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You are right that they are treating it similarly to cash. The problem is that our society is slowly criminalizing cash as well. If cops catch you with a large

You are right that they are treating it similarly to cash. The problem is that our society is slowly criminalizing cash as well. If cops catch you with a large amount of cash, they can just take it with no recourse. It's assumed to be for criminal activity, since why else would anyone transport cash? Using cash is increasingly seen as suspicious and possibly criminal behavior. If you deposit a large amount of cash it's reported to the government and you may even be investigated. Some other comments below have better examples. The government stopped printing large bills and inflation is slowly going to make the smaller bills worthless. The same also applies to laws. The law says "any amount over $10,000 needs to be reported". And as inflation continues, the actual amount of value that represents becomes smaller and smaller from what it was when the law was originally written.

barrkel 9y ago
Before you run away with your paranoid hat on, think about it the other way around: voters want something done about organized crime, and politicians look for the easy wins. Since large untraceable cash transactions are almost always criminal in nature, it makes sense to lower the weight of evidence required to seize unusually large amounts of cash. And frankly, I'm fairly comfortable with that. It'll never affect me, because I don't deal in large cash transactions, and I can't imagine any world in which I would. The largest would be buying a second-hand vehicle privately, but I wouldn't spend 10k on a private purchase - the mugging risk is too high. Yes, poor saps do get caught up, especially if they're doing something like collecting money for charity - small numbers add up. They're ought to be easy ways of appealing the decision for legitimate reasons. I don't really buy the slippery slope argument either. I think the limit will be quickly raised once it's obviously too low.
- rl3 9y ago
  Alternatively, the cops could do actual police work instead of robbing people of their cash at random. >And frankly, I'm fairly comfortable with that. It'll never affect me, because ... Statements such as those aren't sufficient justification for shredding freedoms that have existed for hundreds of years. It's also worth noting that the seized cash usually benefits the organization seizing it, creating a perverse incentive in the process.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    If people would get off their lazy asses and vote, we could have nice things. Here's what voting can get you: California Governor Signs New Criminal Conviction Requirement For Civil Forfeiture https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2016/09/29/california-governor-signs-new-criminal-conviction-requirement-for-civil-forfeiture/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2016/09/29/...
    - falcolas 9y ago
      Err, voting didn't create that law. Voting simply elected the person as the Governor. If the Governor didn't already want to institute the law (regardless of campaign promises), the most voting could do is replace them with someone the voters hope will do what they want (but probably won't). So, voting didn't enact the law, all it did was indirectly create the conditions where the law could come into being.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    Do you think tax is robbery too? The people are sovereign in a democracy. That's how it works.
- seibelj 9y ago
  Don't take cash from citizens without proper process through the courts. Simple as that!
  - confounded 9y ago
    What is the proper process?
    - narrowrail 9y ago
      In the US, civil asset forfeiture laws are state specific. Wikipedia has a good break down by state if you're interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
    - DanBC 9y ago
      Probably i) a court case ii) a judge giving a decision iii) proper legal representation, free if needed, for everyone involved iv) possibly "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond all reasonable doubt". Those things would prevent a lot of the abuse that the US Civil Forfeiture system sees.
- ploxiln 9y ago
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?utm_term=.6628e81a2e65 http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st... > There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800. > Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures. EDIT: throwing in a great specific example: http://listverse.com/2015/06/29/10-egregious-abuses-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/ http://listverse.com/2015/06/29/10-egregious-abuses-of-civil... > restaurant owner Dale Agostini was pulled over on the same stretch of highway as Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson for the same reason: driving in the left lane without passing. After using what turned out to be an untrained police dog to sniff the vehicle, officers found over $50,000 in cash but no evidence of drugs. Agostini explained to the officers that he had family in the area and he intended to buy restaurant equipment at a local auction with the cash he was carrying. At the time, Agostini was traveling with his fiance and their one-year-old child, along with a cook who worked at Agostini’s restaurant. > Agostini and the passengers were informed by Lynda K. Russell, the district attorney who had arrived on the scene, that they would face charges for money laundering and for engaging in organized criminal activity, and the baby would be turned over to Child Protective Services. The car, the $50,000, six cell phones, and an iPod were all seized. > No criminal charges were ever filed.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    Oh I think there have been terrible injustices, and appeal ought to be easy and swift. There are injustices everywhere in law enforcement; innocent people get killed in the US by police because of the policy of carrying guns, combined with rules of engagement covering their use that minimize discretion. But that doesn't mean I'd advocate disarming police in the US, not without a lot of other changes too. The point I'm making is that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. There are tradeoffs in public policy, and organized crime is a particularly tough omelette to fry. I'm OK with targeting their binding protein, their assets, with a reduced presumption of innocence, because I think it's works. I'm thinking of the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland in particular. http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=28 http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=28
- XorNot 9y ago
  Conflating cash seizures with reporting standards is silly - one is not the other and they stem from very different problems in the US.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    The two are strongly related. Large cash transfers are an indicator of some quid pro quo in the other direction. If it's a legitimate transaction, it can be reported on. For one thing, that'll help ensure that the correct taxes get paid, whether now or in the future in an audit. Without reporting, it's deeply suspicious; the other half of the trade is probably illegitimate, or someone is evading tax, which is an attack on the state and its people.
