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> Federal drug agents regularly mine Americans’ travel information to profile people who might be ferrying money for narcotics traffickers — though they almost

by zeveb 10y ago

> Federal drug agents regularly mine Americans’ travel information to profile people who might be ferrying money for narcotics traffickers — though they almost never use what they learn to make arrests or build criminal cases. > Instead, that targeting has helped the Drug Enforcement Administration seize a small fortune in cash. So, they're basically the Sheriff of Nottingham, or the old Central European robber barons.

gtirloni 10y ago
> DEA units assigned to patrol 15 of the nation’s busiest airports seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people over the past decade after concluding the money was linked to drug trafficking So was it drug money or not?
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I mean, it's plausible in all these stories that it is. But it seems like there should be a higher standard before the feds can take tens of thousands of dollars from you.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    Ok some cognitive dissonance here I see: If someone told you Brazilian police were taking people's cash you wouldn't for one second think there was some non self serving aspect to this. You wouldn't even look to see if there was any law supporting it. You would just dismiss it as corrupt police officers in a corrupt system, just like you should be doing in this case. Forgot for a moment that you recited that pledge every morning for 13 years of your life, and think about how someone not from America would perceive this
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      I'm not saying "hey, it's totally OK that they're doing this" or that it's not self-serving. What I'm saying is that these people are not exactly as sympathetic/blameless as some of the other asset forfeiture articles I've read.
      - MaysonL 10y ago
        So what? Drug dealers have constitutional rights too, and depriving them of their rights weakens your rights and my rights.
      - cloudjacker 10y ago
        not blameless when viewed in support of a victimless crime and flawed law riddled with conflicts of interest, discriminatory discretion, and self serving ends. if you want a grand jury to find that the federal officers acted within agency guidelines, then great, you will continue to be able to sleep at night if you want the supreme court to continue to find those laws constitutional, then great you will continue to sleep at night. Eugenics programs are constitutional and so politically unpopular that all 50 states have laws that nullify the practice. The rest of us see this perverse practice for what is and would prefer if Congress modifies laws to instruct its agencies to stop the practice and stop funding themselves by taking citizen's money instead of preparing funding pitch decks for representatives which require oversight
- e40 10y ago
  They'll never know if it was drug money. Some probably is, but I'm sure some is not.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  It's easy for them to conclude, with no due process. They just say so, take the money, and leave you having to file suit and fight the government to get your own money back. Asset forfeiture is more of a travesty than money "laundering" being a crime is. The sicker part is that it's just admitting that their justice system is so broken that they wouldn't be able to get convictions against these "criminals" otherwise.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    > Asset forfeiture is more of a travesty than money "laundering" being a crime is. I'm not sure why it's a travesty that it's illegal to conceal the source of illegally-earned money.
    - mindslight 10y ago
      The entire purpose of money is to be fungible. $1 is worth exactly the same as another $1. Inventing the crime of "money laundering" erodes the very concept of money by making its exchange value dependent on who you know and how politically connected they are. Furthermore, forcing people to structure their activities to be legible to the government is making everybody work as an informant against themselves.
      - gohrt 10y ago
        That dollar is still worth a dollar after it it seized from the criminal who stole it. Same as any stolen property.
        mindslight 10y ago
