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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> That doesn't justify the search and seizure of all his customers' property without due process.

The fundamental due process issue doesn't seem to be in dispute, though remedies for that are being litigated.

What the article is focussed on is not the due process issues, but the right of people outside of those directly affected and whose rights related to involved property are being litigated to law enforcement background information relating to the planning for the operations, which is a completely separate issue.

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The issue with all of this is that we're allowing actions against property while not respecting the rights of the owner. The FBI/cops can and should raid a place being used for crime, but it does not mean the cops should get to keep all the property that is seized. A much more mundane situation: Dad shouldn't have the family car auctioned off because his kid's friend decided to shoot up in the back seat. This civil asset forfeiture thing is insanely unconstitutional.

That example seems clear cut from both ethical and constitutional perspectives. If juveniles use your property to commit crimes, that property is rightly in jeopardy.

So person breaks into your house and squats it, or shoots up there, bith crimes. Your house should be forfeit?

What "ethics" you following?

I think there's a fundamental difference between "someone breaks into your house and commits a crime" and...purposefully allowing someone use of a gun or vehicle, or negligence leading to said use (ie, leaving your car running in front of a convenience store, and then someone stealing it and going on a high speed joyride, running a red light t-boning a minivan, killing a family of four), and someone, with no negligence on your part, using property of yours to commit a crime.

If you leave your gun on the floor of your car, someone smashes the window and steals it and shoots up a convenience store: you should be charged criminally and subject to civil liability.

If someone breaks into the gun safe in the trunk of your car and shoots up a convenience store? No crime, no liability - you took reasonable precautions.

A gun comes with special obligations to protect it. If someone borrows your car, or steals your left-running car, I don't think you should have have any criminal liability or risk of seizure. (Assuming you didn't conspire ahead of time, of course.)

While I agree with you on someone stealing your car, I don't see the gun and the car as so different as you do. You can easily kill people with a car or box truck, and possibly in greater number.

Blaming someone because their car or gun was stolen sounds a lot like victim blaming to me. And to the comment about breaking the window, I'd like to point out that most safes are practically as easy to break open as a window is. I recall buying one safe, and another customer explained to me in detail how they had pried one open in only a few seconds.

> Blaming someone because their car or gun was stolen sounds a lot like victim blaming to me.

This is punishing one of the victims.

Not a single example here is just. In every case someone has committed a crime. Stealing a running car is grand theft auto (assuming the car is worth the minimum). Even if I left it running, the thief alone committed a crime.

"Leopards would never eat MY face" ethics.

I'm not sure that's true, but if it is that is absolutely terrifying and I hope it is rectified at once. I think this would lead to the seizure of all public parks in my city.

Google civil asset forfeiture. It is absolutely nuts.

I guess like all libertarians you will be surprised to learn that there is a separate body of jurisprudence around public property, separate from private property law.

I am rarely surprised to learn anything anymore in the various laws used to part the common joe of his property.

When "use" is "was inside of", how the fuck can you call that ethical?

Why should I be responsible for some other parent's kid committing a crime with my property? So the fact a kid commits a crime erases my rights?

Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of due process, I would think that the warrant's explicit language around _not_ searching the contents of the deposit boxes would be a violation of the 4th Amendment's warrant requirements (and therefore due process):

"Nests of safety deposit boxes and keys, and documents and records referring or relating to them since 2019. This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes. In seizing the nests of safety deposit boxes, agents shall follow their written inventory policies to protect their agencies and the contents of the boxes. Also in accordance with their written policies, agents shall inspect the contents of the boxes in an effort to identify their owners in order to notify them so that they can claim their property;"

They were allowed to "inspect" the contents, but literally only with the goal of returning the property (which they still haven't done).

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