I think they’re some sort of pre-internet relic people thought offered more security than they do.
Today it seems like banks don’t care about them and don’t want to be in the business.
You’re probably better off just having a fire safe box under your bed.
Garden beds, somewhere in your crawlspace, beneath a compost pile, etc are all fine places to stash things.
It might be time to go back the good ol' days of treasure maps (only half joking).
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L4EjtXyg6k [video, auger]
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo7yu84s7Dc [video, rock auger]
Not really. You're trading one threat (negligence on the part of the bank) for another (your home getting robbed/burgled).
Whether that's true would depend on the false positive rate of civil forfeitures. Even if it's some absurdly high number (eg. 50%), you'd still need 2x as much civil forfeitures than burglaries for the risk to be equal (presumably nobody "deserves" a burglary). Also in theory civil forfeitures can be recovered, if you can provide documentation that the items aren't ill gotten gains. I'm not sure what the recovery rate for burglary is, but I'd imagine that P(assets recovered from civil forfeiture|you are innocent) is much greater than P(assets recovered from burglary).
It's plausibly even higher than that. The incentive for civil asset forfeitures is for law enforcement to seize in exactly this sort of "a medium amount of money from a large number of people" type of situation. Because it makes this useless:
> Also in theory civil forfeitures can be recovered
"I got back my $9000 and all I had to do was pay $25,000 to a lawyer."
And when people do the math on that and decide not to pursue it, law enforcement gets to keep the money. Hence the incentive for them to do it.
In theory. It will cost you a shitton of lawyer fees that might exceed the amount you lost, and you can also expect to be constantly harassed by the cops during and after the process, plus forget about ever getting help from them again if you need it.
If it was a legit use of government power they would go for the better, more ethical criminal forfeiture where by they prove a person committed a crime and then take the assets related to the crime
Civil Asset forfeitures are an end run around the 4th and 5th amendments, and should be viewed as unethical by every reasonable person
This is just absolutely bonkers.
"Innocent until proven guilty" was supposed to be a core tenet of our justice system.
The court needs to prove that the money was acquired illegally, not assume it was, and then expect us to prove its innocence. They need to have evidence and a warrant before seizing.
The "Second Amendment" types often claim that the Second Amendment protects the First Amendment. Well shouldn't it also enforce the Fourth Amendment?
As a practical matter, if one were to respond to a 4A violation with a 2A application, the 4A violators respond immediately with overwhelming force, after which you don't get to tell your story, and the violators get to write the report. Victors, history, etc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
the act of breaking and entering a dwelling at night to commit a felony (such as theft)
Only "Assert Forfeiture" overall is a larger volume than theft, because yes it includes recuperation from white-collar crime. The money from civil kind is much smaller (not that it excuses it).
Only one of these are you in any control over.
Banks are also bigger targets. Bank robber Willie Sutton was famously asked why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is," he said. That's the problem with putting all the valuables together in one place.
Meanwhile you can't so easily get your stuff caught up in some robbery or "investigation" of somebody you have nothing to do with.
They aren't digging into insulation in your attic or going through multiple boxes of kids clothes in your basement.
I imagine most safes get burgled because their owner can't keep their mouth shut.
Maybe the reply was just imprecise, but the sentiment seems to still be valid in that hiding your vault in your home/on your property somehow is surely more secure in many cases and circumstances, especially in this time where it should be clear to essentially everyone that fundamental rights once accepted as universal and violations of them harshly punished, are now being essentially totally ignored and even nullified through various legal and legislative gaslighting; civil asset forfeiture being of course only the most commonly known perversion of the most basic and fundamental concepts of civilization and basic logic.
The shittiest thing is if a teller messes up and just let's someone who stole your key from your box, you're SOL. It's like the scene in Casino where De Niro's wife is clearing out the box. The bank manager couldn't stop her cause legally he had to let her in.
The bank can do an extended identity verification and drill the lock out for a fee.