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Judge: NYC Seizing Thousands of Cars Without Warrants Is Unconstitutional
- pbreit 11y agoIs this an Uber thing? I didn't see it mentioned.
- _delirium 11y agoThis is a much older fight in NYC than Uber. They're probably involved in a good number of the cars in question in recent years, but a back-and-forth over to what extent to tolerate vs. crack down on unlicensed taxi services has been going on for decades. The general category is often called by the somewhat racist term "gypsy cabs".
- talmand 11y agoWhy is that a racist term? To be honest, I had never heard the term until recently when I heard it used on a TV show.
- PhineasRex 11y ago"gypsy" is an ethnic slur that refers to the Romani people.
- talmand 11y agoInteresting. From my quick reading I can see why some would disagree with the usage. Although, I also find it interesting that, apparently, in English law it refers to a nomadic person regardless of race or origin. Which is a use of "gypsy" that I was familiar with.
- spectralblu 11y agoUber wasn't explicitly mentioned, but it just sounds like the TLC is overly trigger happy in seizing cars, presumably because of the uptake in services like Lyft and Uber who in the TLC's eyes are skirting around the law.
- gharbad 11y agoBy "skirting around" do you mean "blatantly flouting"? Because that's the truth of it.. Uber, Lyft, et al are just central dispatch for gypsy cabs. I don't see any reason they shouldn't get massive fines or seized vehicles in all locales they operate.
- goldenkey 11y agoCentral dispatch for gypsy cabs? Are you trying to make a cogent argument? because all I see is a nasty insult. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- amalcon 11y ago"Gypsy cab" is a slang term for an unlicensed taxi, and no longer has anything to do with the Romani people. It's not a term I personally use (outside a descriptive context like this), but it doesn't seem intended as an insult.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoMaybe not, but wouldn't it be better to avoid antiquated ethnic slurs like "Gypsy cab" in favor of cool neutral terms like "unlicensed"?
- jo909 11y agoOne of the (I guess intended) effects of using an aniquated slang word is to illustrate that this is not a new problem, but that this very same problem exists for so long that it got its own well known insulting term a long time ago.
- bsder 11y agoWhat's the deal with all the Forbes links redirecting to welcome? How do I stop this? I tried checking the "Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page" box in Firefox, but it doesn't appear to be stopping it. Presumably too many people are starting to use things like "Google Sent Me".
- ukd1 11y agoCan we just ban submissions from sites like this?
- bcoates 11y agoHere's a better, less Forbesy article that loads for me: http://www.amny.com/news/taxi-and-limousine-commission-seizing-of-cars-is-unconstitutional-federal-judge-rules-1.10911628 http://www.amny.com/news/taxi-and-limousine-commission-seizi...
- pavornyoh 11y agoThank you for the link. The original link isn't working for me. Hmm, I wonder if this is connected to this in the NY Times- http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-is-taking-millions-of-manhattan-rides-away-from-taxis/?ex_cid=538twitter http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-is-taking-millions-...
- dang 11y agoOk, we've changed the url to that from http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/10/13/judge-rules-that-new-york-city-seizing-thousands-of-cars-without-warrants-is-unconstitutional/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/10/13/j.... I'm not sure it's a better article, but probably close enough.
- crisnoble 11y agoGhostery counts 57 trackers. How many different ways are there to count sheep anyways?
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- avoutthere 11y agoWow, how was this ever legal to begin with?
- jff 11y agoThe authoritarians that run NYC are tremendously contemptuous of the common man. See: anything Bloomberg has ever done.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoStop and frisk something something...
- zyxley 11y agoIt wasn't. The people doing it just pretended it was.
- Falkon1313 11y agoIt was legal because in the king's eyes, the colonists weren't really citizens, they were just subjects, and therefore subject to search and seizure on a whim. That was one of the reasons we had a revolution. There was also a brief period between 1789-1791 where it wasn't explicitly clear that it was illegal, but that was resolved by amending the constitution.
- thoman23 11y agoSo the government should not arbitrarily seize property from its own citizenry? I'm sure they will take that under advisement.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoIs the lack of any page displaying with adblocking turned on intentional, or is it simply bad design?
- barkingcat 11y agoIt means you're using a bad ad blocker. Using uBlock origin it displays fine.
- notwhereyouare 11y agoI had to disable my uBlock Origin in order to see the page
- gorhill 11y agoJust checked and it works fine using default settings. If you added more filter lists, the issue is likely caused by one of them.
- zaroth 11y agoI agree 100% this is a perfect example of where we the people rely entirely on the judiciary to provide a remedy. That such an obviously illegal practice could continue for years unfortunately does not reflect well on any thoughts of swift justice. It should be possible to get a temporary restraining order against the city in cases like this within days of the first contested case. It should be easy to demonstrate there is no imminent harm of telling the city, you have to stop doing this until we decide it's OK or not, and quite the opposite, cars are an essential and significant asset, and this policy placed a potentially massive burden on the citizens it effected. In one of the examples, by the time the victim prevailed against the illegal seizure backed by zero evidence or investigation of any kind, they had already sold off his car, and offered nothing in return. A pretty large part of the population doesn't have a spare $2,000 in cash to get their own car back while the city makes them prove in front of a Kangaroo Court that they were driving their own family to the airport... Missing from the article -- is there any hope of any kind of restitution? Can the victims now pursue a civil case against the city?
