7% of all funds seized.
* Anywhere between 9.95 and 14.95 per each virtual terminal used to scan for the funds.
* $1000-ish per physical terminal used.
> In addition to presenting the value associated with a card, the terminal will read other card types such as credit and debit cards. While no value can be provided, the terminal will display a “card not supported” message to alert the trooper that this is not a prepaid card. The trooper can then compare the four digits displayed on the terminal with the last four digits shown on the face of the card to determine if the card has been cloned. If the last four digits on the face of the card do not match the four digits displayed on the terminal, the trooper should note the discrepancy and pursue further action in the investigation.
I'm not really sure why they compare the last 4 digits to detect a clone, that seems wrong to me. But in any case, that strongly implies that they can't seize from debit cards linked to bank accounts. They can only seize from prepaid cards.
It catches lazy counterfeiting. Stamp a whole bunch of cards with the same number and info, while the magstripe is what gets read and is the real account you're stealing from, the theory being that no-one really cares about the number printed on the card.
Some retailers do this too, ask or enter the last four of the card to make sure the imprint matches the magstripe, as if they don't it's most likely a cloned card.
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 legitimate reasons). And now they can seize that too?
That's not ripe for abuse, that's designed for abuse.
As a non-American, what's wrong with your country?
That isn't true now anyway?
I don't advocate for anything, all I know is if the current trend continues, like every other free society that has gone down this same road, It will end very badly and then will improve for a generation or so.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
That's, of course, humoring the notion that this is in the cards in the developed world. If you step out of the echochambers on the Internet and interact with people in reality, you begin to see that things aren't nearly as bad as the curated outrage porn would lead you to believe.
That depends how you define "revolution" (if you set the right scale cut-off, it was the last armed revolt meeting the cutoff, but not all "revolutions" are "armed revolts" and vice versa; particularly, for the latter, "revolution" often implies success, not merely an attempt, at replacing the aspects of the status quo ante against which the putative revolution is aligned, which those revolting in the Civil War spectacularly failed to do.)
One could argue that some or all of the suffrage movement, temperance movement, and civil rights movement (and maybe others) were "revolutions" that are more recent -- and more successful (if only in the short-term, in the second case) -- than the Civil War, though none of them were primarily armed revolts.
I'm profoundly disillusioned, and not sure where to go from here.
a pathological liar is one step away from the White House and lending legitimacy to anti-first-amendment ... groups
These complaints actually describe both major-party candidates pretty well.
Trump is only the natural leader to this army of thugs, exactly like in 1934 in Germany. Let's hope that if your country falls into that trap, there will be an even bigger country to come and save you, like you did for us in 1944.
That would be Russia, China, or Canada.
North?
Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
Any lawyers here want to weigh in on whether this would be identity theft/credit card fraud/etc on the part of the police and hence illegal? Isn't scanning/charging a card without authorization illegal?
How can charging a card help either the bank or the account owner in the case of police apprehending a carder?
The only possiblity that comes to mind is that the police empty the cardholder's account and then later return that money minus the device manufacturer's 7.7% cut?!
From what I understand the technology is for seizing money from prepaid cards. For other cards it just looks up information about the account. Thats how it helps with identity theft.
> Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards.
ERAD card scanners were first developed around 2012 for the science and technology arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat the use of prepaid debit cards by drug cartels to transport drug money, according to a Homeland Security media release.
Since then, some law enforcement agencies around the country have adopted the technology.
According to ERAD Group’s patent for the device, law enforcement can determine the balance of money in an account associated with a prepaid card that is part of branded “open loop” networks such as Visa or MasterCard or “closed loop” cards that only allow purchases at a single company, such as gift cards.
When the card is scanned by the officer to check the account balance, the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card, the patent states.
Once the card’s account balance is determined, the officer can use the device to freeze the funds, preventing withdrawal or use of the money in the account, or seize the funds by having them transferred to a law enforcement financial account, the patent states.
