Another day, another disgusting display of what should be unconstitutional government overreach. Let's review:
1. Civil forfeiture is an action against the property, not the owner. And property has no rights. How convenient. This justification gets even more ridiculous when you consider the property is alleged to be the proceeds of crime but this isn't a criminal action;
2. The action to recover such money is a civil action not a criminal one so no right for the government to provide you with legal representation (as noted in this article); and
3. Police departments have a direct profit motive to seize asets without due process as they get to keep most or all of the proceeds.
The direct profit motive leads to "forfeiture corridors". This is where typically drugs will go in one direction and the resulting cash will go in the other. The police will set up to seize only the cash going in one direction and not care one iota about the drugs going the other way.
This is disgusting and has no place in the rule of law.
I've been shouting into the void about this forever: get rid of qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture laws. Last I heard, police have seized more property than was reported stolen for a long while now, and nobody can fight it because of QI. Also, insider trading by elected officials and their family should result in hard-ass prison time for everyone involved.
Edit: acting like a goat, finding the highest moral ground: every dollar seized by police without a criminal conviction gets taken by an angry mob from the representative officials.
Of course you can fight it. But they typically go after those who can't fight it, and if you make it to far they settle so it doesn't go to trial.
Blatant fourth amendment violation.
No way, cops can abide by the laws citizens lay out democratically. QI was basically magic'd out of the judiciary's dignified asshole with no basis at all in legislation. It's extra-legal thuggery.
People don't get immunity for regular jobs. Just don't do crimes. IMO they should lose all immunity the moment they exceed their lawful authority. I would, in particular, have Cheney tried and then strung up from a dead tree.
This highlights your ignorance as to what Qualified Immunity is [1][2], which is different than Sovereign immunity, or Statutory Immunity.
Government Officials would still enjoy differing levels of immunity in the course of their official duties, however qualified immunity specifically is a court created immunity that is a scourge upon the legal system that should be done away with. The legal system has methods to shield government officials from liability for doing their actual jobs, while not allowing immunity for abuse. Qualified Immunity simply shields government officials from liability for abuse
The fact is that the government, like a common thief, says to a person: Your money, or your life... In the past government would not waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon them from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets, no they would hide their theft under noble terms like taxes, fines and fees but having gotten way with this plunder for years the government is now emboldened to spring upon you from the road side directly taking your property just exactly like a common thief, but this theft is far more dastardly and shameful than common theft.
The thief takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber.
Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you.”
― Updated / modernized quote partially taken from Lysander Spooner
> The direct profit motive leads to "forfeiture corridors". This is where typically drugs will go in one direction and the resulting cash will go in the other. The police will set up to seize only the cash going in one direction and not care one iota about the drugs going the other way.
That just sounds like drug dealing with extra steps.
> That just sounds like drug dealing with extra steps.
It comes as no particular surprise that American law enforcement, below the Federal level, is not actually all that interested in stopping illegal drug trafficking. Illegal drugs mean more crime, and that's good business for them!
Not that I agree with civil forfeiture, in fact I'm highly against it, but I don't think of it as drug dealing even if the money comes from drugs. They police did not manufacture or sell the drugs, so it's a pretty big leap to call seizing cash drug dealing in any form.
Maybe "theft with extra steps" because they do in fact essentially steal the money and add the extra steps to legally inoculate themselves against the consequences if they were to go and just steal the money.
If the focus is on skimming off the top instead of actually stopping the flow of drugs, then the cops become a component in the illegal drug market. They are essentially running protection for that market... from themselves.
The leaders of cartels and triads also don't manufacture or sell drugs, they just profit off other people doing it. The money mules also don't actually touch any drugs.
Either way, profiting from the sale of illegal drugs is uncomfortably close to drug dealer.
>3. Police departments have a direct profit motive to seize assets without due process as they get to keep most or all of the proceeds.
The federal government incentivizes it as well with a profit sharing program. According to the video, its over 68.8 billion seized and the average amount is $1300. It'll cost you $5000 in legal fees to get it back, so most people won't bother. Just raise taxes already and quit with the literal highway robbery.
Wrongly incarcerated individuals should also sue the prison they were incarcerated in as an action against the property where they lived and lost productive years of their lives under the conditions of the property. It was used as part of an unjust way to extract valuable time and labor from them. As well as any police equipment used to detain them wrongly.
Furthermore, any government owned equipment used in unlawful surveillance or military operation should be subject to seizure and liquidation by any tax payer as it was spent and used in willful disregard of tax payers and their representatives.
