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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this is pretty dystopian. "You have money that we didn't know about so you have to explain yourself, or we will assume you acquired it illegally and take it from you". That's not due process. That's not innocent until proven guilty. (Yes, I know UK legal standards are different than the US's, but I believe these things to be rights people should universally have.) That's not rule of law; that's rule by thugs.

I guess that's strictly "better" than the nearly-zero-recourse civil forfeiture travesty we have here in the US, but... still not great.

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Suppose you have a $30k salary, and one day $10,000,000 million appears in your bank account. Maybe someone in your town was killed on the same day.

Is it unreasonable that law enforcement asks how did you aquire an amount of money that is greater than you could ever earn in your lifetime?

it's nearly the same mechanism as what was used against alcapone to jail him for inocme tax evasion -> he had access to absurd amount of wealth, and there is no way the could have aquired it legally.

Again - this is not what's happening.

Triggering the investigation is fine and reasonable.

Confiscating the wealth without evidence of a crime is the issue.

Civil Asset Forfeiture in the US is regularly confiscating not tens of millions of dollars, but mere thousands of dollars for the simple reason of it being in cash. And this case is even worse - the cash was not on anyone's person out in public, but in a safe deposit box, not doing anything in particular.

I think it's much better than Civil Asset Forfeiture. Civil Asset Forfeiture regularly ends up confiscating money that the owner can readily prove they have via legitimate means. This won't happen here. It's only if you can't come up with a good reason that your money will be confiscated (and that process is happening through a court not just with a random police officer).

The issue with CAF is not forfeiture of assets without evidence of a crime; with CAF there is evidence of a crime, but not necessarily evidence that the forfeited asset is related to the crime, with little or difficult legal recourse to recover the assets.

Sometimes the case is never brought to trial [1]; in other cases the owner of the assets is never even charged with a crime [2]. When the forfeiture creates a financial burden [3] or the asset has the potential for depreciation [3], the accused may have even a financial incentive to settle rather than go to trial.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31446215

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588268

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365463

[4] https://cre.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/37_2_3_Federal_Fo...

Suppose you live in a free country where innocence is assumed and guilt must be proven?

I'd much rather live in a place where that dang mobster that "no one can touch" gets a little rich and evades the law (until that day he doesn't), than to live in a dystopian totalitarian mega-state (e.g. China).

> Is it unreasonable that law enforcement asks how did you aquire an amount of money that is greater than you could ever earn in your lifetime?

Yes, very much so. It's very, very, incredibly dangerous to fall into the trap of allowing a system that asks someone to prove their innocence and that is exactly what your question is asking.

> it's nearly the same mechanism as what was used against alcapone to jail him for income (sic) tax evasion

Nearly the same is not the same. In other words, it'd be OK to check that the $10,000,000 dollar bank account owner did pay taxes on it. If not, well, ooof. But also, how do we know he had a $10M bank account in the first place? That info had better be obtained legally too.

> it'd be OK to check that the $10,000,000 dollar bank account owner did pay taxes on it.

Scenario:

John Doe has 10 million dollars appear in his bank account. No evidence that it was obtained legally and no evidence that any taxes were ever paid.

Option IRS/Alcapone - he goes to jail for Tax evasion

Option 'Unexplained Wealth Order' - UK government seizes assets because they should it could not be obtained legally. He is still free and out and about

If anything the option you are advocating is "worse" as in it is harsher.

>it's nearly the same mechanism as what was used against alcapone to jail him for inocme tax evasion -> he had access to absurd amount of wealth, and there is no way the could have aquired it legally.

Actually, it wasn't that Capone had "an absurd amount of wealth," the amount was irrelevant. Just ask J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and others who weren't put in jail for being "too wealthy." It was because Capone didn't pay taxes on that income

In fact, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) treats "illegal" income[0] exactly the same way it treats "legal" income for tax purposes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_illegal_income_in_...

In what way is this not "Due process" ?

The presumption of innocence does not mean you're entitled to obstruct investigators. "But you haven't proved that I'm guilty" also doesn't work to stop detectives entering your home with a search warrant.

From OPs explaination, if you won't explain how you got the money it'll be forfeited. That's the opposite of presumption of innocence.

I'm ok with having large amounts of cash with no obvious legitimate source triggering an investigation, but that's not what's happening.

If you target the very wealthy, it's a very tiny burden to make them do paperwork to explain the origin of their money. In a situation like that, you can achieve due process without presumption of innocence.

This can be used for values over £50000, though.

That's probably not a great threshold, but for now I'm more worried about where it has been used than where it could theoretically be used.

The UK doesn't have a 5th Amendment.

Yeah, because they don't really have an actual consolidated constitution, but the presumption of innocence is one of the principles of English Common Law (see Woolmington v DPP), as well as being one of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

They just sneak past it by not actually sentencing you of a crime.

UK has parliamentary sovereignty, so any presumed common law right only exists until the Parliament passes a bill that effectively nullifies it.

Almost every country has some form of this law. Sometimes the money is confiscated, other times it is treated as a taxable event at the highest rate possible, etc.

It's not "you have money we didn't know about", it's "you have an amount of money that requires explanation".

It's more like "we see a lot of smoke coming out of your house, satisfy us there isn't a fire or we're coming in with the hoses". Viewing that through the "innocent until proven guilty" lens is like trying to argue the fire crew have to stay outside until they see actual flames

Wait till you learn about ASBO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order

IANAL but I think throwing "innocent until proven guilty" around might not be valid outside of criminal justice.

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