Although the device does not allow funds from non-prepaid cards to be frozen or seized, it can provide the officer information about those cards such as the card number, the name on the card, expiration date and the card issuer.
Wouldn't that go against the credit card (or pre-paid card) merchant agreement? And wouldn't ERAD have to have signed such an agreement in order to access the credit card network?
> One (1) VX680 GPRS Terminal w/battery, thermal printer
The VX680 is a mobile credit card terminal (http://www.verifone.com/media/413350/VX680_2_lg.jpg) made by Verifone, much like the type that restaurants use most places besides the USA. If I had to speculate, maybe they try putting varying charges/holds on the card and see when it gets rejected in order to divine the balance?
1) Police departments cannot keep anything they seize (or proceeds from its sale/liquidation). Incentives matter. If the funds need to go somewhere, they should be assigned by lottery so they're not a solution to anyone's problems. Or, perhaps have them go to the public defender's office, which is going to need them because...
2) There absolutely has to be due process here. "Civil" is a loophole-technicality if the reason for the seizure is a suspicion that the asset was involved in a crime. PDs should be provided for those who don't have their own counsel, and burden of proof should be on the state.
(I know, sending the funds to the PDs office could create a conflict of interest. A straightforward arrangement wouldn't work; there'd have to be a likely state-level layer of indirection and some stipulations incentivizing the hiring of more staff rather than inflating existing staff salaries much beyond the current exorbitant premiums PDs command. :/ )
At some point you just rely on biometrics for every transaction, it turns into an automated shakedown scheme or you just learn to avoid the state of Oklahoma.
Its simple and its fast.
To me the USA was the place where Neil Armstrong lived, it was the country that gave me so much that I was thankful for, it was a country where the words "Freedom of speech" ruled above everything. To me it was the country I wanted to be in if I had a wish.
Little by little, that idea I had of the united states is being changed, may be its my fault since I idealised the USA too much. May be its the news I read about, large scale surveillance, government officials who has no regard for civil liberties, people more powerful than the FBI, people above the law, power crazed security guards at airports etc etc.
I really really dislike this, wish I would once again get to believe that there is a place where people are treated right.
Her attitude changed in soon after the Bush administration started their wars in the middle east and the PATRIOT act was passed. When that came up in conversation one day, she suddenly got really serious and quietly said, "It's happening again." The same environment she had fled from the USSR was happening here, and it terrified her.
There was a change. The USA has always had problems, but there defiantly was a change that happened somewhat recently. I've been trying to fight it ever since, but all that has done is convince me that it's going to get a lot uglier before it any true reform is possible.
1) Does anyone know who came up with these "civil asset forfeitures"? (Personally, they seem most un-civil to me.)
2) Can any of you defend America as "the land of the free" when more of the population are in prison than in almost any other country in the word and the police not only have the power to strip you of your property and assets without even needing a solid reason, but can shoot you dead and barely get a slap on the wrist?
Not having a go at America or Americans, but it seems to me that those who truly believe it to be a land of the free are deluding themselves.
[edit: damn keyboard]
2. It's the land of the free if you're not one of the 'bad' minorities. That same moniker was used when it enslaved millions of people. The fact that they are now sitting in prison, instead of being forced to pick cotton is tangential.
The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 - which started all of this - was introduced by a Democrat and passed through a majority Democratic House.
All sides are guilty of opening this genie's bottle.
No, it wasn't. In the early US (which imported the legal concept from British maritime law) it was first used as a means to assure collection of customs duties. It expanded during prohibition, but even then was deployed primarily against domestic bootleggers, not kingpins residing in a foreign country with protection against extradition.
2) Not if they're intellectually honest about it. If one reads the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in context and in their spirit, it's hard to countenance that civil forfeiture is at all consistent with our founding principles. In fact, the practice is highly contrary to those principles.
(This is not to say that those principles have ever actually been properly applied consistently since day one of the Republic. Still, a damn good effort to do so ought be made.)