To bad we don't have a constitutional amendment that says we should be secure in our effects and against unreasonable seizures. Feels like that kind of amendment would go well in in protecting ones property
To an outside observer, the US is a place of wild contradictions. On the one hand, you have a (perceived) high aversion to "government overreach". On the other hand, you have....this. I know that it's an enormous country with an extremely heterogenous political landscape, but it boggles the mind that this situation could be allowed there.
What's truly remarkable is the homogenous attitude towards these issues despite the enormity and diversity of the country. During the 1980's and 1990's, there was a near-universal agreement that civil rights could be violated in pursuit of drug crimes and that penalties for those crimes would be harsher than even violent and sexual crimes. Many of the most aggressive laws were passed by liberals in Congress and in liberal states.
If people ever wonder why there is such a backlash against "Boomers", the drug war and the completely insane laws that came with it are a huge part of the reason.
Disinformation, and a huge number of families decimated by a massive drug addiction problem in the US
Law Enforcement, and the Policing for profit supporters have massive budgets to convince victims of drug addiction that law enforcement is the proper place for the "war" on drugs to be fought
As such while under normal circumstances American's do have high aversion to government overreach, Americans have allowed massive amounts of overreach under the guise of protecting people from the surge of drugs
However after nearly 50 years of this "war", all we have to show for it is higher and higher drug addiction rates, and a Militarized police force that is more fitting for dictatorship than a democracy
> As such while under normal circumstances American's do have high aversion to government overreach, Americans have allowed massive amounts of overreach under the guise of protecting people from the surge of drugs
I would rephrase that to "Americans have a high aversion to overreach exercised on people like them". The Patriot Act was popular when it was passed, and only became unpopular when people realized it was being used on them. Civil Forfeiture only really came to light when it started impacting "normal" people.
We're largely fine with overreach when it only impacts foreign citizens, criminals (especially drunk drivers, drug dealers, terrorists and pedophiles, but excluding white collar crime), and undocumented workers.
I still see very little concern for how the judicial system places enormous pressure on criminal defendants to take plea deals. CBP has enormous extra-legal authority when near the border.
We've really only ever been concerned with overreach that's likely to impact us as individuals.
Can someone explain to me how civil forfeiture doesn't create a perverse incentive by making police departments dependent on the existence and availability of (potentially illicit) funds?
>For some law enforcement agencies, forfeiture funds have accounted for as much as 20% of their budgets, and are sometimes used for seemingly nonessential purchases.
No. No one can explain how it doesn't.
I was recently watching one video where the state basically outlawed civil forfeiture. But the fed hasn't. And the feds will share the profit with all agencies involved. So police in that state will still sieze money and turn it over to the feds and get a cut back.
Has there ever been a incident of civil asset forfeiture for a white collar crime? Say the coast guard seizing the yacht of someone suspected of obtaining it via insider trading?
Has there ever been a incident of civil asset forfeiture for a white collar crime?
Also from reason.com (2/18/22): "The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Family—and Never Charged Them With a Crime" [0]
In April 2020, agents showed up at the Nelsons' home and informed them that Carl—a former real estate transaction manager for Amazon—was under investigation for allegedly depriving the tech behemoth of his "honest services." In plainer terms, they accused him of showing favor to certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks. "That never happened and is exactly why I've fought as long and hard as I have," he says. "It's that simple."
"Central to the American criminal justice system is that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty. But civil forfeiture isn't a criminal action; it's a civil one, occurring in civil court, where defendants are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer."
Part of the problem is that it happens to people who have stuff to lose (because people with little to lose don't wind up sitting on 10k in cash or similiar). If this happened to people with nothing to lose there's be a big enough body count that we'd have solved it by now.
There is literally no legal way to stop this from happening. Even if it is made illegal everywhere there are effectively zero DAs willing to prosecute police for anything they do on the job.
Ok. But you can make civil asset forfeiture illegal. Now they may so seize your property, but it would be a more straightforward fourth amendment battle
They are literally stealing from the people they are charged with serving in broad daylight with zero actual justification, if it’s made illegal they will simply not give you a receipt. The individuals that use “civil forfeiture” are not like normal people, they are movie mafia goons and they cannot be reformed.
This sort of stuff is why cryptocurrency was created. Despite its flaws, it does impede the governments ability to take your assets without criminal charges.
This gets trotted out whenever civil asset forfeiture comes up on HN, so I'll trot the standard response out: any financial scheme that requires you to do a crime to avoid corrupt institutions is a bad scheme. Hiding your money from the government muddies the water in exactly the way that a prosecutor or overzealous cop loves to see: it's direct evidence that you know your assets won't stand up to scrutiny.
The solution, as it's always been, is to criminalize asset seizure and go after agencies that use it to maintain their slush funds. Cryptocurrency isn't in the picture.
