FBI misled judge who signed warrant for seizure of $86M in cash
latimes.com
latimes.com
...but if a government worker, paid by the taxpayers, fucks up... the worst that can happen is, the taxpayers have to pay for eventual lawsuit cost and damages to the people who got fucked by that worker.
For something like this, atleast a few people should end up in jail for a long time.
Firstly, if an employee of a company fucks up at work, the company is responsible, not the employee.
In certain regulated fields, if a licensed individual fucks up, even when employed, their licence can be impacted and they can be fined (this is common in the financial industry).
If a prosecutor intentionally misleads a judge, there is a misconduct process that can impact their license and career.
When the article says "fbi", they mean an attorney acting on behalf of the FBI, and that person can be held accountable if the judge decides to.
> A Volkswagen engineer was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox of the Eastern District of Michigan to 40 months in federal prison, and two years of supervised release his role in a nearly 10-year conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and Volkswagen customers by implementing software specifically designed to cheat emissions tests in hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen “clean diesel” vehicles sold in the U.S., the Justice Department announced today.
Regardless, the FBI lawyer CAN still be punished in this case. Just because we don't know why the judge did not see fit to do so, does not mean they are immune. For all we know, the judge knew exactly what he was doing and wasn't really misled at all.
Not really clear why a lawyer lying to the judge is not as bad here.
That’s utterly wrong.
The employee is always a potential defendant. Legal doctrines such as respondeat superior and principal/agent and the like extend the liability to the employer.
Nobody bothers to sue the employee as they’re generally broke. The goal is to sue the employer.
But, there is no ‘immunity’ that arises from being an employee.
You are right, what the FBI did here is much worse.
More importantly, why am I obligated to pay for this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_let...
Article V is really looking good right now. None of this is working for us.
Employee who are officers or directors of the company, or lawyers for the company, can absolutely be held personally responsible. That's why it's common for employee's in those position to be covered by E&O insurance.
Here’s a recent example.
https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2022/09/09/lawsui...
If you own shares in companies directly, you often receive updates on lawsuits against C-level execs.
This article says that the FBI agents and US Attorney incorrectly accused a safe deposit company of being a criminal enterprise (case was later dropped, nobody convicted, no real evidence). The FBI then lied to a judge, disregarded their warrant they obtained under false pretenses, and stole money and valuable from hundreds of people, almost all of whom were entirely related to the crimes the FBI was ostensibly investigating. The problem here is not a lack of insurance, it's that the FBI is brazenly acting like a criminal gang and none of the people who perpetrated the crimes will face consequences.
That's not quite correct, I think: the company itself plead guilty to the money laundering part and was fined... but it was also unable to pay the fine, and the government chose not to go after the owners/officers personally. So the individual charges were dropped, but not against the company. That seems like even more of an indication that this was primarily/just a fundraising via forfeiture expedition.
Civil forfeiture laws need to be changed to require a criminal conviction first, and to impose mandatory multipliers of damages on the government when a forfeiture is found improper, or there is no motivation for law enforcement to stop padding their own budgets this way.
That nobody was convicted of a crime over this is why I wrote the FBI incorrectly accused the company. If the FBI was right, and these were money launderers - where are the criminal charges? The FBI and US attorneys are well and widely known for over charging and coercing people to take pleas - so the guilty plea with no consequences doesn't really carry any weight. What's the evidence?
Ethically, morally, by common sense? Sure, weird. But it's also civil forfeiture law as it currently exists basically working "as intended." The whole goal is to end-run the criminal court and move things into civil court where they have a lower burden of proof and the accused have to pay for their own defense (or technically that of their property.)
Won't happen, DAs and the police are on the same team. It'd be like suing…yourself.
An amazingly high percentage of judges are former prosecutors. The last stats I read had it at around 66%. The remainder were primarily criminal defense attorneys in their previous life.
Clearly, one of the biggest problems with government (and large corporations) is that individual employees can hide behind and be protected by the institutional infrastructure. Essentially they can make decisions with impunity knowing that the 'system' will protect them.