For the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, it might just be easier (to start) by just reading them directly. I have a small (12.5cm x 9cm) book that contains both documents and is only 58 pages long at that size. Read them in that order as the Declaration lays out the moral statement for why a break from the British Empire was seen as necessary by the (then) British colonists and the Constitution was the legal reflection of those ideas... reading the Federalist Papers is great for getting in the mind of the Constitution's authors and supporters.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Just a few weeks ago I watch a lecture that talked about Magna Carta and include discussion on its influence on the U.S. revolutionaries that founded the country. Just that one aspect was something that I didn't really see in many of the histories I've seen.
As a recent transplant to the US I actually like the idea of having my own copy of the declaration and constitution, for both the actual information and kind of symbolic novelty of being here.
Thanks!
EDIT: I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. If you think it is wrong at least state why it is wrong.
I've heard this before and it's complete bullshit. The constitution as originally ratified by all the colonies included the bill of rights. Sure, there were many drafts and prior versions that didn't include it, but it has been there since its release. If you use that logic, the original was a blank sheet of paper and didn't include anything.
> I've heard this before and it's complete bullshit.
Well, except for the part where its completely true.
> The constitution as originally ratified by all the colonies included the bill of rights.
No, it didn't. The Constitution, without amendments, was ratified in 1788. The 12-amendment Bill of Rights was passed by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification in 1789. Of those 12 amendments, the last 10 were ratified in 1791 and became Amendments 1-10 to the Constitution (what is popularly now known as the "Bill of Rights"), while the second was ratified in 1992 and became Amendment 27, and the first is, technically, still pending and open for ratification.
The original Constitution expressly recognized and protected slavery, true, and did not include the bill of rights, but not because it couldn't be reconciled with slavery, but because the bill of rights was crafted to address concerns raised by critics of the original Constitution; the Bill of Rights (well, the 10 amendments popularly called that now -- the package proposed had 12, one of which still isn't ratified, and one of which took a little over 200 years to be ratified) was ratified within a few years of the original Constitution, and had no problem being reconciled with slavery, which was still around until being abolished by the 13th Amendment after the Civil War.
The government needs to be reminded the people are what give it any legitimacy in the first place, and such blatant unconstitutionality needs to be prosecuted and denounced loudly and publicly.
- I don't think the number of people in prison is the best measure of whether a country is free or not. By that logic, a backwater regime which simply dealt with undesirables via extrajudicial shootings would be more "free."
- Likewise, the notion that police can "shoot you dead and barely get a slap on the wrist" is quite hyperbolic. Yes, there are plenty of cases of police brutality and we need a better system for prosecuting police murders (ideally an independent prosecutorial office which only prosecuted police). But I'm no more afraid of getting shot by the police than I am of dying in any other unlikely way (terrorist attack, random serial killer, etc.).
- We do still have some rights which are freer than anywhere else. Free speech, for example, enjoys much better protection in the US. Trying to prosecute someone for insulting a foreign leader would get laughed out of court here, but apparently it's a crime in Germany. Our secret police are marginally less brazen than GCHQ. The prospect of a national firewall/blacklist is a lot more distant here.
You may be unafraid, but there is an order of magnitude difference between your examples. Serial killers murder about 150 people per year, terrorist attacks killed 19 in 2015. Cops killed 1146 people.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...
"Bad cops" have committed acts which are illegal; where were illegal acts committed in the story?
Even if organizationally there wasn't a tendency to protect the organization, this would not end the issue.
Blacklisting someone without due process is not the same thing as refusing to produce a drug to kill someone.
We need laws that prevent those things. That's the only way this can be resolved. We're a huge community with an equally huge influence and resources. Let's coordinate and use our power for a good cause, instead of resurrecting witch-hunting practices.
The government is made up of it's constituents, we should absolutely blacklist those people to let them know we are not OK with this. You'll never get more transparency from the government, it's not in their best interest to do that, nor is it for them to implement 'better' legislation. Ideally that would be great, but we are WAY past that being a realistic possibility in America.