It's not illegal in the U.S. to hide your assets or to hold cryptocurrency, and I'm sure a prosecutor would try, but possessing cryptocurrency is hardly evidence of crime.
I definitely agree with your second point though, it would be a much better solution to criminalize civil asset seizure, but that is a much harder thing to achieve in the short term.
It is not separately illegal to hide your assets in the US, except where doing so involves committing other crimes (such as not paying your taxes.)
However, hiding your assets is functionally illegal in the circumstances that are interesting during civil asset forfeiture: civil cases have discovery available to them, and the standard for compelled information during civil discovery is extremely low (the prosecution only needs to show that the information might reasonably lead to admissible evidence). Hiding your assets during discovery means perjuring yourself.
>However, hiding your assets is functionally illegal in the circumstances that are interesting during civil asset forfeiture: civil cases have discovery available to them [...] Hiding your assets during discovery means perjuring yourself.
1. IANAL, but can't you plead the fifth on that?
2. I agree that cryptocurrency isn't a silver bullet against government action, but it still seems like an improvement to the status quo, where they can seize your stuff whenever they want and you have to sue them to get it back. With crypto, the most they can do is figure out how much money you have, but they can't seize anything without going through the courts. That in itself basically solves the civil forfeiture problem.
I think it varies by state. The 5th amendment explicitly concerns criminal matters and not civil ones, so each state has a patchwork of laws and jurisprudence determining whether you can plead (and what the consequences are) during civil discovery.
During a quick search, it looks like many states allow adverse inference when pleading 5A in civil cases.
That sort of defeats the entire point of the 5th amendment. At best, it should perhaps signal an investigation may be called for, but I'd argue that civil asset forfeiture is misqualified as a civil case if that is the case, as the admission of adverse inference against a plaintiff in a civil case would further tilt the scales of justice in favor of the government, which if we're really being honest here, does not need the help.
> That sort of defeats the entire point of the 5th amendment.
Not really -- civil matters aren't matters of crime (it's not illegal to divorce your spouse), so it makes sense on the surface that protections against self incrimination don't apply.
The problem here is civil asset forfeiture itself, which should be either completely illegal or at the very least subject to a higher standard of proof than it currently is.
Pity that despite having manuals on parallel construction, the government never seems to be held to account for acts of perjury; as in order to establish it perjured itself, it must admit to doing so, and anything that could come to light to convincingly do so is classified.
The judicial system jas some serious issues when it comes to not reigning in Executive excess.
Some cops carry a device that drains debit cards[0], there’s no reason to expect they won't soon have a device that automates draining all accounts available on your phone or anything that looks like a private key.
Looks like the device is a card reader with some sort of backend api to freeze/seize accounts. Presumably the the only way it works is that the issuers are willing to give law enforcement a blank check to do whatever they want. I don't see how that's the case for cryptocurrency wallets, which are at least password protected.
This is definitely a concerning device, but you would think that it would be harder to take password protected keys off of a device than it would be to swipe a credit card.
That's how it's ended up, which is a shame. The idea behind cryptocurrency had the potential to be used for good, but the execution has been so poorly pulled off that it ended up being scams, speculation, and air pollution.
only very rarely do intelligent people get their wallets drained -- its mostly young people hopping on the cultural movement (e.g. NFTs, games) without actually knowing what they are doing.
if you abide by a few basic principles (keep your wallet cold, actually read through smart contracts before executing them, read the specification of everywhere you are putting your tokens) you'll be just fine.
The prior poster's point wasn't that the government couldn't get it, it was that they couldn't get it without due process: They'd have to use their ability to imprison the target to get his securely stored Bitcoin, and in doing to they'd implicate his constitutional rights.
To the sibling comment, -- sure Bitcoin exchanges are sadly a security crapshow but that its a brief exposure (and one can obtain Bitcoin without an exchange, though the alternatives have their own costs). Once you've obtained and securely stored your Bitcoins they should be safe from both hackers and government due process violations.
It's not always easy to correctly store Bitcoin, but it's possible which is something you can't say about other equivalently liquid assets when your threat model includes things like the abuses described in this article.
1. Civil forfeiture is an action against the property, not the owner. And property has no rights. How convenient. This justification gets even more ridiculous when you consider the property is alleged to be the proceeds of crime but this isn't a criminal action;
2. The action to recover such money is a civil action not a criminal one so no right for the government to provide you with legal representation (as noted in this article); and
3. Police departments have a direct profit motive to seize asets without due process as they get to keep most or all of the proceeds.
The direct profit motive leads to "forfeiture corridors". This is where typically drugs will go in one direction and the resulting cash will go in the other. The police will set up to seize only the cash going in one direction and not care one iota about the drugs going the other way.
This is disgusting and has no place in the rule of law.