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Comment by stackus | Hacker News Reader

You're never charged with a crime, the object is and it is not given representation. So there's no "innocent until proven guilty" for inanimate objects.

Despicable, and akin to highway robbery in my opinion.

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This is flatly incorrect. This is a civil proceeding, neither you nor your property are charged with a crime. Instead, a civil (not criminal) forfeiture proceeding is initiated against your property.

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.

Sue a contractor for not upholding your contract with the federal / state government? Like road building or whatever else.

I have to imagine there's a giant pile of (criminal) laws they could use to prosecute someone who's trying to defraud the government. But your point is still well-taken, and it's kind of academic anyway - it's an incredibly valuable (and lucrative) tool for the government, of course they're not going to give it up.

It is literally highway robbery, as it is the highway patrol pulling you over and stealing your money.

In thread after thread on this topic - civil asset forfeiture in its various forms - I see people do elaborate intellectual dances to describe or title what this is.

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).

In a similar vein, I liked the suggestion that we should start calling "Parallel Reconstruction" evidence laundering.

"Officer involved shooting"

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/...

"collateral damage" - these sorts of tricks are not new.

The CIA is the master of yhese euphemisms; "extraordinary rendition" for kidnapping and "enhanced interrogation" for torture.

That doesn't make sense. Objects cannot commit crimes since they aren't human beings and thus cannot act, have rights, etc. Is this what Statism has come to? I know we have the whole corporations are people nonsense, but this is straying even further into complete irrationality. I know it's just to circumvent the law, but if they can create fiction like that, there's pretty much no law and order anymore.

Because of War On Drugs people had no problem with this. If you had asked when this law was passed someone random Joe Schmoe on the street -- "Is this a good law, we'll get all those rich drug lords?". They would have probably nodded and agreed.

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.

> You're never charged with a crime, the object is and it is not given representation.

No one and nothing is charged with a crime in civil asset forfeiture.

But you do end up with amusing case names like "United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...).

The currency is defined as the defendant in the case.

I feel like I'm living in the Matrix when I see things like this. There are people out there - lawyers and judges, who must be fairly smart to finish law school - who think "United States v. $124,700" makes perfect sense.

I was told when I first started graduate school that it's not about how smart one is, but rather it's about perseverance, the ability to jump through bureaucratic hoops, bite your tongue and do what you're told.

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.

A PhD is more about elbow-grease than intellect. You do need some intellectual chops (in your field - you can be very naive outside it), but you need perseverance more than anything.

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.

Hey, if a corporation is a person...

The objects are property, and people have property rights.

Sure, people have property rights, which, in this case, they've stripped without due process. Or indeed, any process at all.

There's no way I'd carry a bank card in OK.

This comment[1] suggests that the product does not work with an actual bank card, only prepaid cards, which boggles the mind.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11865494

The article says "Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards."

It wouldn't be the first time a news article was wrong, though it'd be nice to know for sure.

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