I don't think you meant what you wrote there. You're saying government transparency is not in the best interest of its citizens?
But also in the same breathe, people in government are also extremely self serving, and it does them no good to provide more transparency when their current paychecks benefit from a lack of transparency.
I can see how that appears to be contradictory but I did not mean for it to be taken in that manner, hope this clears up my statement.
Doing/making something because it is legal is does not make it right. As you're building a team you should hopefully be hiring only people who act ethically and can understand the implications of their work, right?
Setting aside that professional licensure requirements are anathema to the spirit of the hacker movement, they would likely have prevented the creation of a massive pool of technology companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. Even that proposal would stifle innovation.
However, what's being suggested by the OP is not even a professional licensure system.
It's mob justice.
The difference is that professional licensure organizations follow fixed sets of rules, procedures, and principles. These rules are established, agreed upon, and promulgated in advance of enforcement. Most importantly, the procedures generally allow for the basics of due process.
Mob justice has no set of fixed procedure, and no assurance of due process. Its enforcement is governed by caprice, and subject to a set of arbitrary, inconsistent, and constantly shifting "rules."
The OP is proposing an arbitrarily enforced "refusal to hire" policy people from an ill-defined set of "undesirable" companies.
First, there are no rules for establishing which companies are undesirable.
What fields of technology exactly are undesirable? And exactly how closely did an engineer have to be involved with such technology?
Second, many companies develop "dual use" technology, which has both civilian and military uses. This includes manufacturers of everything from CPUs to jet engines. Is the designer of a gyroscope used on spacecraft and on missiles banished from our ranks?
Third, many of these companies are also huge conglomerates. GE makes jet engines, as well as washers and dryers.
Where do we draw the line?
Should a GE employee be blacklisted under this "system"? One from Intel? How about Facebook for taking money from the CIA? Google for Boston Dynamics?
Most importantly, who decides, and how?
If it's determined by whim and popularity, as proposed by the OP, then I want absolutely no part of it.
And I suspect very strongly that the engineers on this particular project would have clearly violated any standards of professional ethics we could agree on.
Civil war amongst software developers, with utter lack of due process, and ostracism as punishment are not as pleasant to the ear as "consensus," but that's the end result of what you're proposing.
This, of course, misses the central flaw in the proposal: If "good" companies refuse to hire engineers with work history at "bad" companies, you'd be forcing the very engineers who now want to do work you consider "good" back into doing work you consider "bad."
Setting aside the horrific personal implications this ham-fisted approach would have, by its very nature, a refusal to hire policy would have the exact opposite effect that you intend.
The problem is if the police is corrupted and are using it outside the law, or not by the intention of the law.
(As this civil case nonsense)
I'm a very law-and-order guy, but I have zero sympathy for police departments who pull shenanigans like this and then bitch and moan that their communities don't respect them. This gives limitless ammo to critics who want to paint police as noncaring, profit-driven thugs, probably endangering officers' lives in the process.
What an utterly despicable, contemptible move. It's simply not defensible in any way.
It's doubtful that local or state PDs have enough political pull or money to battle banks over this through the court system.
My bank does call me every now and again to verify charges on my debit card. Some of these calls make me wonder if the system has a hair trigger, which also means it's probably smart enough to just blanket block anything that looks like an asset seizure. This can't be too difficult, and will save banks money. The incentive to save money is a powerful one and has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting customers.
Once the state police start stealing funds from banks, they're very obviously crossing a line that will quickly get the Feds involved on a 'personal' level. It's actually a plus, the big boys in banking (which rule over an increasingly larger share of all banking nationally) will put an end to the state police theft very quickly as the numbers climb. Wells Fargo or JP Morgan, as far as the federal authorities are concerned, are drastically more powerful than the lowly Oklahoma State Police.
until of course they make a "profit sharing" deal with federals similar to the one in supposedly DEA related asset forfeitures performed by locals.
Your argument could equally be applied against regular (cash) civil asset forfeiture. The outcome is the same either way.