    - XorNot 9y ago
      That wasn't my point - my point was that the policing issue (cash seizures with incentives because it goes to department revenue, and costly recovery measures for citizens) are a very different problem to the question of whether or not we should have the reporting standards we do - which we absolutely should, for the reasons you note.
- RichardHeart 9y ago
  "I think the limit will be quickly raised." I can't think of a single instance of regulation where a limit has ever gone up with inflation, or for any other reason, ever. 10k limit across borders for, uh 30 years? It gets more harsh, not less. EU: "Cash controls - New proposal On 21 December 2016 the Commission proposed to extend the already existing controls on amounts of cash entering or leaving the Union equal to or in excess of 10.000 euros. The measures will extend cash controls to unaccompanied cash such as cash sent in postal parcels or freight consignments and to precious commodities such as gold, which serve as 'quasi-cash' and are used to circumvent the obligation to declare. The proposed changes will improve the exchange of information between competent authorities at national level and between Member States and allow them to act on amounts lower than the declaration threshold, provided that there are indications of criminal activity."
- csomar 9y ago
  I'm suspicious the large criminal operations are using cash (or crypto). They are probably using Banks, Politicians and Regulators. These laws are meant to control the simple citizen, or the smaller criminal operations.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    I also think we need to be much tougher on white collar crime. There needs to be far more custodial sentences, and not merely fines. People need to go to prison. White collar crime is such a parasitic attack on the complexity of the modern economy that I think it should be dealt with more harshly than petty street crime. Sentences need to be risk adjusted take into account the low probability of getting caught, not just for the specific crime being convicted. Here's an idea: what if we had undercover police units actively setting up shell companies to try and bribe politicians, and convict them for life if they are susceptible. It's something I wouldn't be unsupportive of, but it would be very hard to get politicians to vote for.
    - chrisbennet 9y ago
      In th US, "bribing" politicians is actually legal. Large campaign donations are not illegal and occording to Citizens vs United, are protected free speech. As far a white collar crime goes, if you are talking about banking when mention a "parasitic attack on the complexity of the modern economy", I think that bank lobbying has made things that you would hope people would go to jail for, legal or unenforceable. Thankfully our President is going to "drain the swamp"... /s
      - Houshalter 9y ago
        That's not true at all. You certainly cant bribe politicians by giving them money directly. You cant even donate it to their campaign like you say. All you can do is donate to an organization they aren't affiliated with or agree to run ads on their behalf. That's not great, but its a lot different than normal corruption.
        9y ago
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  There is a simpler solution make it impossible to seize assets of any variety without getting a conviction first. If you can't prove a crime you have no business seizing anyone's assets. Innocent until proven guilty is a thing.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    I think we live in a democracy, and the people set the rules. If we the people say that large cash transactions get preemptively intercepted that's ok, because the people are sovereign.
    - throw2016 9y ago
      Voting for 2 seconds every 4 or 5 years does not make you sovereign, in theory, practice or in day to day reality.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      No, we (speaking as a US citizen here) do not set down most of the rules. We instead elect representatives who we "trust" to make the rules on our behalf. Asset forfeiture was not one of the laws which would have hit the ballots; it came down from the federal level. > people say that large cash transactions get preemptively intercepted that's ok It's doubtful that this was never actually presented to the public - at most the public raised concerns about drug runners using their ill-gotten gains too freely, so the elected (and appointed) officials decided to implement a solution this way. It's also equally possible that the public had no input whatsoever in the process.
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      This is a wholly and totally ridiculous line of argument on several levels. The people merely pick representatives for a whole host of reasons they rarely get a say regarding an individual law so its extremely difficult to argue that a given law is by default the will of the people merely because it exists. Further even if we were to accept such a thing it is insufficient to abrogate our responsibility to exercise our critical thinking regarding the nature and effect of the law. More importantly the US constitution clearly and in plain language makes such taking illegal unless the government undergoes the arduous process of amending it which would pretty clearly signify public acceptance of such a change. The fact that such an amendment is not merely unthinkable its laughable seems to suggest that the public will you imagine exists is wholly a figment of your imagination.