        "Money laundering" and "stolen" are orthogonal. "Money laundering" is usually persecuted against someone suspected of doing legitimate business that the government doesn't like, and sometimes even against people who are simply pushing back against that FINCEN >$10k surveillance. You can tell it's one of those specious "laws" that actually destroys the rule of law because it flips the script to guilty until proven innocent.
- wiredfool 10y ago
  Of course it was drug money, It was seized.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Zak 10y ago
  Some of the money certainly was, perhaps even most. It is, however a grave injustice when money that is totally legitimate gets seized from innocent people, and some of the people mentioned in the article had strong evidence for their money being from legitimate sources. The fundamental problem is that the standard of proof required is much lower than in criminal law. The legislative remedy some states have started to use is to require a criminal charge to seize property and a criminal conviction for forfeiture.
  - senorprogrammer 10y ago
    I'd argue the fundamental problem is that 'civil forfeiture' is 'guilty until proven innocent', an inversion of the way the rule of law is meant to work. Requiring charges is a very small step in the right direction. I suspect what will happen is that people with money will now be charged for small, ridiculous offences, misdemeanours, as a way for law enforcement to skirt the law. A real improvement is to seize, hold, require conviction, and then enforce forfeiture. If a conviction cannot be made, the forfeiture should be invalidated.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > I'd argue the fundamental problem is that 'civil forfeiture' is 'guilty until proven innocent', an inversion of the way the rule of law is meant to work. That's not an inversion of the way "the rule of law" is supposed to work, its an inversion of the way criminal punishment is supposed to work, because of the particular character of criminal sanction. But civil forfeiture isn't criminal punishment, and doesn't have the features for which that protection exists. Further, civil forfeiture mostly isn't "guilty until proven innocent"; while the burden of proof is the typical civil burden of proof ("preponderance of the evidence" rather than the criminal "beyond a reasonable doubt"), the government bears the burden of proving that assets are subject to forfeiture in a contested forfeiture. (The one aspect of civil forfeiture that has a bit of "guilty until proven innocent" is the "innocent owner" defense, on which the owner bears the burden of proof, where property that is subject to forfeiture -- e.g., because it has been proven to be proceeds of a crime -- is nevertheless immune to forfeiture because the owner either did not know of the conduct justifying the forfeiture or took steps to stop the use of the property giving rise to the forfeiture once they did know.)
CelestialTeapot 10y ago
Yep, legalized theft. Civil forfeiture works to fleece the peasantry (and the criminals) equally. The DEA and police use this method to fund their organizations, because in most cases, they're allowed to keep most if not all of the money seized. That's an enormous conflict of interest that has caused many innocent people to get shafted by the government, as has been shown here (and elsewhere) in prior stories related to civil forfeiture. TL;DR: Never travel with cash, gift cards, or cash cards.
- wldcordeiro 10y ago
  I had an acquaintance that had the police seize $10k in cash from him after he had gotten in a car accident, along with bags of clothing he had bought at the mall. After court and everything the clothing was never reported and the $10k became $4k. It's not just money they'll take, it's anything of value they feel like.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Used to be people would wait a while, and then go and shoot people who did this. I can't decide if it's progress that people no longer consider this reasonable.
    - jrowley 10y ago
      Yeah I don't consider myself a supporter of the mafia but in some situations it'd be nice to have an equalizer.
    - wldcordeiro 10y ago
      I think the thing I was trying to point out is that while there is the legal theft that goes under the guise of civil forfeiture there's also plenty that I feel goes unnoticed by officers acting independently of the bureaucracy.