"Sorry, it was authorised by the authorities, nothing we can do".
You'll be short of the money until you sue, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. When you do sue, you'll have to prove that you're entitled to the money, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. What you get back will be less legal fees, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture.
It was not authorized by the card holder or a court order, so it is fraud.
Sorry, you're wrong. I've had the IRS steal money directly from my bank account to pay for taxes (and fees, and fines) I didn't owe. The bank won't help you, and I had to pay a tax lawyer $1,800 to get back $3,200 in taxes (and fines) from the IRS for a stock sale I never made.
The bank treats withdrawals by government agencies as legitimate transactions. They won't recognize it as fraud, and you won't get the money back from the bank.
A local police department or city government does not have this power.
Update: few more examples: http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/wage-garnishm..., apparently this is quite common; still don't think PD can do it for this reason
The line you'll get in fact will not be that it was authorized by the authorities and there's nothing that can be done. Banking is federally regulated, it is not regulated by the state police in Oklahoma. The matter of jurisdiction when you start fraudulently stealing from bank accounts (which in many cases would naturally also be out of state and otherwise national banks, and or even virtual banks) is without question: it's a federal matter.
Cash and card are not the same. The very obvious difference between cash and card is that you can charge back via a card. The cash is physical and must be physically recovered from their possession (protected by their guns). That's a very substantial and fortunate difference for the card holder.
This only works to seize the funds on prepaid cards, not bank accounts.
To steal and murder! The correct police motto.
It's gotten so I feel bad about it. I even apologize. Each time, I think "Well that's it, there's nothing that could go beyond this."
Holy cow!
Several years ago I sold a small lot which had an office on it. The guy who bought it paid cash. Cash is kinda unusual for this kind of transaction, so I asked him where he got it. He told me that he was a general contractor and had been saving for over ten years.
Then he told me that the previous month, while he was moving his savings to his mom's house, he got pulled over for a bad taillight.
They almost took all of his money. Holy cow! This was my introduction to Civil Asset Forfeiture.
There are many parts of this story that are amazing. Right away I note that if you're truly wealthy? You have nothing to fear. You have enough assets to pay the one lawyer who golfs with the local DA and get this thing fixed quickly. But if you're not? If you're like my friend saving up for a large purchase? Good freaking luck.
Read an article once from a former LE guy. I remember one of his points. He said that cops are hunters. They hunt bad guys. We are their prey.
As we are finding out, the definition of "bad guy" is wonderfully malleable. Just about anybody can be one. The more political power you have (whether through contacts, as a politician, or by having money), the less likely you are to be one.
There has been a long tradition in the states of assuming the best when dealing with the local constable. They have tough jobs, usually the training isn't terribly difficult, it's a good spot for people who like guns and violence but want to be one of the good guys.
This tradition is coming to a close. While the constable himself might be a nice enough, stand-up guy, the system as a whole is terribly corrupt and overbearing. I might go so far as to say evil.
This cannot continue. Reforms are desperately needed.
Heh! I came from a country where police torture people routinely. Any suspect who lands in police custody has a good chance of being tortured. They know how to do it, so it causes psychological distress but doesn't leave huge marks on the body. My friend and I once caught a pickpocket and took him to a police station. Cops were bored and proceeded to torture him behind a closed door in order for him to reveal where his buddies were hiding. At first we were so happy we caught the tiny criminal. By the end of the evening I felt pretty sorry for the guy.
Anyway, that is how I see cops. Rationally I know they are not all like that, and we are not in <oldcountry> anymore. But deep down instinctively I still have that fear of them. It is scary and dissappointing that people in this country are slowly starting to adopt the same attitude toward police because of how police is acting.
> While the constable himself might be a nice enough, stand-up guy, the system as a whole is terribly corrupt and overbearing.
If constable ever kept this mouth shut when he saw their co-workers abuse their power, they have stopped being a good stand-up guy at that very instant.