- mtgx 11y agoThis is why the US needs a Constitutional Court so badly to vet bills after they get signed by the president, like other countries have. Then you wouldn't get stuck with unconstitutional laws for many years or even decades, letting them abuse an entire generation of people. Now the replies will go like "but the US has an adversarial justice system!". Yeah. Except for that whole three decades old secret FISA court that is in charge of spying. No adversary there.
- adventured 11y agoHaving either an adversarial system or constitutional court doesn't stop a government from using its power to do illegal, immoral, secretive, or plainly unconstitutional things. Historically, and across pretty much every nation that has ever existed, governments have routinely chosen to disobey their own laws, do terrible things in secret, and so on. I also fail to see how a constitutional court prevents FISA from existing if you have executive orders and national security doctrine (the two things that made FISA and the NSA spying possible). You'd need to throw out a lot of things to make a constitutional court work. As it is, national security doctrine would simply bypass a constitutional court check when it comes to creating FISA. You would have to try to elevate it above all possible counter considerations, and good luck with that.
- dannysu 11y agoI was getting redirected to http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/ if I clicked the link on HN. If I copy & paste the link to a new tab, then it worked for me.
- bsimpson 11y agoIf I turn off Ghostery, the link loads for me. They are probably trying to dissuade ad blocking. It might work better for them if they told you what was happening (instead of just sending you to a blank page).
- scintill76 11y agoOr, it just breaks in a way they didn't intend or know about. I've had both Ghostery and HTTPS Everywhere subtly break things, in cases where the author probably wouldn't bother to target those users. I guess we're kind of asking for it, running a client that doesn't comply with standards...
- Jerry2 11y ago>If I copy & paste the link to a new tab, then it worked for me. It worked because you opened it the second time. First time you open it, it places a cookie on your machine so it doesn't show you a redirection second time you open a link on Forbes. So the solution is to just open it in tabs twice... and close the first tab.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dools 11y agoJust another example of how prohibiting human behaviour instead of regulating leads to over zealous police and undue burden on law abiding citizens. They should take a page out of London's book and allow minicabs to operate.
- aswanson 11y agoWhy is the regular news reading more and more like my Onion RSS feed? I have a feeling things were always this absurd, if not more so, but the idiocy gets amplified now by the channels being so connected.
- themartorana 11y agoIgnorance is, in fact, bliss, sometimes.
- Arnt 11y agoSounds like a contorted way of saying "I click the clickbait" ;)
- grecy 11y ago>“‘Probable cause’ is not a talismanic phrase that can be waved like a wand to justify the seizure of any property without a warrant” Does that apply to civil forfeiture as well? Sounds like it should.
- mtgx 11y agoFor some reason, Courts so far have agreed to buy the government's whole twisted logic that "things can be guilty of crimes", and under that twisted logic it seems to make sense to do that.
- liquidise 11y agoVery true. I am still awaiting the day this is extrapolated to gun rights and watch the hypocrisies rain.
- ende 11y agoHypocrisies?
- ende 11y agoI was asking a legitimate question. Why downvote that?
- scott_karana 11y ago> I am still awaiting the day this is extrapolated to gun rights and watch the hypocrisies rain. Are you saying that all gun owners are also supporters of civil forfeiture?... Or have I misunderstood?
- brewdad 11y agoI think he's saying that guns kill people, not people with guns kill people.
- maehwasu 11y agoAnd once again, the nice thing about living in not America is that bribes are significantly cheaper.
- timtas 11y agoYet another reason why I've stopped using plural pronouns to refer to the state at any level.
- peeters 11y agoI think the most interesting, or scary, part of all of this is the justification for this warrantless search and seizure: to stop Uber from operating in the city. Usually the government has to invoke public safety to try to justify removing individual rights. Now they can just invoke the taxi lobby I guess.
- dandare 11y agoThis is on of the things that fascinates me about the US. Such blatant injustice would be unthinkable in the Europe.
- talmand 11y agoNah, I'm sure Europe has their own flavors of injustice against its people. It's just the nature of governments.
- bzbarsky 11y agoIt would? http://www.webpronews.com/french-police-told-to-seize-uber-cars-on-sight-2015-06/ http://www.webpronews.com/french-police-told-to-seize-uber-c... begs to differ, after about 30 seconds of googling.