by zeveb 10y ago

gtirloni 10y ago

> DEA units assigned to patrol 15 of the nation’s busiest airports seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people over the past decade after concluding the money was linked to drug trafficking So was it drug money or not?

emodendroket 10y ago
I mean, it's plausible in all these stories that it is. But it seems like there should be a higher standard before the feds can take tens of thousands of dollars from you.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Ok some cognitive dissonance here I see: If someone told you Brazilian police were taking people's cash you wouldn't for one second think there was some non self serving aspect to this. You wouldn't even look to see if there was any law supporting it. You would just dismiss it as corrupt police officers in a corrupt system, just like you should be doing in this case. Forgot for a moment that you recited that pledge every morning for 13 years of your life, and think about how someone not from America would perceive this
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    I'm not saying "hey, it's totally OK that they're doing this" or that it's not self-serving. What I'm saying is that these people are not exactly as sympathetic/blameless as some of the other asset forfeiture articles I've read.
    - MaysonL 10y ago
      So what? Drug dealers have constitutional rights too, and depriving them of their rights weakens your rights and my rights.
    - cloudjacker 10y ago
      not blameless when viewed in support of a victimless crime and flawed law riddled with conflicts of interest, discriminatory discretion, and self serving ends. if you want a grand jury to find that the federal officers acted within agency guidelines, then great, you will continue to be able to sleep at night if you want the supreme court to continue to find those laws constitutional, then great you will continue to sleep at night. Eugenics programs are constitutional and so politically unpopular that all 50 states have laws that nullify the practice. The rest of us see this perverse practice for what is and would prefer if Congress modifies laws to instruct its agencies to stop the practice and stop funding themselves by taking citizen's money instead of preparing funding pitch decks for representatives which require oversight
e40 10y ago
They'll never know if it was drug money. Some probably is, but I'm sure some is not.
MichaelGG 10y ago
It's easy for them to conclude, with no due process. They just say so, take the money, and leave you having to file suit and fight the government to get your own money back. Asset forfeiture is more of a travesty than money "laundering" being a crime is. The sicker part is that it's just admitting that their justice system is so broken that they wouldn't be able to get convictions against these "criminals" otherwise.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  > Asset forfeiture is more of a travesty than money "laundering" being a crime is. I'm not sure why it's a travesty that it's illegal to conceal the source of illegally-earned money.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    The entire purpose of money is to be fungible. $1 is worth exactly the same as another $1. Inventing the crime of "money laundering" erodes the very concept of money by making its exchange value dependent on who you know and how politically connected they are. Furthermore, forcing people to structure their activities to be legible to the government is making everybody work as an informant against themselves.
    - gohrt 10y ago
      That dollar is still worth a dollar after it it seized from the criminal who stole it. Same as any stolen property.
      - mindslight 10y ago
        "Money laundering" and "stolen" are orthogonal. "Money laundering" is usually persecuted against someone suspected of doing legitimate business that the government doesn't like, and sometimes even against people who are simply pushing back against that FINCEN >$10k surveillance. You can tell it's one of those specious "laws" that actually destroys the rule of law because it flips the script to guilty until proven innocent.
wiredfool 10y ago
Of course it was drug money, It was seized.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Zak 10y ago
Some of the money certainly was, perhaps even most. It is, however a grave injustice when money that is totally legitimate gets seized from innocent people, and some of the people mentioned in the article had strong evidence for their money being from legitimate sources. The fundamental problem is that the standard of proof required is much lower than in criminal law. The legislative remedy some states have started to use is to require a criminal charge to seize property and a criminal conviction for forfeiture.
- senorprogrammer 10y ago
  I'd argue the fundamental problem is that 'civil forfeiture' is 'guilty until proven innocent', an inversion of the way the rule of law is meant to work. Requiring charges is a very small step in the right direction. I suspect what will happen is that people with money will now be charged for small, ridiculous offences, misdemeanours, as a way for law enforcement to skirt the law. A real improvement is to seize, hold, require conviction, and then enforce forfeiture. If a conviction cannot be made, the forfeiture should be invalidated.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I'd argue the fundamental problem is that 'civil forfeiture' is 'guilty until proven innocent', an inversion of the way the rule of law is meant to work. That's not an inversion of the way "the rule of law" is supposed to work, its an inversion of the way criminal punishment is supposed to work, because of the particular character of criminal sanction. But civil forfeiture isn't criminal punishment, and doesn't have the features for which that protection exists. Further, civil forfeiture mostly isn't "guilty until proven innocent"; while the burden of proof is the typical civil burden of proof ("preponderance of the evidence" rather than the criminal "beyond a reasonable doubt"), the government bears the burden of proving that assets are subject to forfeiture in a contested forfeiture. (The one aspect of civil forfeiture that has a bit of "guilty until proven innocent" is the "innocent owner" defense, on which the owner bears the burden of proof, where property that is subject to forfeiture -- e.g., because it has been proven to be proceeds of a crime -- is nevertheless immune to forfeiture because the owner either did not know of the conduct justifying the forfeiture or took steps to stop the use of the property giving rise to the forfeiture once they did know.)

CelestialTeapot 10y ago

Yep, legalized theft. Civil forfeiture works to fleece the peasantry (and the criminals) equally. The DEA and police use this method to fund their organizations, because in most cases, they're allowed to keep most if not all of the money seized. That's an enormous conflict of interest that has caused many innocent people to get shafted by the government, as has been shown here (and elsewhere) in prior stories related to civil forfeiture. TL;DR: Never travel with cash, gift cards, or cash cards.

wldcordeiro 10y ago
I had an acquaintance that had the police seize $10k in cash from him after he had gotten in a car accident, along with bags of clothing he had bought at the mall. After court and everything the clothing was never reported and the $10k became $4k. It's not just money they'll take, it's anything of value they feel like.
- Retric 10y ago
  Used to be people would wait a while, and then go and shoot people who did this. I can't decide if it's progress that people no longer consider this reasonable.
  - jrowley 10y ago
    Yeah I don't consider myself a supporter of the mafia but in some situations it'd be nice to have an equalizer.
  - wldcordeiro 10y ago
    I think the thing I was trying to point out is that while there is the legal theft that goes under the guise of civil forfeiture there's also plenty that I feel goes unnoticed by officers acting independently of the bureaucracy.