In the states it matters whether you torture people. Sure, bad folks get away with it, but if you get caught, you can be assured that the system will work against you. Same goes, mostly, for killing people without reason. Several public incidents over the last few years have shown this. I think the trick is to have video footage handy.
False arrest? Not so much. Police harassment? I'm sure there are cases brought to trial, but it's really rare. Taking your money when you didn't do anything? As we can see, that's already part of the system.
So over time, the system slips into being, for lack of a better word, "evil". More and more stuff that was out of bounds becomes normal. Sadly, I honestly think the reason for this is just officers trying to do a good job. Maybe cutting a corner here or there. No evil intent required.
This is going to sound weird, but if you'd like a good example of how the US traditionally felt about Law Enforcement, watch a few episodes of the old TV show "The Andy Griffith Show" with Don Knotts in there. Perhaps follow that up with a couple of episodes of "Dragnet"
These are highly-sanitized 60s shows, but it's clear that for a population who had most men return from armed combat in WWII or Vietnam, over-zealous macho policemen were a cause of great amusement. When real crimes did occur, the cops were considered just part of the population, perhaps with more analytical skills and with a job most people wouldn't like, but not that different from anybody else.
I believe that attitude started turning in the mid 70s with the Dirty Harry movies. Crime was considered a terrible problem, and the courts were considered to be advocating letting criminals rampage. Then we had the organized crime mania. Then drugs. With each public fear-fest, legislators gave the police more and more power -- just to use against the terrible threat of the current day, of course. It didn't work out that way. Now we have cops using organized crime and drug laws against some yokel growing 3 pot plants in his basement.
It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes."
This is truly disgusting. I have no words.
Like how does the officer know how much you have and how much is 'appropriate' to confiscate?
I wonder if it does a series of authorizations looking for some sort of upper limit to figure out how much money is in the account and then they determine what to take from that?
Either way, this goes way beyond reason for what a trooper should be able to do on the side of a road during a traffic stop.
I am speaking about the method used to determine how much is in an account and what can be withdrawn, because they can't check your balance without a pin number, and if their system is issuing multiple repeated authorizations, what protections banks have in place that might block these sorts of transactions to prevent theft.
I think that might even be worse then the police being able to sieze all of you money.
After it turned out it's legit news:
2. So why they simply aren't maxing out people credit cards too? I mean, by the same flawed logic, it would stop crime if people are more in debt. You can of course prove you aren't going to use your credit card for further crimes and have the money returned.
Then again, I should stop giving people ideas.
I need a state sponsored monopoly where my income stream is non-recourse without chargeback possibility.
This defies all logic and is a clear example of the corrupt state this country is in (USA).
I disagree. Police can do it because they have the power of the state behind them; the state can try you, imprison you, ruin your life, seize your other assets, etc. That policeman's gun is a minor detail and is rarely used.
Most importantly, they have the power of the state because voters permit it. Do you know if this is allowed in your state? Who are your state legislators? Are you going to contact them?
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.
Many times, criminals illegally clone valid payment cards
on to non-descript pieces of plastic like hotel room keys
and subway cards, making detection and interrogation
nearly impossible. Since virtually any plastic card with
a magnetic stripe can re-purposed as a credit, debit or
prepaid payment card, being able to determine the
identity of the card is critical to your investigation.
Which criminals? The ones a local policeman happens to stop in a routine checkpoint?
I'd like to see actual stats on what percentage of everyday criminals who are met by local law enforcement "conceal billions of dollars".
I'd bet this percentage is so small the tool does more harm to the general populace than good on the off chance such a criminal is caught.
Yes, US citizens are criminals by definition of law, apparently.
"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 but only from prepaid cards, apparently, for now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/us/justices-weigh-freezing...
Supposedly its already in use at borders. The news is that now if you get pulled over in OK the cops will now keep any gift cards they find.
Ever wonder why there's such a push to get RFID everywhere? If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
Errrrrr not really! 4th Amendment gives you the right to refuse a search of your person or vehicle. Even if the cops do find something illegal during a search you've clearly but politely refused, your refusal will give your defense attorney grounds to ask the court to throw out any evidence found in the trunk.