If we're to restore any faith in our governance then this protection must stop. Decisions made by government employees must be open to public scrutiny, similarly, the origins of government policy—laws, regulations etc.—must be traceable back to its source (those who initiated said policies).
Systems without accountability will always become corrupt.
Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals....
(Truly benevolent dictators are like hens' teeth—non existent.)
sure, there have been such, but nobody ever considered them legitimate like people do with "governments"
There are other corporations in history that had a "security" force of some sort that absolutely was used as a means of intimidation
If I do not consent to rules forced upon me, and stop paying protection money, ultimately government goons with guns are gonna come to haul me away.
In the US, the capitalist mine owners, railroad owners and factory owners all employed paramilitaries to crush worker uprisings-- the tactics often included murder. In the case of Blair mountain, the capitalists' paramilitary forces even used aircraft to drop chemical and explosive bombs (left over from WWI) on striking mine workers.
The use of paramilitaries by corporations continues with e.g., Exxon accused of murders of environmental activists in the Niger delta. But, often corporations use state apparatus to affect violence for their advantage-- e.g., the many US illegal wars of aggression / regime change to steal resources of other nations. Or, the domestic use of police to e.g., attack indigenous protesters attempting to block an oil pipeline (Keystone XL) being built across their land against their wishes-- the police fired tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets, and water cannons (in the middle of winter) on the protesters, in service of TC Energy Corporation.
Governments engage in violence, but large scale government violence is usually at the behest of the very same rich powerful entities that historically employed their own henchmen or even their own private armies. Small scale government violence may just be sadistic and/or corrupt officials. While this petty violence is terrible for the victims, it is insignificant compared to the large scale violence committed in service of the rich and powerful.
The rich don't seem to care if a police department/FBI engages in theft/murder, as long as it doesn't affect them, and state apparatus to inflict violence is simply too useful to the rich to reign it in. Governments are not the problem. The capture of government by the rich and powerful is the problem. Unfortunately, many states seem to have designed their systems to ensure the rich control policy while the masses remain powerless-- the US, where money is speech, is a good example (159 rich people were responsible for 59% of SuperPAC campaign money, and 93% came from 3300 rich people-- they will expect a return on their investment).
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...
Gov: let me do X
Libertarian: no way! Big government is bad!
Gov: but what if I was a corporation
Libertarian: shit, that's all you needed to say
Really highlights how some people can think a gov is bad but if a corporation does the same actions, suddenly it's justified.
We should be wary of organizations as a whole, regardless of what form they take.
Corporations act with probably the most impunity of all. They are beneficially and popularly thought of as job providers (until they choose to layoff). When they abuse their function in their yearn for profit, they offer nothing to imprison criminally and can only offer financial compensation -- if they haven't walled off their finances and declared bankruptcy for the guilty self. (Thinking of J&J & the talcum powder case.) In the Purdue Pharma/Sackler case, they paid only what they agreed to pay and many thought they got off easy, since none of Sacklers were even charged criminally.
Who has it easier?
This is why self-defense laws are important.
The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.
Absent this, one of three conditions exist;
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.
<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>
There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>
The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.
See also private militia and police services, e.g., the frequently-renamed Blackwater / Xe / Academi / Constellis.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company)>
There are of course a vast number of other examples.
"More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade – report"
Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/29/global-w...>
Not exclusively corporate, but also not exclusively states. For the most part I find the distinction between these two (and other) forms of power to be largely a red herring. The real issue is power and its accountability, not the specific form it takes. Though at least in theory, a government can be made to answer to those it governs.
Even a typographical error or minor delays by the government official has asymmetric consequences for the human but no consequence to the officer. You can be perfect and do everything correctly but still fall off a cliff because some government officer made a typographical error.
Except software engineers :)
In my opinion, this is lenient to the extent that it’s a miscarriage of justice.
> He doctored the email to mean the exact opposite of what the email was communicating.
s/He was a source/He was not a source/
It's amazing the kinds of things you can get away with when you're politically connected.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10322339/Disgrace-l...