- mapt 11y agoYou: The city is stealing my car without probable cause in an attempt to extort money from me. City DA: No they're not. What's your recourse here? Call the FBI or federal prosecutor and report an organized crime syndicate being run by corrupt law enforcement professionals? Because... isn't that what this is? Is there any onus, or even incentive, for them to listen and investigate? Is the only way to redress the problems a civil lawsuit against the City citing Bivens and various appellate court principles like malicious prosecution? Because grand theft auto, extortion, racketeering, and fabrication of evidence / perjury are not civil offenses, and conservative readings of the concept of 'standing', as I understand it, make it rather difficult to challenge the authors of a failed / withdrawn prosecution in order to get at the legal principles which triggered it. Concepts like this one, as well as things like civil asset forfeiture, are so clearly in direct violation of the Constitution that at some point, it's not legitimate to shelter enforcers under cover of "just following orders". We still have laws (Constitutional and common), and Peabody, Minnesota doesn't have the right to do things like put all the gay residents to death by legislative fiat & judicial compliance; If you found this occurring, you wouldn't need to file a lawsuit alleging that a constitutional overreach has been committed and demanding merely that the policy cease to be in effect. Instead, you would get some overriding authority, like the state police or the FBI, to run in with SWAT teams and arrest and prosecute every last person peripherally attached to the Peabody legislature or judiciary or law enforcement. For murder. No amount of 'adopting selective prosecution based on what we can win, since the courts recognized a valid affirmative defence' or 'changing training programs to be more in line with civil rights' or 'firing/reprimanding the officers involved and settling a civil suit' makes killing the gay population of Peabody less of a crime, and no amount of lawsuit would be required to get that recognized.
- zaroth 11y agoWish more people would simply call it what it is. If we can't even do that, certainly we'll never see an actual prosecution. The name of a thing is important, and calling it exactly 'grand theft auto, extortion, racketeering, and fabrication of evidence / perjury' versus something like 'civil asset forfeiture' or in this case, not even that, it's a glorified falsified parking ticket! I mean, how did this actually play out in court? "So, Your Honor, you're not going to believe what happened. I was going to drop my niece at the airport and these thugs pulled me out of the car, showed me a badge, impounded my car, and now want me to sign a document and pay them a stack of cash to get it back." Prosecutor, "Actually, we employ 170 people to do this, and we've done it 21,000 times". The article they quote saying it's a corrupt money-making scheme for the city was an interesting read: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140724/long-island-city/taxi-inspectors-say-theyre-pressured-make-illegal-cab-seizures http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140724/long-island-city/ta...
- c22 11y agoThis is a stupid grammar nitpick I only offer in the hopes that you find it useful for your writing. No dismissal of your arguments or denigration of your character is intended. I think you want the word "affected" in your second paragraph. Effects are the result of causation, whereas affect refers to the causation. The citizens were affected by the effects of this policy.
- ricksplat 11y agoYou actually wrote two paragraphs to tell somebody they misspelled with an 'e' instead of an 'a'
- c22 11y agoI'm sure we've all wasted keystrokes on stupider things.
- marincounty 11y agoYea, but it just getting old? I'm glad someone finally said something. Think of it this way, you loose your residence, and job. In turn, I tell you, "Well, nature is beautiful?". And yes, we can all find grammatical mistakes. Now, producing something worth reading is another story?
- ricksplat 11y agoYeah it is just getting old. A pedant picks up on a single spelling mistake in three paragraphs of perfectly fine text, and it's a matter worthy of commentary. No matter how politely it's phrased, or how elegantly the correction presented, that's just plain ignorant. The fact that it got upvoted too just illustrates the commentariat are more interested in style over substance.
- c22 11y agoI agree, which is why I virtually never make comments about minor errors in execution and why I felt compelled to add a disclaimer to this one. I just find that this particular error is very subtle and trips a lot of people up so thought it might be helpful to highlight in case it was not a simple typo. I never expected it to garner this much diversive conversation.
- briandear 11y agoHas anyone ever died because of an unlicensed limo? Is it really a threat to public safety? If consenting adults agree to a transaction, I am not sure how that's the government's business. However, if an unlicensed vehicle was portraying itself as a licensed vehicle, then you have a fraud issue, not a public safety one.
- _Codemonkeyism 11y agoSome countries require health checks on drivers so they don't act as super spreaders.
- MrApathy 11y agoSome years back NYC [1] (under Mayor Giuliani) instituted a policy whereby drivers suspected of driving while intoxicated would have their vehicles seized by the police. Unlike unlicensed limos, DWI is a real public safety problem. The problem with what NYC did, however, was that a driver could be found not guilty of DWI and still have his car seized. There were many complaints regarding due process, uneven applications, etc., and eventually the city abandoned this policy. I mention this not because I sympathize with drunk drivers (I don't), but because it's not the first time the city has done something like this. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/24/nyregion/drive-drunk-lose-the-car-principle-faces-a-test.html http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/24/nyregion/drive-drunk-lose-...
- studentrob 11y agoMarvin in pulp fiction maybe? Just kidding. Who knows. It does seem like an easy way to get away with such a crime. In the past it may have been a legit safety concern. Now with uber it seems safe. Police can track the location of the car, driver and passenger. Probably has something to do with collecting tax money too. Licensed means it is easier to track taxes. Uber doesn't need the traditional licenses for reporting taxes