- sametmax 9y ago
  You are missing the point. Cash is a way to get around the system when it fails. Every system fails at one point or another. By making cash harder to use, it makes it harder for the population to protect itself against a failing system. Be it war, dictatorship, banks taking over your money like in europe, or just plan economical crisis, an electronic money only country is in a terrible struggle. More than ever, we need fail safes. Our systems are not bullet proof and they may put us in bad situations in this very life time.

barrkel 9y ago

Before you run away with your paranoid hat on, think about it the other way around: voters want something done about organized crime, and politicians look for the easy wins. Since large untraceable cash transactions are almost always criminal in nature, it makes sense to lower the weight of evidence required to seize unusually large amounts of cash. And frankly, I'm fairly comfortable with that. It'll never affect me, because I don't deal in large cash transactions, and I can't imagine any world in which I would. The largest would be buying a second-hand vehicle privately, but I wouldn't spend 10k on a private purchase - the mugging risk is too high. Yes, poor saps do get caught up, especially if they're doing something like collecting money for charity - small numbers add up. They're ought to be easy ways of appealing the decision for legitimate reasons. I don't really buy the slippery slope argument either. I think the limit will be quickly raised once it's obviously too low.

rl3 9y ago
Alternatively, the cops could do actual police work instead of robbing people of their cash at random. >And frankly, I'm fairly comfortable with that. It'll never affect me, because ... Statements such as those aren't sufficient justification for shredding freedoms that have existed for hundreds of years. It's also worth noting that the seized cash usually benefits the organization seizing it, creating a perverse incentive in the process.
- x0x0 9y ago
  If people would get off their lazy asses and vote, we could have nice things. Here's what voting can get you: California Governor Signs New Criminal Conviction Requirement For Civil Forfeiture https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2016/09/29/california-governor-signs-new-criminal-conviction-requirement-for-civil-forfeiture/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2016/09/29/...
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Err, voting didn't create that law. Voting simply elected the person as the Governor. If the Governor didn't already want to institute the law (regardless of campaign promises), the most voting could do is replace them with someone the voters hope will do what they want (but probably won't). So, voting didn't enact the law, all it did was indirectly create the conditions where the law could come into being.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Do you think tax is robbery too? The people are sovereign in a democracy. That's how it works.
seibelj 9y ago
Don't take cash from citizens without proper process through the courts. Simple as that!
- confounded 9y ago
  What is the proper process?
  - narrowrail 9y ago
    In the US, civil asset forfeiture laws are state specific. Wikipedia has a good break down by state if you're interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Probably i) a court case ii) a judge giving a decision iii) proper legal representation, free if needed, for everyone involved iv) possibly "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond all reasonable doubt". Those things would prevent a lot of the abuse that the US Civil Forfeiture system sees.
ploxiln 9y ago
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?utm_term=.6628e81a2e65 http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st... > There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800. > Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures. EDIT: throwing in a great specific example: http://listverse.com/2015/06/29/10-egregious-abuses-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/ http://listverse.com/2015/06/29/10-egregious-abuses-of-civil... > restaurant owner Dale Agostini was pulled over on the same stretch of highway as Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson for the same reason: driving in the left lane without passing. After using what turned out to be an untrained police dog to sniff the vehicle, officers found over $50,000 in cash but no evidence of drugs. Agostini explained to the officers that he had family in the area and he intended to buy restaurant equipment at a local auction with the cash he was carrying. At the time, Agostini was traveling with his fiance and their one-year-old child, along with a cook who worked at Agostini’s restaurant. > Agostini and the passengers were informed by Lynda K. Russell, the district attorney who had arrived on the scene, that they would face charges for money laundering and for engaging in organized criminal activity, and the baby would be turned over to Child Protective Services. The car, the $50,000, six cell phones, and an iPod were all seized. > No criminal charges were ever filed.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Oh I think there have been terrible injustices, and appeal ought to be easy and swift. There are injustices everywhere in law enforcement; innocent people get killed in the US by police because of the policy of carrying guns, combined with rules of engagement covering their use that minimize discretion. But that doesn't mean I'd advocate disarming police in the US, not without a lot of other changes too. The point I'm making is that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. There are tradeoffs in public policy, and organized crime is a particularly tough omelette to fry. I'm OK with targeting their binding protein, their assets, with a reduced presumption of innocence, because I think it's works. I'm thinking of the Criminal Assets Bureau in Ireland in particular. http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=28 http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=28
XorNot 9y ago
Conflating cash seizures with reporting standards is silly - one is not the other and they stem from very different problems in the US.
- barrkel 9y ago
  The two are strongly related. Large cash transfers are an indicator of some quid pro quo in the other direction. If it's a legitimate transaction, it can be reported on. For one thing, that'll help ensure that the correct taxes get paid, whether now or in the future in an audit. Without reporting, it's deeply suspicious; the other half of the trade is probably illegitimate, or someone is evading tax, which is an attack on the state and its people.
