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Comment by ajb | Hacker News Reader

Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but maybe there is some institutional incentive there.

I would argue that breaking the incentive is the best way to stop this,as opposed to fighting the detail of seizure justification (although the concept of 'criminal property' without charging the owner should be limited too)

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General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates

The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their mansions, etc but that requires making it socially unacceptable to support the status quo which means shunning those that do (i.e. basically what happened with racism in the 60s and homosexuality in the 00s) which is hard.

If the last few years should have showed anything it's how little the elected officials typically care about balancing, let alone create excess, budget.

Exactly. Even Trump, whose main policy promise was reducing spending, is currently 12% over budget (4% budget increase requested from congress + 8% that he's actually overspent so far)

Well there was that Tea Party movement. But the reality is that America is addicted to spending more money than comes in.

The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a unilateral push.)

That narrative was created by the journalists Gamergate was against, to deflect against their criticisms. It was never actually true.

And the real Grade A irony is that the same is true for the tea party and he took the post-hoc media spin hook line and sinker.

If you take a step back you'll see that while tea-party, occupy wall street, Maga 1, mostly peaceful 2020/BLM and Maga 2 all take aim at different points in the establishment they're all firmly rooted in the discontent that every day people have with the amount the powers that be are lightening their pockets for causes they don't agree with.

The grassroots movements will keep coming (and they will probably become more extreme too, and the powers that be will keep trying to co-opt and redirect them) until something changes.

My initial description was correct. Unfortunately, people like yourself subscribe to the outcome of years of commiseration that commenced with the aim of rationalizing what was clearly bigotry to even contemporary observers (I was one of those).

It is correct that the grassroots movement that you mentioned had a core of righteous discontent. As mentioned, the right portions were co-opted quickly and refashioned into an arm of neoconservatism. The left was popularly (though not ideologically) discredited or otherwise neutered by reliance on reluctant liberal "allies". The proof is in the rightward march of American policy in the interim.

And THAT narrative was created by Gamergater grifters. IT was even less true than whatever you might find flawed in GP.

That's mostly because what "comes in" has been deliberately reduced. US, apart from the ludicrous health system, doesn't seem to spend much more than other western countries.

And it died the moment there was a Republican in the White House because the GoP doesn't actually care about budget balance, outside of a few individual members, it's just an electoral strategy against Democrats. They have no problem pushing through massive tax cuts with "budget neutral" tricks to get it through with the assumption that they'll simply be extended any ways (and those are just your tax cuts the business tax cuts are, of course, permanent).

Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement.

On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.

Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)

I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change.

Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.

I've also never personally been to NYC or Antartica, thus neither of these places really exists.

when you assert that something exists, it is generally expected that you would point at documented examples. for example, consumer protection organisations, or petrol lobbies, etc might have an interest in documenting those things. do those documents exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio#

The south catches a bad rap for speed trap towns but seems like every 10yr or so some town in the midwest abolishes its police department or something because of that sort of behavior.

once every ten years doesn't sound as bad as the others have been making it out to be.

> Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.

Legally, of course. But there is such a thing as an artificially low speed limit. If the road conditions allow driving in safety at 60 km/h but a town installs a sign that says that you have to drive at 10 km/h, with no pedestrian traffic or bends or anything at all that could justify it, then that is a speed trap, and drivers who drive the normal speed of 60 on that stretch are not doi g anything wrong, the law is just being abused against them.

In Czechia, the maximal jump between two signs is, AFAIK, 30 km/h, so as not to require abrupt braking.

So I see people saying this all the time, but they forget one crucial factor - noise. Roads next to houses have lower speed limit not just because of people on the road or sharp turns, but because cars driving faster generate more noise(exponentially more noise in fact).

The equivalent in my area are "bus gates" i.e. lanes at junctions reserved for buses during certain periods that automatically generate fines.

In principle, great, but the trick is that the signage is such an inscrutable combination of badly placed adhoc signs and road-markings that a huge number of visitors with zero intent to breach a rule get fined.

There is a common sense principle such things should meet: if the revenue from a traffic measure is high and consistent then not only has it failed in it's purpose to change behaviour but there is something bogus about it's setup.

A judge first ruled the signage was fine but after seeing so many appeals, he admitted he had been definitively proven wrong and it needed to be improved.

Here’s a Propublica article about a Louisiana town that exists financially from traffic fines.

https://www.propublica.org/article/fenton-louisiana-brought-...

Then it wasn’t a speed trap. Just running radar is not a speed trap, it’s enforcement.

Speed traps are as described by others: abrupt, significant changes in speed limit with minimal warning and poorly-visible signage.

Look up the story of Waldo, Florida, which for years and years did this on US 301. The town lies on the main route between Gainesville, location of the University of Florida, and Jacksonville, where it meets I-95 and thus access to points north along the East Coast. It was one of the few places that the American Automobile Association would directly call out as a speed trap.

I know that Alabama has had a series of laws starting in the 90s passed by the state legislature to rein in such activity. Not entirely successful, but not without its victories, either.

Large jumps should be plainly illegal, and bad visibility of signage should be a defense in the court.

