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Comment by vegetablepotpie | Hacker News Reader

1. Judge Steve Kim gave the FBI a warrant to search US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, but did not grant agents permission to search the contents of safe deposit boxes.

2. FBI raided US Private Vaults, investigating the company for drug trafficking and money laundering in March 2021. FBI opened 700 safe deposit boxes on the assumption that their contents were associated with crimes.

3. 400 Owners of the boxes filed a class action suit, saying the FBI violated their 4th amendment rights.

4. September of 2022 U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government obtained or executed the warrants

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I'd like to learn more about this because it's genuinely interesting ...

If you have a warrant for a building, or suite, and there's a bunch of little boxes inside ... what difference does that make ?

It seems to me that a savvy deposit box operator would create office space leases for every individual box such that you would have to enter a "premises" for each box, just as you would for individual offices in an office building ...

... or, at the very least, subdivide the box rooms such that every 50 boxes is in a different office with a different master tenant ...

The Savviness of this safe deposit boxes owner was using their business to obscure crimes. Their legitimate customers got caught in the middle.

If you’re looking at ways to prevent this from happening to you, the question is, would the FBI do something like this with the banks?

The answer is no. They are much larger and politically connected than a private safe deposit company. I recommend checking out a video by Steve Lehto if you want to learn more https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ

Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. Law enforcement is willfully ignorant of constitutional rights, and when they overstep, they often get away with it.

> Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society.

The only rights you have are the ones you are willing and able to fight for. "Always has been."

Marx obviously inspired a huge amount of evil but had a quote saying something like this.

Steve Lehto's coverage explicitly called out that there's no meaningful difference between what happened here and a hypothetical bank. Perhaps they wouldn't target Wells Fargo, but vast amounts of wealth are held in many tiny banks.

I'm not very smart, so I might be interpreting what you laid out incorrectly:

1 judge says, "you can grab the boxes, but not open them". The FBI grabs the boxes, then opens them anyway.

It seems like judge #2 ruled in favor of the FBI to save face.

Yes, the FBI grabbed, then opened the boxes after judge #1 said that they should not open the boxes. In fact not only did the FBI open the boxes and inspect their contents, they co-mingled the contents of all the boxes such that the boxes original contents could not be determined. Then they reached out to US Vault customers, and asked them to step forward and identify their items. Knowing that the FBI presumed guilt and not innocence, 400 of these customers filed a suit instead.

Judge #2 ruled in favor of the FBI. The Plaintiff is appealing to the 9th circuit.

> they co-mingled the contents of all the boxes such that the boxes original contents could not be determined.

This is solid evidence to support the idea that the FBI was simply looting US Vault, since confusing the contents without documenting what came from each box would blow up any evidentiary value of the items seized, and prevent the evidence from being used in any criminal prosecution, or even civil asset forfeiture proceedings against the items themselves.

It is my opinion the FBI was expecting to keep everything they stole and auction it off for a profit.

Maybe the FBI was paid by the drug lords to -confiscate- and co-mingle and thus eliminate any damning evidence

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