  - XorNot 9y ago
    That wasn't my point - my point was that the policing issue (cash seizures with incentives because it goes to department revenue, and costly recovery measures for citizens) are a very different problem to the question of whether or not we should have the reporting standards we do - which we absolutely should, for the reasons you note.
RichardHeart 9y ago
"I think the limit will be quickly raised." I can't think of a single instance of regulation where a limit has ever gone up with inflation, or for any other reason, ever. 10k limit across borders for, uh 30 years? It gets more harsh, not less. EU: "Cash controls - New proposal On 21 December 2016 the Commission proposed to extend the already existing controls on amounts of cash entering or leaving the Union equal to or in excess of 10.000 euros. The measures will extend cash controls to unaccompanied cash such as cash sent in postal parcels or freight consignments and to precious commodities such as gold, which serve as 'quasi-cash' and are used to circumvent the obligation to declare. The proposed changes will improve the exchange of information between competent authorities at national level and between Member States and allow them to act on amounts lower than the declaration threshold, provided that there are indications of criminal activity."
csomar 9y ago
I'm suspicious the large criminal operations are using cash (or crypto). They are probably using Banks, Politicians and Regulators. These laws are meant to control the simple citizen, or the smaller criminal operations.
- barrkel 9y ago
  I also think we need to be much tougher on white collar crime. There needs to be far more custodial sentences, and not merely fines. People need to go to prison. White collar crime is such a parasitic attack on the complexity of the modern economy that I think it should be dealt with more harshly than petty street crime. Sentences need to be risk adjusted take into account the low probability of getting caught, not just for the specific crime being convicted. Here's an idea: what if we had undercover police units actively setting up shell companies to try and bribe politicians, and convict them for life if they are susceptible. It's something I wouldn't be unsupportive of, but it would be very hard to get politicians to vote for.
  - chrisbennet 9y ago
    In th US, "bribing" politicians is actually legal. Large campaign donations are not illegal and occording to Citizens vs United, are protected free speech. As far a white collar crime goes, if you are talking about banking when mention a "parasitic attack on the complexity of the modern economy", I think that bank lobbying has made things that you would hope people would go to jail for, legal or unenforceable. Thankfully our President is going to "drain the swamp"... /s
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      That's not true at all. You certainly cant bribe politicians by giving them money directly. You cant even donate it to their campaign like you say. All you can do is donate to an organization they aren't affiliated with or agree to run ads on their behalf. That's not great, but its a lot different than normal corruption.
      - 9y ago
michaelmrose 9y ago
There is a simpler solution make it impossible to seize assets of any variety without getting a conviction first. If you can't prove a crime you have no business seizing anyone's assets. Innocent until proven guilty is a thing.
- barrkel 9y ago
  I think we live in a democracy, and the people set the rules. If we the people say that large cash transactions get preemptively intercepted that's ok, because the people are sovereign.
  - throw2016 9y ago
    Voting for 2 seconds every 4 or 5 years does not make you sovereign, in theory, practice or in day to day reality.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    No, we (speaking as a US citizen here) do not set down most of the rules. We instead elect representatives who we "trust" to make the rules on our behalf. Asset forfeiture was not one of the laws which would have hit the ballots; it came down from the federal level. > people say that large cash transactions get preemptively intercepted that's ok It's doubtful that this was never actually presented to the public - at most the public raised concerns about drug runners using their ill-gotten gains too freely, so the elected (and appointed) officials decided to implement a solution this way. It's also equally possible that the public had no input whatsoever in the process.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    This is a wholly and totally ridiculous line of argument on several levels. The people merely pick representatives for a whole host of reasons they rarely get a say regarding an individual law so its extremely difficult to argue that a given law is by default the will of the people merely because it exists. Further even if we were to accept such a thing it is insufficient to abrogate our responsibility to exercise our critical thinking regarding the nature and effect of the law. More importantly the US constitution clearly and in plain language makes such taking illegal unless the government undergoes the arduous process of amending it which would pretty clearly signify public acceptance of such a change. The fact that such an amendment is not merely unthinkable its laughable seems to suggest that the public will you imagine exists is wholly a figment of your imagination.
sametmax 9y ago
You are missing the point. Cash is a way to get around the system when it fails. Every system fails at one point or another. By making cash harder to use, it makes it harder for the population to protect itself against a failing system. Be it war, dictatorship, banks taking over your money like in europe, or just plan economical crisis, an electronic money only country is in a terrible struggle. More than ever, we need fail safes. Our systems are not bullet proof and they may put us in bad situations in this very life time.