This egregious seizure is just further proof that the Fourth Amendment is pretty much dead. Any kind of forfeiture without probable cause should be a Fourth Amendment violation but yet civil asset forfeiture (the most egregious form of Fourth Amendment violation) remains legal.
Probably the worst thing about this case is that the government has been caught in a lie and isn't backing down and they want to keep the contents. Any "evidence" gleaned from these contents should be absolutely inadmissible without prior and specific probable cause. There should be no allowance for "there's no reason why legitimate customers would use USPV instead of a bank".
Lots of people distrust banks. Not using a bank is not evidence of a crime let alone probable cause.
I really hope the FBI and the US attorney get their rear ends handed to them over this but I have doubts they ever will.
https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
Support their work to have a chance of restoring this right.
Obviously the paranoid state, won't like the idea of a private safety deposit box company.
I think the next leg to fall is cash itself. We will move to CBDC and social credit.
There’s something incredibly irresponsible and pathetic about acknowledging a course of action that seems bad/inevitable, and then declaring that it will happen.
The future is not inevitable. If you declare failure to reach a positive future as inevitable, you are actively working towards failure, not success.
The US following China's lead. I'd hope that the idea alone, of following in China's footsteps, is enough to get the US to change course.
Quality of life in China is constantly improving. In US it isn’t. So no, US isn’t following China’s lead.
I hope things stabilize and people there DO keep improving, I have no desire to see anywhere stagnate or start declining. But I’m also extremely aware of how much of the Chinese state apparatus is dedicated to lying and distorting public perception, and what I hear about what’s been going on behind the scenes sounds really bad right now.
Facts:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/04/20/how-the-ame...
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/us-and-china-n...
A large part of that uplift is due to massive US investments. US leaders knowingly sacrificed a lot domestic industry in order to build up a China that we thought would liberalize and act to counterbalance the Soviet Union.
What should have been a cause for solidarity and cohesion and mutual uplift, and was functioning that way until relatively recently, has turned sour. China is starting to stagnate drastically, and we have not managed to create the service economy in the US we thought could sustain the middle class in spite of the transfer. The demographic issues in China were created decades ago, as were the supply chain issues affecting the global economy. The massive real estate fraud also didn't help. Instead of actually working to productively address these issues, Xi has pumped up nationalistic rhetoric, is clamping down on business, and seems hell bent on returning to a Maoist cult of personality.
These problems will not be addressed by chest pumping about which dysfunctional system is less dysfunctional, or which past glories are brightest. The present requires focus on the problems we have in front of us, and are best addressed with eyes wide open and a hard look at the practical problems in both the Chinese and US economies.
Lol, no - they sacrificed it for profits. Same with India. Also, China is liberalizing quite quickly; in many aspects it’s already more liberal than parts of Europe. But it doesn’t matter - it’s just an American propaganda talking point, as evidenced by not having an issue with much less liberal US Allie’s, like Saudi Arabia.
Which, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of the direction that most politicians are going because real long term solutions are incompatible with tax cuts.
I believe you’ll find that the last link (csis.org) discusses that in detail.
[]https://www.china-briefing.com/news/people-dont-trust-chinas...
[]https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2022/04/29/is-chin...
There are things about China worthy of emulation, like how easy it is (or was, not sure if this is still true) to set up factories, the cultural emphasis on hard work and education, the stronger generational family support networks, the sense of unity and cooperation and trust in authority. But there are also severe problems that China doesn’t talk about, many of which are side effects of some of the same things that are admirable when moderated, and extremely dysfunctional when under poor leadership.
As for false advertising - look at how western media are pumping Chinese “housing crisis” where the reality is pretty much the opposite (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011211/the-winners-of-chinas...) - it’s the west that has a terrible housing crisis; China has merely a housing investment crisis, which is a relatively minor problem to people.
Where did you hear that? Everything I can find says the opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Whew. Hard work. You’re welcome!