Hopefully the incredulity of this will put a spotlight on civil forfeiture and end it once and for all.
But it probably will take a decade to get to the supreme court and this will ruin lives in the meanwhile.
And then there is who is going to fill the next three supreme court judge slots and how they feel about "the police can do no wrong" authoritarianism.
The simple existence of the Patriot Act, which destroys the very basis of the US legal system (the habeas corpus) and ignore blatantly the constitution, proves that the Suprem Court is not the democratic safety net it's supposed to be.
Literally the opposite of how presumed innocence is supposed to work. Furthermore, good luck mounting a decent case now that they have all your money.
This is the rich looking after the rich in the most corrupt and reprehensible way possible, see how this is going to work out for you as resentment grows in the population roots.
Roughly $2trillion of the nation's $3.8trillion spending in the 2015 [1] budget was healthcare, social security, food assistance, and unemployment. This doesn't include any of the substantial spending on welfare and 'handouts' as you call them by state and local governments.
The problem isn't that we aren't willing to redistribute money, the problem is that the politicians do a crap job of it, and do it in ways that often seem specifically designed to keep the poor people poor.
[1] https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/budget-graphic....
The so called presumption of guilt. I am sure everyone has the proofs and doesn't need the money while they are held by the police.
- Well my grandma saved it for me when I was a child. - Prove it. - Sorry but she's dead and I moved it to a new bank account two years ago. - Yeah sure.
This is just disgusting.
He also said they look for inconsistencies in your story. So, the more you talk you have more to explain.
It's curious to see the case of lawful vs unlawful corruption evolve, in different countries.
In the situation you describe a simple bank statement from "2 years ago" would be more than enough to meet the "preponderance of evidence" standard for these cases.
https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/prepaid-card-read...
Billy: SURE! I get to be the Cop and the Robber, you play the innocent citizen and I'll take all your money after pulling you over for speeding!
Johnny & Billy simultaneously: YAAAYYYYYYYYY
If your cash is seized the police will go ahead and keep the full amount less the 7.7% fee. So what happens if the person is proven innocent? Does the police dept have to use its own funding to repay the 7.7% fee?
This seems unlikely to me (but that is based on no facts). Or does the company have to repay the money? It would seem like they could legally say they preformed a service and should not be required to refund the money.
Sadly it looks like if you are seen as "potential guilty" and your assets are seized, even if you are proven innocent you still lost 7.7% of your money. Then tack on legal fees associated with proving your innocent.....
Absolutely terrible. Finally bitcoin et al have a legitimate use - protecting your property from grubby government hands.
That said seizing cash whether physical notes or electronic must be subject to due process and a court order.
Serious question, where does the money go and how is it spent? Who is it spent by?
We do have a process for the confiscation of proceeds of crime here in Australia. I believe the money goes into a big pot controlled by a federal government department (https://www.afsa.gov.au/ ie not the police) to be spent on community projects. I am sure that there is plenty of scope for waste etc but if nothing else the system would seem to do a good job of removing any financial incentives for the police to seize stuff.
If you seem suspicious, or if they claim so, then your money suddenly is not yours any more, until you prove their source. If you can't prove the legitimity of your money, they become fair game to be confiscated. In this whole process you personally are not charged with anything, but the confiscation is triggered by their being suspicious about you.
"No, officer, you may not see my wallet. I do not consent to a search of myself, my vehicle, or my property. I furthermore, refuse to have any further conversation with you. May I go now, or am I under arrest?"
Works every time for me.
Now they're asking to see my entire wallet?! I'm assuming we're all well within our rights to refuse to hand over our wallets?
I'm not a lawyer either though, so take that for what it is worth.
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
So basically... guilty until proven innocent?
I am dumbfounded by this statement.
The article is a balanced analysis that speaks truth to power, but the headline is statist propaganda.