This has to be legislated at the state level, though, or the municipalities will go wild in their policing for profit.

These always slide by because the cost of defending yourself in court is enormous even if you have a completely simple case that anyone with a modicum of intelligence could handle. You can’t do it remotely.

You are being wilfully obtuse.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-...

https://reason.com/2022/05/08/11-insanely-corrupt-speed-trap...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speed-trap-profits-could-come-e...

> Waldo, Florida, is just two square miles, and Highway 301 runs right through the village, but the highway speed limit changed six times, enabling police to write thousands of tickets a year. The AAA put up a billboard warning drivers.

It's the responsibility of town planners, etc. to design roads and their speed limits for safe traffic flow. Sudden speed limit changes are dangerous, and a much safer approach - if, say, a highway runs through a village for two miles, with multiple junctions - is to have a single speed limit for the entire stretch. Not to have speed ups and slow downs, aggressive enforcement, and evidence that the majority of your village's funding comes from fines. That is municipal malfeasance.

>> Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.

That's not how driving actually works in practice. Most of the time drivers rely on a learned sense of what the standard speed limit is based on the type of road. E.g. highways are 65 - 70, major roads are about 55, neighborhoods are 25 - 35, etc. When I learned to drive, the state's drivers manual literally had a section on what speed limit you should assume on different types of road if you haven't seen a sign.

That's to say nothing of situations where the sign is actually hidden. For example, I was once pulled over on a road that abruptly dropped more than 25 mph, on a significant downward slope, where a tree was growing in front of the speed limit sign.

Did you fight it? The tree should have gotten your ticket thrown out.

You have never driven through Utah. My one and only speeding ticket ever was when the speed limit changed from 55 to 30, and the sign was behind a turn and a cop was right there who grabbed me immediately. Of course the speed limit went back up to 55 about 100 feet after that. I hyper noticed this BS everywhere since.

I'm not sure that violating a speed limit going abruptly from 100 to 10, with the sign hidden behind a bush, and without any apparent reason for the limit to be changed is anything else than a scheme to collect money.

This is why, IMO, municipalities should have no ability to set their own speed limits. They should be specified by a disinterested third-party engineer at design time and be immutable without physically changing the road, or certain aspects of the road’s use (building a school, for example).

Or evidence that the existing speed limit is unsafe (e.g. good arguments, car accidents) and should not have been set in the first place.

Current civil engineering best practices is that if a sufficient amount of traffic is violating the limit the limit is what's wrong. Several states use methods consistent with this to set their speed limits generally. Many do not.

Regardless, this is a distraction. Law is the codification of acceptable behavior. Rules that come with force of law should not substantially deviate from what average people consider acceptable.

Furthermore, these sorts of bad laws aren't just limited to property seizure and speeding. From federal tax law to municipal zoning these is no shortage of these sorts of laws, rules with force of law and precedents that are crafted in such a manner as to give the enforcers unilateral power to take as they please and with checks limits generally only existing not to prevent abuse but to prevent the enforcers from getting so greedy that their racket gets outlawed. All examples of such laws and rules are bad and ought to be done away with.

Thank you for illustrating exactly what one of the enablers of these sorts of bad policies looks like. I will leave imagining what a similar argument in favor of civil asset forfeiture looks like as an exercise for the reader.

> Law is the codification of acceptable behavior.

Good luck lobbying the town to change the speed limit. They don't care what you think about the limit, if you drive past that speed you'll have to pay.

And just to rant a bit: as someone who lives on a too-straight street (but very local and with pedestrians, including, children, walking on often) where dickheads constantly drive well past the limit because they probably think they know best what's "acceptable", I would love them to get hefty fines every time they did it.

>And just to rant a bit: as someone who lives on a too-straight street (but very local and with pedestrians, including, children, walking on often) where dickheads constantly drive well past the limit because they probably think they know best what's "acceptable", I would love them to get hefty fines every time they did it.

Once again, you're doing a great job illustrating how we got to the status quo we have. You're littering in the park, ideologically speaking. You want heavy handed enforcement on your pet issue. Like litter it's not a problem a a few people do it but when you multiply by every other shortsighted person who does the same and the end result is the political will to allow law enforcement to get away with beyond the pale behavior like in TFA.

The problem is that the road design doesn't fit its usage. In an ideal world the street would be redesign so the driver naturally adopt the desired speed limit.

To add to this, "redesigned" doesn't have to mean making it less straight but cheaper things like making it narrower will also slow down traffic.

> They don't care what you think about the limit

The outcome for greedy, corrupt towns who enjoy profiting by abusing the law is DEATH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio#Dissolution

So perhaps, for their own survival, they should care what their victims think, and not abuse their position.

> as someone who lives on a too-straight street [...] where dickheads constantly drive well past the limit

Then fix the street. Modern design codes call for chicanes and street furniture to narrow the street. When streets are narrow, drivers naturally slow down.

A straight, wide road with a low speed limit is like a door with a handle and a sign saying "push" - and you want to fine anyone who intuitively pulls the handle.