I'm living in the EU and any bank-related form I had to fill out ask whether I have ties to the USA. There's one for "are you citizen of a different country?", but the USA (and only the USA) is always asked for explicitly.
Imagine if every country on Earth asked this. But of course USA can force other countries to do whatever it wants.
Literally 100% of the times I have read this phrase, obvious falsehoods followed shortly thereafter.
Courts and police conspire to avoid penalizing police with violations of law.
We didn't always have this loophole.
The original purpose of grand juries was to allow any citizen to bring criminal charges, so that political appointees wouldn't have this "pre-conviction pardon" capability. The grand jury's job, when returning an indictment, was to appoint an attorney general for that particular indictment:
Why isn't cloud data treated the same as a safety deposit box?
Is it? The cloud stores your data but the provider does not own your pictures or your PhD paper just because you uploaded them there. Any example of an EULA where a cloud provider assumes ownership of all data? Or you're thinking of situations like Facebook who I believe (may be wrong or misremembering) has this in their EULA - content uploaded become theirs.
On the other end of the spectrum as long as they don't know what's there (encryption?) it can't hurt them in the eyes of the law. If they can see what's there then authorities can still force them to act (identify the owner, remove the data, etc.).
I would assume that a bank does not regularly go rifling through the contents of everyone's safety deposit boxes and reporting items they believe are incriminating the way a cloud provider does.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
Safe deposit boxes are still subject to AML regulations. Banks are required by law to snoop around on their customers and to try to determine if the deposit boxes are being used for money laundering. Banks do regularly rifle through customer records to build profiles about what they think their customers are doing. Federal AML regulations require it!
Regulations or the threat of potential regulations are behind pretty much all of these types of privacy invasions. No one is claiming to own your data, money, or possessions -- but there will be scrutiny in all cases due to the law.
This is why banks don't let random unknown people open safe deposit boxes. They're required to profile their customers.
Can you provide a reference showing that AML regulations would require a bank to snoop in the contents of a safety deposit box? I've never heard of such.
In comparison it's easy to find references to banks being required to report cash transactions over $10,000.
But it is undisputed that neither the cloud provider nor the bank own what you put in there so I'm not sure why you'd hook into that point.
The rifling through your things is a strawman in this context. Both parties can and will do it if the law asks for it. It's logistically more complicated for a bank to do it for thousands of boxes but on the other hand all that stands between the bank and the content is one door they can easily unlock. It's far easier for a cloud provider to rifle through every account but on the other hand between them and the data there may be some practically unbreakable defense (encryption). Which is why Apple can get out of a search warrant while a bank cannot.
Data in general do not have ownership (there are some special cases like copyrightable data or personal data, where exclusive rights equivalent to ownership exist). So anyone who have lawful access to data can use them (unless there is some contractual restriction). So if you upload some general data to the cloud, your and cloud provider's relationship to the data is the same.
It appears this opinion was wrong: many honest people did choose this store instead of a bank for their safety deposit needs. I wonder why? I understand this question has no bearing on the legality of the FBI actions, but I do want to understand the customers' rationale.
https://www.securityinfowatch.com/access-identity/access-con...
Also, not all bank branches offer safe deposit boxes, and it’s difficult to get one unless you have other accounts. For someone who does their banking online or with an institution that doesn’t have a large branch network, it might have been more convenient to use U.S. Private Vaults than to set up and maintain another banking relationship.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276 Safe Deposit Boxes Aren't Safe (nytimes.com) 234 points by rafaelc on July 28, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 143 comments
One important quote from the article:
“All of the major national banks would prefer to be out of the safe-deposit-box business,” said Jerry Pluard, the president of Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage, a small Chicago firm that insures boxes. “They view it as a legacy service that’s not strategic to anything they do, and they’ve stopped putting any real focus or resources into it.”
It honestly sounds quite appealing to me - quick trip to a strip mall, access via retinal scan, in and out nice and easy.
Also, the recent news is the unsealing of documents which confirm what was just suspicion two months ago.
Covered at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276