Wow, so it's now safest to travel around the country with your encrypted Bitcoin hid steganographically....
Consider, however, that the law in theory differs very much from its practice. In a Terry stop, just like most encounters with the police, the officer holds all the cards. Non-compliance can be met with force, and there's always the threat of being charged for obstruction or whatever else the policeman thinks up, based on their word alone(which has more weight than yours in court). Policemen are given a wide latitude to act, and a good faith presumption to all their actions, so they can get away with stretching any applicable law to its breaking point.
aka Guilty until proven innocent.
Call now!
If everybody else around you accepts to get arbitrarily molested in the butt, you either accept it too, or else you move out.
I have personally chosen to move out. Unfortunately, you can see the United Nations, USAID, international NGOs and similar organizations coming over here to convince the locals to accept similar abuse from their own government, by advocating "the rule of law". Of course, there are also the Christian organizations advocating to the locals to offer their other cheek to such thefting police.
Since I cannot keep "moving away", at some point I will have no other option than to finally make a stand.
The Art of War says that the secret of success consists in never letting the enemy choose the time and the place. You must always choose the time and the place by yourself. Therefore, it suggests that it is us who must schedule forceful attacks against the police. Seriously, I am all for it.
And organizing violence is not particularly easy. For something like civil forfeiture, it would be much easier to just follow the democratic process.
So collect signatures, call representatives, state legislators, and stage protests at city halls. A lot less painful for all parties, and a greater chance of success.
Police departments found a way to fund themselves without pissing off anyone who matters politically.
Under no circumstance should i have to PROVE where my money came from nor how i got it. this is assumed guilt and utterly unamerican IMO. Where is the burden of proof that must be reached before taking my assets and forcing me to prove that i have the right to have them. OK = backwoods state full of backwoods laws, and apparently backwoods people that keep voting for these types of idiots.
But... that would make police less productive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10591250
And many more stories ...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asset+seizure+site%3Aycombinator.c...
That's language is too vague to mean much: Are you saying this is illegal, or are you saying it is unconstitutional, or are you saying it is immoral?
That means you can't be jailed for murdering someone without a trial and you can't spend 10 years in jail before the trial. In the same way Assange is basically jailed without a trial or being proven guilty of anything.
"Asset forfeiture" in the US goes against everything that the above stands for. The fact that a government official (Cops, feds, etc) can take your money... link that money to "drugs" in some way... and keep that money (or assets) without a trial? Is un American.
and then see if "starting" is actually applicable vs a glaring understatement
"State Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, said that removes due process and the belief that a suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty ... 'If I had to err on the side of one side versus the other, I would err on the side of the Constitution'"
Attacking an entire population of people like that is a nasty breach of HN's civility rule. Please don't ever post anything like this again.
It's the upvoters of such comments who should most be ashamed of themselves. The fact that people here feel angry about police seizing cash without due process can, and must, be kept distinct from cheap slurs. That takes a certain (rather tiny) degree of self-discipline, which is a minimum requirement for participating here.
furthermore being called backwoods is only an attack if you choose it to be, some people don't mind being unsophisticated.
Although your anarchic mindset is appealing to me, I'm less ready to give up on the phrase and concept of "rule of law," which I think still has a place in a free information age.
Not only this will turn citizen against citizen but will also destroy lives.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-is-now-the...
If only Thatcherism / Reaganism never happened... (and Laffer, Friedman and all the other related right wing propaganda that's been catapulted down our throats)
I suppose things will eventually get bad enough that people will eventually realize "Everything that demented old man proposed was wrong?!?" (demented as in literal "alzheimer's patient")
Also, could we please stop blaming Thatcher and Reagan for undesirable political trends that started before them, and continued accelerating throughout successive left and right wing administrations in both countries?
Or perhaps the WOD was a liberal plot, only pushed through past poor old Reagan due to his fear of his veto being overturned if he dared vote against it???
Sure glad the local police didn't have one of those when they were doing their first of the month car stops.