The problem is with the road, not the drivers. My city has re-engineered many roads that used to have four lanes into two lane roads with a middle left turn lane along with roundabouts or curbs that ‘narrow’ the road at intersections which makes drivers slow down. Roads where traffic used to move at 45 MPH now moves at 30 MPH.

Go to city council meetings and demand that the road is re-engineered instead of blaming drivers.

The road has speed bumpers already. Most streets in my area have a narrow section through which only one car can pass, so drivers going in either direction have to negotiate going through, but my street doesn't. So, drivers know very well they should keep the speed down, but unfortunately outside of making it physically impossible to go faster, people just can't help themselves doing it. It's very telling of human nature. I do think we need to blame those drivers going over anyway. Yes, people should be held accountable and be counted on fucking holding back their foot when on a small, narrow local street. This discourse that it's not the driver's fault is incredibly dishonest. Yes it is.

Afraid not. Most regular traffic is aware of speed traps, it will slow down in the zone and speed up right after to make up time.

It's far more effective to lower the road's natural speed by introducing curves, roundabouts, rumble strips, flexible barriers and speed bumps.

Why not have the revenue go to victims of crime? Setup a general fund so that judges can allocate recovered funds to help the worst affected.

Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes.

> Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes.

I don't really follow you. Are you suggesting that the victims fund would over-compensate victims so that they make a profit from being robbed etc?

Currently, lots of people do make a career out of causing crimes - we call them criminals.

Perhaps distributing among a large list of charities would be better. “A large list” would help prevent gaming the system with police / fire charities or something.

With incentives, actual numbers matter. So yes, speed trap towns have bad incentives, but for national governments fines going to general revenue does not cause a problem even if in principle it is a bad incentive.

In my country, local authorities are often accused of using parking fines as revenue, but the police are rarely accused of seizing for gain. As an unofficial punishment yes, but not for gain.

Seized property should be held in a neutral escrow account until the case is adjudicated, and then automatically returned to the victim if they are not convicted of a crime within a reasonable time.

This is actually the same reason why I'm surprised when anyone that is into bitcoin likes the idea of the federal strategic reserve. The government specifically saying they won't buy any, they'll just put any seized bitcoin into the reserve to be used later.

Why would anyone like that the government created an incentive to seize more bitcoin?

imo people who understand bitcoin and its purpose don’t want government to buy it for strategic reserve. That said if you hold your own keys then bitcoin protects you from this type of abuse of power

Holding your own keys would help avoid seizure, but assuming the state already has enough access to reliably track the current owner of any btc they could still come after you regardless of where the keys are.

They also could prevent you from using the btc in any non-private transaction. Companies are required to know their customers, it wouldn't be hard for them to be forced to block specific bitcoin hashes. You could still trade it privately, but it would effectively be gray money and should be worth less.

Interesting scenario. If a government can tie a specific person to a specific wallet, they don't need the keys to go forward with whatever they want to do with that info.

I wonder if the FBI can proclaim a certain wallet is yours and you did some bad thing so you have to surrender those coins. Without the private key, they can't forcefully confiscate your coins. But I wonder if they can say "If any coins leave that wallet, we'll take retaliatory action!".

I would expect that a scenario where they could legally confiscate your coins is also a scenario where they could legally arrest and charge you with a crime. Confiscation of money is likely the least of your concerns there.

The government could gain valuable intel from bitcoin addresses all the way back to the Mt Gox scandal. They would have only gotten more access since then, especially with legitimate businesses operating as exchanges that follow KYC regulations.

If the government holds seized bitcoin as opposed to selling it, that will tend to increase the price.

I guess that's why, though the government would then have an incentive to seize as much as it can legally seize.

It'd be one thing if the bitcoin was just thrown in a hole or destroyed. A strategic reserve is a financial asset though, the government will want to grow that fund to help fund pet projects while running a ridiculous deficit.

The government effectively prints money at will; it doesn't need bitcoin. This is an attempt by the current administration to curry favor with people who like bitcoin.

today the government prints money at will, that can change. They will be creating a new federal power with a strategic reserve, it will get abused eventually.

Actually, this fund is THE money printer. Ever increasing in value, not directly usable but great for accounting. It can be used to balance real spending.

There's such an odd deference to the perpetrator's chosen language here.

If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison.

There's something infantile about how we go along with the state's fictions and pretenses rather than just calling their wording of "civil forfeiture" by its natural wording of "robbery".

I think the origin of this the formation of "district attorneys", followed by only allowing them to prosecute, as well as professional police forces. This is a sharp deviation from and degradation of common law, which used to allow anyone to initiate a prosecution against anyone, and which levied the responsibility of law enforcement on everyone.

I'm totally comfortable with calling the OP's experience robbery. I used the word "seizure" because my comment is about what the law allows, not this case in particular.

> If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison.

I'm a Federal Employee, not a LEO. If I take someone's wallet, I can claim qualified immunity.

https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-c...

For the US I think all fines and seized money should go to the social security administration.

> Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive.

In a country where tips at restaurants are not only socially accepted but actually expected, this seems "expected behavior" as well, in my opinion.

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